
One of the least favorite wars for Americans to talk about is the Vietnam War because face it, the United States lost and failed its troops by not truly supporting them. History does not disclose how much weight the soldiers of the Vietnam war carried on their shoulders because they try to cover up their mistake of going into this unpopular war. They not only struggled physically fighting a war on ground that they did not know and could not protect themselves against at all times, but they also struggled mentally by watching their fellow soldiers around them die and lacked a feeling of being truly supported back home. By reading the excerpt from the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien gives the reader an insight of what it was like to be a soldier in the Vietnam War and just how much they had to carry both physically and mentally. 

Service men and women had to make conscious decisions on what they could and could not physically carry because the more you carry, the longer the day seemed. Sometimes the soldiers would get rid of different items during their march because it helped lighten their load since later that day, there were planes and helicopters that would bring more supplies to them (O’Brien 335). Because they had so many things that they needed to protect themselves with such as guns and claymores (O’Brien 331), they had to limit the amount of personal objects they could bring such as pictures and comic books (O’Brien 329). Their gear weighed the most causing discomfort since the helmet weighed 5 pounds, the boots weighed another 2.1 pounds, and so on which shows that even what they were wearing caused discomfort since it was burdensome (O’Brien 328). Whenever they did not have room in their bags they would find different ways to carry things that had symbolic meaning to them like how Cross did not have room in his bags, so he carried the pebble that Martha sent him in his mouth to save space, and so he could feel more in touch with her (O’Brien 332). Each mission required different items because they did not know much about the land, so they had to make their best guesses at what they would need. For example, on more complicated missions they had to carry explosives to blow tunnels while during dangerous missions they would take “turns carrying a 28-pound mine detector (O’Brien 332).” The toll on the soldiers’ bodies made them even weaker since they had to carry so many things, but they continued on even when the day seemed like it was never ending. 

Halfway through the excerpt, the ideas change from actual physical things that they carry to non-tangible things they carry such as disease and poise. On page 335, Jimmy Cross says how “They carried their own lives” which shows how they mostly had to rely on themselves because they only had each other and no true outside support. Most did not have someone who wrote them while others had someone but never had a true connection with that person such as First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross with Martha. When Lavender died, O’Brien explained how Cross would now carry a rock in his stomach for the rest of the war because he now felt the emotional toll of losing someone, and Cross felt personally responsible for Lavender’s death since he was not paying attention to him and thinking about Martha instead. This also shows how the servicemen had to carry guilt with them since they felt personally responsible if one of the other soldiers died. They were also concerned with staying alive themselves, yet they felt guilty for being alive since they think that they could have saved the person who had died instead of freezing and panicking (O’Brien 338). The soldiers felt that they had to stay composed at all times because they felt that they had to maintain their poise and not be an embarrassment in front of the other soldiers which could take a toll on the soldiers mentally since they could never express themselves (O’Brien 337-339). Cross finally understood that war was taking a toll on all of the 

soldiers when he says “It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do (O’Brien 340).”

Teachers did not show things the soldiers carried internally and externally in the Vietnam War because of the lack of popularity the war had. In history classes, teachers teach very little about the Vietnam War because first of all, America did not win, and second of all, the war was very messy. This war was more of a psychological war because America did not win, and they were not willing to accept the fact that they cannot win every war they fight in (Lawrence 6). The soldiers fought this war without knowing the land at all and had to engage in guerilla warfare against people who had lived there all their lives “pursuing flawed strategies in fighting the war (Lawrence 5). Every place they went, they knew very little about and could not protect themselves as much as the native people could. The soldiers did their best by specializing what they carried for different missions, but the weight slowly became too great. When Americans realized that they were not winning the war, the war started losing momentum since the United States stepped into a place that they were not originally invited into all in order to stop communism in a country that had already started adapting to communism. For example, Martha never talked about the war other than telling him to be safe, but never asking him how he is actually doing or that she supports him throughout everything that he goes through in the war (O’Brien 340). 

Ultimately, this book changes the reader’s perspective of the Vietnam War because it shows that they carried so much physically and had to carry the things they felt emotionally. It shows a side of history that teachers hid from their students since America was not the ultimate winner. Half of the Vietnam War was physical with actual fighting, and the other half was all psychological with dealing with loss and the chance of someone killing them every moment of every day. This is still important today because people need to see that the soldiers go through hell and back during war time, and civilians need to appreciate what the soldiers have given up to serve this country because the soldiers come back with not only physical scars but also emotional scarring that cannot always be fixed easily (Taylor 57). Through thick and thin, Americans should support the war the soldiers are fighting in because civilians do not understand the significant difference between what the soldiers have to carry on a daily basis versus what they carry on a daily basis because soldiers not only have a lot to carry when they are overseas, but they still carry the burdens that the war caused when they get home if they are lucky enough to actually make it home. 
