On the morning of this lecture, one of the small children then staying at Neville's home — part of a visiting family group on their way back to Vietnam, where the father is a Marine Corps flier — got into the matches after his wife had already warned him off them. When she caught him about to strike one and took the matches away, the boy retorted, "I'm going to shoot you dead," language Neville notes the child had picked up from the household's constant talk of his father's combat service.