Sam Kennedy’s Reviews > The Things They Carried > Status Update

The soldiers spend the next day trying to find Kiowa in the mud and Lt. cross can't help blame himself. O'brien in his 40s returns to Vietnam with his daughter. O'brien was wounded twice in his service once in the side and he was back in service in a month the second through the butt and the new medic messed up the treatment and O'brien was out for awhile. O'Brien never forgives the new medic, Jorgenson.

The squad stays in a monastery for monks and it makes some of the squad become more spiritual. O'Brien talks about his first kill and how it was traumatizing. Norman Bowker could have saved Kiowa from drowning in some mud field but cant under mortar fire and never forgives himself. He never blends back into civilian life then kills himself.

Rat Kelly tells a story about how when he was stationed in a medic camp in the mountains his friend Flossie had had his girl friends flown in from the states to spend time with. The girl, Mary Anne, begins by just talking with the Vietnamese guards and slowly becoming more curious and involved she ends up leaving Flossie and going on ambushed with green Berets then eventually disappears into the jungle one night.

O'Brien Talks about the small stuff betweens friends ad enemies in the group. He then talks about how when you try to tell a war story its hard to pull the truth from the lies because theres such a fine line. He is very vague about how to know if its a real war story because not even he knows. The men are asked to move into the mountains which they know will be trying. Curt lemon is killed by a booby trap

Tim obrien thiks about running away to canada to avoid the draft. He finds a place on a border river and stays at the tip top lodge on the banks of the river. Elroy Berdahl the old man there helps silently make Obrien face his ultimatum and obrien choses to go to war.

The first chapter it mainly about the equipment the average soldier carried in Vietnam and how much it weighed. It also talks about soldiers mental burdens they must carry with them. Lt. Jimmy Cross battles the burden that he let a squad mate die because he was day dreaming about a girl.