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“Can I get you something to drink Mr. Armstrong?”the nurse asks. “No, I think I'll be okay for now .” he responds. The elderly man sits and stares out of his window into the horizon. “Any breakfast Mr. Armstrong?” the nurse asks. “No thank you.” he responds. The man wheels himself to the bathroom and brushes his teeth. He stops and stares, skims his fingers lightly across the scar that was left across his face. A day he’ll never forget. Sounds of artillery shells hitting the ground and the roaring of bullets zipping by play in his mind repetitively as if they were in the same room. As he comes back to reality the nurse asks him, “I know it's not polite to ask nor is it any of my business, but how exactly did you get that scar?” The man glares …show more content…
Armstrong went inside by himself searching for spare ammunition. As he wanders around the bunker inattentively a Nazi trooper comes behind him with a knife to his throat. The German man began to speak in german rapidly, but quietly enough to not warn the other soldiers. Captain Armstrong not knowing what to do keeps his hands in front of him to not startle the Nazi. The German continues to ramble quietly, but Armstrong remembers his self-defense tactics from training. Armstrong swiftly grabs the arm of the German man and propels him around his hip. The German abruptly rises from the ground and holds his knife out in front of him pointing it at Armstrong. The German takes a swift swing at the Captain, achieving to lacerate his face. Armstrong stops and stares with anger. He charges toward the German and tackles him to the ground. At that moment the Nazi loses his grip of the knife, making the Captain now have the advantage. The captain, still on top of the German, then grabs the knife from the floor. He raises the knife up with both hands. The Captain, with anger still hovering over his face, drops the knife and stares at the German and lets him go. Armstrong then leaves the
Bullets flying through the air right over me, my knees are shaking, and my feet are numb. I see familiar faces all around me dodging the explosives illuminating the air like lightning. Unfortunately, numerous familiar faces seem to disappear into the trenches. I try to run from the noise, but my mind keeps causing me to re-illustrate the painful memories left behind.
A soldier’s wounds from war are not always visible. Louise Erdrich, the author of The Red Convertible, presents a short story about two Native American brothers Henry and Lyman, who live in North Dakota on an Indian Reservation. Henry and Lyman purchased a Red Convertible and took a trip across the United States with the car. Upon their return, Henry is drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. When Henry finally came home, he was a different man. Like Henry, I have a nephew named Bobby, who serves in the United States Army. Bobby has seen more combat than most soldiers would like to see. The effects of war can be tough on a soldier when they are reintroduced back into society, just like Henry, my nephew had a tough time dealing with the effects of war.
Author Tim O’Brien in “How to Tell a True War Story” uses the physical and mental mindset of isolation in the Vietnam war to create a story with many literary devices that makes a captivating story. The author uses point of view, verbal irony, and the character Tim O’Brien to enhance his written experiences of the Vietnam War. This story teaches the reader that experiences that were lived by the reader can be altered by the mind to a certain extent, where they can be questioned as true or not. Perhaps at a sports game or in a heated situation such as a police chase or court case. Tim O’Brien’s experiences have captivated many readers, but are they true? Or just a product of insanity from war? Well, Tim O’Brien leaves that up to the reader to decide.
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(O'Brien 13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful, requires a great force; the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(O'Brien 39). Azar has become demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, the infliction of violence has become the norm of behavior for these men; the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is instantly erased by another, setting order back within the group. O'Brien here shows a hint of sensitivity among the men to set up a startling contrast between the past and the present for these men. The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror; therefore fulfilling O'Brien's purpose, to convince the reader of war's severely negative effects.
Julianna Claire, an award winning poet once said, “War makes men act like fools, and makes fools pretend to be brave.” War is a very difficult and dangerous game. There must be a just cause to fight for, supporters on either side of the war, and clear plan on what the war ought to look like. Though, as much as countries plan their strategies and perfect their tactics, war never seems to go how people think it should. War creates heartache, makes countries question their governments, and changes the lives of the soldiers who fight in them. One such story that address the damages of war, is Ambush, by Tim O’Brien (1946). In this short story, Tim O’Brien tells a story of a young man fighting in Vietnam who kills a member of the Vietnam army. Robin Silbergleid, a neurosurgeon in Seattle, Washington, who minored in
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
War can destroy a man both in body and mind for the rest of his life. In “The Sniper,” Liam O’Flaherty suggests the horror of war not only by presenting its physical dangers, but also by showing its psychological effects. We are left to wonder which has the longer lasting effect—the visible physical scars or the ones on the inside?
