War is not orderly or calculated, it is desperate and unjust by nature.

This image is from June 1965 and represents the slogan “war is hell” that was commonly used during the Vietnam war. It seems almost like a cheat to use a picture that has the prompt of the assignment within it, however, it’s not just the slogan that captured my eye. This one unidentified soldier represents my greatest misunderstanding about war in one image. When I think of the military I think of clean pressed uniforms, precision and order. The battle scene in glory was the first time that this vision was challenged for me, the soldiers were wrestling each other. Before that media had depicted to me a single story of war, where everything always goes the same way. We win some battles we lose some battles, we are strong and powerful. Soldiers that return home in coffins died honorable and selfless deaths by putting themselves in extreme conditions. Although this is not entirely false it certainly doesn’t account for the stories in The Things They Carried in which Kiowa drowns in a shit field and Ted Lavender is shot in the head as he goes for a bathroom break. War has been presented to me as patriotic event and this unit has been the first time I have explored war on such a micro level, revealing to me a very different type of warfare. The perspective I received from the book was clarified further by our guest speaker. The job of a point was espe
cially terrifying to me and impossible to understand. The life expectancy for a point was three days, which is unjust and unfathomable. How does this patriotic event that takes courage force someone into a situation where they know that they will die and lead groups of men who lose 200 soldiers in a matter of weeks? In this image you look into the eyes of one soldier who has shared many of the experiences that the writer of the book has experienced, he looks like a survivor. He is young and serious, but he almost has a smug look, much like a smirk. It stands as a symbol of the many young boys that were drafted into the Vietnam war and the role they played. His bright eyes stare directly into the camera. When looking into his eyes I am reminded of a quote from the book. “The competition could be lethal, yet there was a childlike exuberance to it all, lots of pranks and horseplay; like when Azar blew away Ted Lavender’s puppy, ‘what’s everyone so upset about?’ Azar said, ‘I mean Christ. I’m just a boy.’(O’brien 35).” Much of war’s disorder and dysfunction can be seen on the most basic level in the soldier's actions independent of the war and the fighting. There is nothing clean or orderly about the prank of blowing up a puppy. In the military that I have been presented with, in the image in my head there is no place for these kind of youthful shenanigans. Yet they exist and here is this young soldier looking right into the camera affirming the war that has been shielded from me. The phrase on the helmet also stands out to me because it is one that O’brien often toyed with in his writing as seen in his chapter titled how to tell a true war story. “War is hell, but that’s no half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love (O’brien 76).” This unit has highlighted for me the complexities and barbarities of war that are constantly lurking under the surface waiting to be uncovered. Every war experience in our nation's history is incomplete without these “true war stories” which illuminate the desperation and injustices that are only to be experienced in war.

Bibliography

Sanchez, G. H. (2015, October 22). The 50 Most Powerful Pictures In American History. Retrieved March 21, 2016, from http://www.buzzfeed.com/gabrielsanchez/the-most-powerful-pictures-in-american-history#.reJErPwB4