But it can also be read as a more specific claim: that the public understanding of what he had done was wrong, and that being celebrated for a simplified version of something complex was its own kind of injury.

He talked, less frequently and more carefully, about the reservation and his community.

He knew that his public role required him to be a symbol of national unity — the Indian fighting for America, proof that this was a war for all Americans regardless of background.

He performed that role because he had been asked to and because he was not without patriotism.

But he was also a man who knew what he was going home to, and the gap between the national celebration and the reality of that homecoming was not one he could fully articulate in the settings he was put in.