Within the first six months he had only gone home twice; throughout the six months he had also sent money to help with momma and Jane. But at the end of the fifth month, he was told he would be deployed at the of the next month to Afghanistan. It was that time, time for John to leave even further away to Afghanistan; and he had just told his momma and Jane so not to worry them. Throughout his year in Afghanistan he was never allowed to come home once. He could only send and receive letters from them; but that wasn’t enough. Finally the sargent allowed him to go visit, John wanted it to be a surprise. He finally arrived and momma said it was the greatest surprise to finally see him. She called him her little hero. Unfortunately he had …show more content…
As he was in sight of the base, an enemy bomb exploded. The noise of the explosion was piercing, the damage was dreadful, the deaths were too many to count, the injuries were ten times more, and John almost died. A day after the explosion search, men were still out looking for soldiers to see if there were any others that made it. At the end of the day when everyone was ready to give up looking for unfound men, someone a few feet from where John was standing saw something in a hole, which was created from bomb. “HEY!!! HEY!! SOMEONE COME OVER HERE!! I THINK I’VE FOUND SOMEONE!!!” a man yelled at the top of his lungs. As it took a few minutes for someone to reach the man through all the rubble, they began pulling fragments from the hole until they saw someone, it was John. The two men began working faster and faster until there was enough room to pull him out. Once he was completely out, the two men picked him up carefully and ran him back to the base as fast as they could where the hospital tent was ready to take in anyone who was found and brought to them. John was one of the men with more serious injuries and he was immediately laid down on the stretcher. Unfortunately the
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.
Mary Anne was smuggled into Vietnam by her boyfriend Mark Fossie to visit him, her arrival in Vietnam brought a touch of home to everyone. She was a beautiful, innocent 17 year-old American blonde, she had on “white culottes and a sexy pink sweater” (O’Brian 91). Her bubbly personality, joyful smile, and good looks not only pleased Mark but also a good morale of all the other soldiers. For the first two weeks, the two love birds were stuck together like as if they needed each other to breathe. “Mary Anne and Fossie had been sweethearts since grammar school and since sixth grade on they had known for a fact that someday they would get marr...
According to the Indian Times, madness is the rule in warfare (Hebert). The madness causes a person to struggle with experiences while in the war. In “How to Tell a True War Story”, the madness of the war caused the soldiers to react to certain situations within the environment differently. Tim O’Brien’s goal with the story “How to Tell a True War Story” is to shed light on the madness the soldiers face while in the war. Tim O’Brien tells the true story of Rat experiences of the war changing his life.
Tim O’ Brien’s narrative, How to Tell a War Story depicts the livelihood and experience of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. More so evaluating the life Tim O’ Brien and several other characters in his platoon. The sequences of stories reveals the thoughts and behavior of many post-Vietnam veterans and also can be related to the behavior of many veterans today. Throughout the segments of stories, “How to tell a War Story”, “Speaking of Courage and Notes”, and “The Things They Carried”, O’ Brien illustrates a common theme of guilt and sacrifice among the key characters Lieutenant Cross, Rat, and O’ Brien himself. Each character are presented with an unexpected responsibility and are forced to serve their state. A sense of discomfort
Tim O’Brien is a twentieth- century author, he was born October 1 1946 in Minnesota. After O’Brien graduated from Worthington College, he received his draft papers for Vietnam. O’Brien served as a ‘foot soldier’ from February 1969 to March 1970. He was awarded the rank of sergeant and received the Purple Heart after sustaining a grenade wound. After serving O’Brien went onto graduate school at Harvard University, where is received an internship at the Washington Post. O’Brien’s writing career took off in 1973 when he released If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home, the book was about his experiences at war. Although it is not all rainbows and butterflies, O’Brien experienced depression, and personal desperation approaching suicide, without his army friends he felt alone and scared. He called himself a coward, a deserter of conscience, for not defying the draft. Luckily O’Brien found happiness when his wife Meredith gave birth to their two sons, Timmy, and Tad.