Like "The Lives of the Dead," it begins with a statement that the rest of the chapter throws into question. "The War wasn 't all terror and violence," the narrator tells us, "Sometimes things could almost get sweet" (31). What follows, however, is a series of vignettes that are anything but "sweet." When a Vietnamese boy with a plastic leg approaches an American soldier with a chocolate bar, the soldier reflects, "One leg, for Chrissake. Some poor fucker ran out of ammo" (31). When the same soldier steals his friend 's puppy, "strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device," he responds with an ironic affirmation of the initiation right of the conventional war story: "What 's everyone so upset about? ... I mean, Christ, I 'm just a boy" (37). Here, the novel renders ironic both the loss of innocence and the "reconsideration" that structure the traditional war story. The positive spin that underlies the war story as a genre emerges here only as a bankrupt fantasy. Thus in "How to Tell a True War Story," the narrator warns, "If a story seems moral, do not believe it. 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 the victim of a very old and terrible lie" (68). Aimed
Bullets fly past his head, a ringing left only after a near-death experience remains in his ear for the rest of his life, which ends five minutes later when he and his fellow soldiers are bombarded with falling bombs. Wartime is a gateway to massacre and life-long mental suffering, labeled as “honorable” with false intentions. People suffer from war, especially those in the military, which is why war and military enrollment should not be so accepted and allowed as it is.
John F. Kennedy once said “Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind”. War runs the danger of destroying a soldier’s mind and body. When a soldier does leave the battlefield he/she still has to carry the burden of war. Servicemen and women have to go on living and hiding the emotional and physical wounds of war. In the short story “The Sniper” author Liam O’ Flaherty includes the element of surprise to real that war not only causes physical risk, but also psychological suffering.
Lawrence Hill Books, c2009 Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
When working in medicine, it is easy to accept the death of an elderly person, but difficult to see a young man or children murdered by war. Also, the severity was an issue for many woman’s psyches. An elderly person has lived a full life having creating friends, a career, and family. A young child has not had the opportunity to accomplish this. The patients that Vietnam nurses regularly saw were young enough that the nurses often checked to see if they were high school classmates. Most likely it seemed that these young men reminded the nurses of brothers and friends. In Vietnam, the average age of nurse was twenty-two, while the average age of men enlisted was only nineteen (Norman, 28). Connie Christensen McCall Connolly served her country as an army nurse and remembers the devastation of seeing young men killed in battle, “the people who died were people my age; the people who were injured were people my age.’ Though grateful to be alive, Connie says she went home ‘with a very angry spirit’” (Gruhzit-Hoyt,
“PTSD… destroyed the person I was. That carefree, vital man became two men in the wake of injury. One is the person you meet, still duty-bound, whose emotions are identifiable and whose reactions usually seem normal. The other is the man inside me, the one who never really came back, who still lives on the battlefield.”
Storytelling has the ability to display the details and and events of war that is not easily depicted in any other way. O’Brien describes the misconceptions and truths that surround the experiences of war and stories about war. O’Brien’s stories are a way of preserving his memories from war, and also a method for soldiers in coping with their situations as well. Stories have the ability to reflect on the grief, struggles, and even satisfying events of war, especially on the front lines of combat. Storytelling is an important way to appeal to emotion and describe important details about the ugly truths that are hidden from the public eye, as well as serving as a coping mechanism in order to deal with one’s life situations.
Dark clouds settled above, forever watching the monstrous scene forming below. Flashes of lightning lit up the caliginous sky, a temporary false dawn. Rain moulded the once solid ground into a sodden, quagmire mess. War was the worst at night; when the fear of whistling bombs deprived soldiers of sleep and dreams of drowning in a green sea caused their hearts to palpitate. It was then, that they were left with their undesired thoughts. Waiting, watching, for the next barrage. The men sat silent and still; their thoughts repressing them from distant rest. Their eyes were empty sockets, stripped raw by the weight of their experiences in war. Settled amongst the soldiers on the Western Front, a distinctively younger boy stood out from the rest, eyes vibrant, ardent for some desperate glory.