Recommended Reading for Veteran’s Day

The beauty of books is that they can change your thinking.  A goal that many authors strive for but all too often fail to achieve.  Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried changed me.  The book is a collection of short stories concerning the Vietnam War.  In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Tim O’Brien is the Nobel Laureate of the Vietnam War.  His most famous story is “The Things They Carried,” but the one that I carry in my heart is “On A Rainy River.”

As a young mother, I said numerous times “I’m not raising my child to die in a Vietnam style war.  I’ll drug him (or her, because if the draft ever comes back, it will be for everyone) and ship him to Canada.”  After reading “On a Rainy River,” I realized that decision, along with so many others, isn’t mine to make. 

The story is written in the first person and the narrator is a 21 year old who just graduated from college summa cum laude, a member of Phi Betta Kappa, student body president and a full scholarship to Harvard for graduate studies.  His graduation gift from the United States government was a draft notice.  Imagine opening that letter on a normal summer afternoon.  The narrator believed being drafted wouldn’t happen to him, he was too good, he had played the game of life as he was supposed to.  He spent the summer emotionally raging, everything the reader would assume, but so well written by O’Brien that the reader feels it all. 

Finally, he takes off for northern Minnesota to a lodge with one old man on the Rainy River bordering Canada.  He spends six days trying to decide to stay or flee to Canada.  Six sleepless, jittery days.  One spent vomiting in turmoil, all of them constantly “dizzy with sorrow.”  The old man seems to know his struggle, he doesn’t interfere, just supports this young man with his presence.  On the next to last day, the old man takes the boy fishing twenty yards from the Canadian shore.  He breaks down crying.  He can’t leave his family, his community and his country, but not out of loyalty, out fear of embarrassment.

I would go to war–I would kill and maybe die–because I was embarrassed not to.  That was the sad thing.  And so I sat in the bow of the boat and cried. . . I survived, but it’s not a happy ending.  I was a coward.  I went to the war.

As a mother, I want to shield my children from the horror of war, from even the decision to participate in a war.  However, the decision to fight for your country, either as a choice or by a draft, is a choice made by very young people; I would argue by people too young to understand all of the implications.  Nevertheless, it is a choice to be made by the solider.  As citizens, we must honor that decision.

A little warning, once you’ve read “The Things They Carried,” you’ll carry it with you the rest of your life.  This story is not forgotten.  It’s written in a flat journalistic tone and yet the reader is emotionally gutted.  Interwoven throughout the story of a platoon of boys is a list of what the soliders’ carried and its physical weight: 

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.  Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water.  Together, these items weighed between 15 to 20 pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. 

Mr. O’Brien lists additional items throughout the story depending upon the soldier’s rank, his mission, his superstitions, and his weapons; all kinds of tangible items whose weight seems to sink the soldiers in the swamps they’re walking through.  The lists show the personality of the soldiers. 

Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake.  Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia.  Ted Lavendar, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the villae of Than Khe in mid-April.  By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and the camouflage cover.  They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers.  Very few carried underwear.  On their feet they carried jungle boots–2.1 pounds–and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot.  Until he was shot, Ted Lavendar carried 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity.  Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms.  Norman Bowker carried a diary.  Rat Kiley carried comic books.  Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet.

The point of the story isn’t the heft and struggle to hump these items through the jungle, that’s the easy part, the burden is what they carry for the rest of their lives. 

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die.  Grief, terror, love, longing–these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.  They carried shameful memories.  They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. 

Today, I humbly honor the men and women who carry the scars of war with them for the rest of their lives.  The Things They Carried gave me an insight to their experiences, thinking and emotions both during the war and afterward.  Reading it is the least I could do.