
“The Vietnam War became a metaphor for American society that connoted distrust in the government, and the sacrifice of American lives for poorly understood and deeply divided values and principles.” (Stevenson) Fighting in Vietnam was a uniquely different circumstance from any other war that U.S. soldiers had experienced. Vietnam included a mixed style of fighting, including new weaponry, new draft policies and procedures, and for the first time, media coverage. During the Vietnam War, 58,000 soldiers were killed, 2,000 were captured, and 350,000 were maimed and wounded. Vietnam was viewed as “a personal failure on a national scale.” (Beaton)  While the percentage of deaths seen in Vietnam was similar to previous wars, the number of soldiers who suffered amputations and crippling’s was 300% higher. The soldiers returning to the U.S. not only suffered physical damage, but the psychiatric impact from seeing multiple individuals die would have lasting implications. Many of those who were drafted to fight were only 18 years of age and just graduating high school. Of those who were killed, 61% were younger than 21 years old. (Beaton) These young men were thrown into a guerrilla style of warfare far away from their homes with little to no training. Many started out very timid and cautious to use their weapons, but after being attacked just once or seeing their comrade blown to pieces, they quickly became strong enough to fire a gun. Vietnam was an intense war atmosphere compared to other wars. During World War II, the infantryman saw approximately “40 days of combat in four years”, as compared to Vietnam which is reported to have seen “240 days of combat in one year.” (Beaton) Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried is a historical documentation of the physical items that the Vietnam soldiers carried subliminally representing the emotions of anger, fear, and isolation that the soldiers harbored.

The draftees that were sent to Vietnam were the youngest soldiers that the United States had ever sent into battle; thus the age of these young men impacted their experience and performance during war. O’Brien opens the excerpt carefully describing the valued letters that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried in his rucksack. O’Brien quickly and emphatically informs the reader that these were not love letters, but they were letters from a young lady from home named Martha. The Lieutenant, “wanted Martha to love him as he loved her.” (328) This was a young man who would have been attending college just like his friend Martha. The letters represented not only his desire to have love, but to have the college life others his age were experiencing. He dreamed of the missed college events including classes and the life that while in high school he imagined would follow graduation. In addition to letters, the soldiers protected the few photographs that were stashed in their packs. When Lieutenant Cross looked at the photographs, “he thought of the new things he should’ve done.” (330) As the war waned on, Lieutenant Cross lost his platoon comrade, Ted Lavender. Experiencing this death up close and the realization his friend would not return to his family led Cross to burn the letters he had been carrying from Martha. In an act of anger, sadness, and youth he burned the letters and her photographs. In the end, Lieutenant Cross hated Martha, but it was not truly Martha he physically despised. His hate was the hate he had for the war and losing friends in battle. The fact Cross could not save Lavender is what Cross hated most. The act of burning his treasured letter was not a change in feelings for Martha as woman, but for the war and how it was destroying his young life. Cross understood, “It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.”(340)

The photographs the soldiers carried were not the only pictures that depicted the experiences of the young men in Vietnam. Some of the soldiers packed cameras that they used to capture the geography, landscape, and Viet Cong citizens that they met. As New York Times, writer Joseph Berger states, “photographs were taken not by professionals but by young grunts barely out of high school. Grinning wide-eyed at this strange land where they had been sent, often against their will, in circumstances they did not fully understand, with little foreboding of what might be in store, their photographs of ordinary wartime days have a special poignancy.” (Berger) O’Brien, like Berger, was portraying what the soldiers carried on their backs as much as the mental anguish they carried in their memories. O’Brien describes Henry Dobbins lugging Black Flag insecticide and Lee Strunk with tanning lotion, these items were necessary because of the environmental conditions whereas some of the items they carried, like the scrambler radio, weighed thirty pounds. These items did not have meaning but were out of necessity and fear to protect against infections like malaria or dysentery. For the first time in the lives of these young men they were in an unknown land, with unknown topography. For the first time, they were being attacked in a guerilla style of fighting that included hidden land mines as well as hand to hand combat. There was evidence of native women befriending the soldiers and turning on them and killing them. These young soldiers were naïve and trusting of the local residents only to learn that this treatment was only an act and not genuine. Berger describes some of the photos capturing worn equipment and discarded weapons, all of this was new to these young soldiers who, just months earlier, carried worn basketball shoes or football pads and helmets to sports practices. (Berger) O’Brien describes the movement of the soldier, “The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules.” (335) These young men, recruited as soldiers with minimal training, were witnessing death first hand for the first time. It did not matter which weapon they were assigned or which mission they were on, ultimately, “They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous.” (335) The weapons were carried out of necessity and symbolized the soldier’s recurrent prayers and hope to survive. 

With so many men being needed to fight in Vietnam, the draft process was not only necessary but modified to handle the gross number of recruits. For the first time in history, recruits were assigned a number that designated when they would be shipped out to training camp. In addition to their departure date, the men were provided a return home date.  Knowing this return date before leaving for battle would prove to be a detriment to the soldier’s performance on the battlefield. (Stevens) In the beginning, the fear of fighting was so prevalent that many soldiers were not psychologically prepared to shoot a gun. The weapons are described by O’Brien in detail including their physical weight in pounds. The weight the soldier was humping was dramatically different than the weight of armor used in previous wars, but it was included by O’Brien to represent the mental heaviness of this war that the soldiers were burdened with. As Stevens shares, “after the first serious encounter, he lost his enthusiasm for combat. As he began to approach the end of his tour, the soldier noticeably began to give up; he became reluctant to engage in offensive combat operations.” (Stevens) The goal was not to win the fight, but to survive in order to return home.

This guerilla warfare proved to be more difficult for the American soldier. The “closer contact with the Vietnamese people blurring the distinction between soldier and civilian” changed the war for the young soldier from a “good” war to a “bad” war. (Stevens) There was no shortage of the supplies that were sent in to the soldiers, only a tremendous lack of psychological support for the fear and anger these young men were coping with. The soldiers were not short on rations, “the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility.” (335) Consequently, the reason for the war was what the soldiers missed more than the resources, “and for the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.” (336) These things were not the tangible items but the visions of soldiers burning, missing limbs, or dying in the arms of another solder. As Berger shares, “that many veterans had destroyed their photographs because they could not bear to look at them.” (Berger) Returning from Vietnam was a unique experience from the return from any other war that soldiers had experienced. After both World War I and II, soldiers were welcomed back to the United States with ticker-tape parades; they returned home heroes. Those who returned from Vietnam were greeted by sign carrying protesters even as they exited the airport. Often protesters would attack the soldiers with their signs, some even threw urine on them. (Moffett) After both World War II and the Korean War, “a grateful nation was anxious to show its admiration and support to the returning soldiers”; celebrations for those who had served continued for weeks. “It seemed as though the nation and its citizens could not do enough for the returning service men and women.” (Moffett) This feeling of gratitude was not the sentiment expressed for those who returned from serving during the Vietnam War. Americans were visibly rude and ungrateful; “as a result of America’s loss in Vietnam, there was a perception that the men who fought there did not measure up to their predecessors.” (Moffett)
