The history of sociality which we discussed with reference to the Tiger Temple community shows that the reality of war, even in the field of a total war, involves an extraordinary manifestation of human solidarity among traditionally unrelated people, not merely the consolidation of the existing boundary between friends and enemies. This history is an important dimension of the lived history of the American War in Vietnam; yet it also can provide important insights to understanding contemporary issues such as the revival of commemorative rituals: for ancestors on the one hand and on behalf of the displaced spirits of the war dead on the other. To this end we will return to the material condition of war death discussed earlier. We will investigate what the two-sided ritual practice can tell us of the historical reality of mass displacement and the power of human action to counter it.

In his seminal history of the First World War, Jay Winter highlights two important social developments in Western Europe relating to the catastrophic mass death between 1914 and 1918 and the consequent experience of universal bereavement. One was the revival of traditional religious icons and practices, including beliefs and narratives about the ghosts of fallen soldiers. Winter notes, “The period of the 1914–18 war was the apogee of spiritualism in Europe.” The other was the remarkable postwar development of voluntary informal networks in which broken families and grieving individuals hoped to share their grief and assist one another in overcoming their hardship.