Before this battle, the men are starting to feast on pig and some other foods. All of a sudden they realize that something is wrong because the observation balloons have spotted smoke from their chimney. Soon after, shells begin to drop on them. They race down to the house and feast for four hours. Outside houses are burning, shells are propelled down to the ground. In eight days the men are told to return. Only a few days later are they ordered to evacuate a village. While on their way, Kropp and Paul see people fleeing out of the village with distress, anger, and depression. Everyone is silent as the two walk by them, even the children holding on to their mothers for moment, Paul feels a blow on his left leg. Albert is right next to him, and he cries out to Paul. The men scurry to a nearby ditch. They are hurt, but do the best that they can to run to another ditch. Albert is straggling behind, and Paul helps him to continue by holding him up. They reach the dug-out where Paul bandages up Kropp’s injury, a bullet for an ambulance to be taken. The ambulance picks them up, and they are given an anti-tetanus shot in their chests. When the dressing station is reached, Paul and Kropp make sure that they are lying next to each other. The surgeon examines Paul and tells someone to chloroform him. Paul objects to this order, and the doctor does not do it. The surgeon takes out a piece of shell, and puts Paul in a plaster cast. The two are brought on the train, Albert develops a high fever so he needs to be taken off the train at the next stop. In order to stay with his friend, Paul fakes a fever and they reach a Catholic Hospital together. Paul is operated on and recovers faster than Kropp. His leg is amputated, and he later goes to an institute for artificial limbs. Paul is called back to his regiment and returns to the front.  parts, or lost body parts, and they are thankful that it is not them who are in danger of dying. By receiving injuries, Paul and Kropp experience the war from a different perspective.
...g during the war. Tim O'Brien doesn't write about black and white of what is true and what is not, but of the gray fog in between. Even though each story is separate, they come together to express how stories rule our lives. What is written down in words is what others hear and is passed down. "What stories can do, I guess, is make things present…I can make myself feel again." His main purpose is to make a person feel something about what the characters are going though. It is not everyday when one comes home from war. The only way to preserve the memories are to write about them in a story. This novel may appear to be a simple story about a platoon of soldiers while in Vietnam. As the book progresses, the weight of the war starts to dwell on the reader. The powerful emotional content grows as the narrator gets more courage to talk about the horrors that occurred.
A big "celebration" dinner was planned for John's going away. All of his family and close friends came to enjoy good food and fellowship before leaving in the morning. His parents were to drive him to the airport where he would fly to the army base. The same base his father trained at many years ago. John's father was proud of his son, but also a little concerned, for he realized the seriousness of this war.
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).
In his assessment of storytelling, O’Brien highlights the challenges of telling stories by including many tales that take place after the Vietnam War. For example, back in America, the soldier’s of Vietnam found
“Why would you want to interview me when there are plenty of people back home that would be easier to interview in person?” asks John Stout. He is about 5’11, has dark black hair and his eyes are a rich chocolaty brown. He is tan and has a strong muscular body. John is currently deployed in Bagram Afghanistan. He departed on July 7th, 2016 and will not return until April of 2017. He grew up in Fort Ripley, MN and graduated from Brainerd High School in 2014. John is very close with his Mother, Father, Brother and Sister. He grew up with a wrench in his hand and always helped his Father work on project cars and fixing things around the house. To John, family is everything. His family always took vacations and every summer, he gets to travel around the United States for Army training. John grew up in a military family. His Father works as a Warrant Officer in the Minnesota National Guard and his Brother, Curtis, is in the Marine Corps and is also deployed right now.John has always wanted to serve his country
... war, but: “Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story.” (O’Brien 233). The stories by the veterans of war, struggle with their own mental illnesses in their stories of fiction. Both stories are about their reflection of the war they served in.
In the past 12 years there have been over 6500 U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each soldier lost has their own back-story. With-in those stories you will find the stories of their family, friends, and loved ones. My story is about the first Company Commander I served with in combat, Captain Michael J. MacKinnon.