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As a soldier, the equipment you carry into any conflict has two purposes. One purpose is to kill the enemy, the other purpose is to save your life. Any extra items, such as personal items or memories, are taken along or left behind to save your sanity.
I have no doubt that was the focal point of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. The story switches back and forth between the descriptions of the physical and mental equipment that the average American foot soldier carried into battle. The list becomes longer and in the end incorporates the hopes, dreams, and fears that each soldier carried. All these items are necessities to the soldiers; items that they can not live without. Like the cumbersome equipment the soldiers carried into battle, their hopes, dreams, and fears were just as heavy and weighed them down just as their equipment did.
In The Things They Carried, Mr. O'Brien describes the lethal necessities that soldiers carry into battle, such as; M-16 assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, flack jackets, ammunition, and steel helmets. Letters, comic books, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, hotel size bars of soap, packets of Kool-Aid
. . .
O’Brien also describes the esprit de corps that develops between men who face death together and the callousness that appears when death takes a fellow solider and friend. I related to the character Lieutenant Cross more than any other character in the story. "… they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of staying alive.
I also related to the way the soldiers handled their emotions as they saw their fellow soldier, and friend, die. My heartache, anger, and longing for her interfered with my safety and the safety of my men. For they had they responsibility of keeping their men safe and bringing them home alive. Others have an immediate detachment to the whole thing and look at their fallen comrade, not as a friend, but as another fallen soldier. " (526) He continues with "…Martha had never mentioned the war… she wasn’t involved.
Lieutenant Cross felt personally responsible for the death of Ted Lavender. She signed the letters "Love", but it wasn’t love…" (530)
I associated with this element of the story because I also had to sacrifice the love for my girlfriend to concentrate on my duties as a squad leader.
Like Lieutenant Cross, I was a changed man as well. Its a callousness that covers a combat veteran like a scab. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.
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