The Dallas Cowboy Football Soldier

As Dr. Hughes has explained, my task is to explain the tensions within one of your passages and to speculate about what you were trying to accomplish in it. I am curious about the passage on pages 175-178 in which Billy is speaking with the Dallas Cowboy football players about his service in Iraq. In a sentence, I think your goal in the passage was to show that civilian that do not serve in the war do not understand the emotional strain that soldiers go through.

In the passage on pages 175-178, both Billy and the football players are trying to get something out of their conversation. Octavian Spurgeon wants to know what the war in Iraq is like. They ask extensive questions about the weapons that Billy and his fellow soldiers use while on duty. They ask Billy about what weapons they use specifically and the firepower behind these firearms. The football players are also very interested in the feeling of killing someone. Octavian said to Billy, “But like you ever cap somebody you know of? Like, fire

yo’ piece and dey go down, you done that?”(176). Octavian then goes to ask, “So whas it like? You know, like what it feel like?”(176). The players are very focused on the feeling that the Bravos receive after they had killed enemies in Iraq. Billy, throughout the whole conversation, is trying to get out of the discussion that he is having with the players. After Billy’s exchange with the players, he says to Dime, “Some of these guys are crazy, Sergeant. Not right in the head.”(178).
Within the passage, there is some tension that presents itself.

The Cowboys’ relentless questioning of Billy causes him to have to think back on past experiences and situation. One of experiences that Billy had to go back to was to himself killing another person. After Octavian asks Billy about the feeling of killing someone, “Billy swallows. The hard question. That’s where he bleeds, exactly.”(176). The type of question that Octavian asks is the type of question that bothers Billy greatly. He does not like to think about the people that he had to kill in combat. Killing is not a thought that he likes to have resurface. While Billy is uncomfortable with this topic, the players are intrigued and interested on what Billy has to say about it. It is also said that, “Someday he’ll have to build a church there, if he survives the war.”(176). Billy wants to build a church if he survives the war as a way to atone for all the killing that he has had to do for his

country.
I believe that you are trying to show the reader that most regular civilians neglect to take into account the feelings that soldiers experience when looking back at what they had done in their service. People do not think about how tough it is for some soldiers to think about what they have had to do in the past. Soldiers have to relive the traumatizing experiences that they had in the past every time they are asked about specific details of their war service. They have to relive the experiences that some of them try very hard to forget entirely. But by asking about the specifics, the old, suppressed memories resurface, as well as suppressed feelings. While all this happens in the soldier's head, the civilians just waits for the answers to their questions without taking into consideration how deeply the questions could pain the soldier.
Please tell me if I am right!
Scholar Almoustapha