Even if he wanted to be brave, O'Brien is subject to his limited body, which will not readily face death. He is not the bold, confident hero who would sacrifice himself willingly. O'Brien learns, alongside his fellow soldiers, that no human is exempted from fear. "It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero." O'Brien O'Brien still deals with horrible nightmares and the actual memories of war are worse still, but he records his experiences in this book because he believes he is not alone in this act. As the final function of his duty, he writes this book to inform the American people about the real cost of war. O'Brien recognizes that one soldier's memoir is not enough to forever change the course of human history and prevent further wars, but he believes that his story is important and deserves to be told. "Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. In the morning, however, O'Brien faces battle with his senses dulled from a hangover, potentially a lethal mistake. They combat their own fear by celebrating every spare moment. He and his buddies spend their time self-medicating the dread of battle with alcohol, stories, and all sorts of revelry. O'Brien focuses in depth upon the horror of combat. "With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head." O'Brien Written by people who wish to remain anonymous We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. Listen to Rat: “Jesus Christ, man, I write this beautiful fuckin’ letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back.These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. He’s nineteen years old - it’s too much for him - so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it’s so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made a victim of a very old and terrible lie. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. They didn't know the first thing about Diem's tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalist, or the long colonialism of the French - this was all too damn complicated, it required some reading - but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.” They didn't know Bao Dai from the man in the moon. All of them - I held them personally and individually responsible - the polyestered Kiwanis boys, the merchants and the farmers, the pious churchgoers, the chatty housewives, the PTA and the Lions club and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the fine outstanding gentry out at the country club. “I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to a war they didn't understand and didn't want to understand.
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