Just Finished Reading: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (FP: 1990) [254pp] 

Vietnam, 1968. He was a coward, pure and simple. Even with the Canadian border in sight he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave. It would shame his family, shame his high school, shame his church, his town. There was only one thing he could do – accept the draft letter and report as ordered. He was going to Vietnam. As a basic grunt, humping through the jungles and paddy fields as part of Alpha company, he saw friends die from a sniper's bullet, a random mortar round fired into a field stinking of human shit, a booby-trapped artillery shell, from infection, from a self-inflicted wound. He watched as air support destroyed entire villages and helicopters picked up the dead and dying. He stopped being amazed by the fact that no matter the amount of ordnance they used, the bullets expended, the rockets fired or the grenades thrown, there was always more, more than you could count, more than you could imagine, more than you could carry.  

I’d heard of this author and some of his Vietnam novels – including this one – long before reading this. As a serving soldier in the infantry in that conflict he has, since his rotation back to the world, been writing about it ever since partially, he suspects, in order to remain sane. I was expecting this to be a novel so was a bit surprised that it turned out to be, sort of, a series of short stories or vignettes drawing on his personal experiences. There’s even an interesting discussion about the ‘reality’ of war stories and the question of whether you can actually tell the truth to those who haven’t experienced the surreal war experience first-hand. I’m sure that many of us have seen Vietnam war movies that seem more fantastical than real (compared to, say WW2 movies) - for example Apocalypse Now! - and its these, the author maintains, that get closest to the truth of things. The more believable, the more understandable, the story the less likely it is to have actually happened – and that’s before we get into the psychology of combat stress and false memories. Fascinating stuff. 

I think my favourite story was ‘Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong’. This was a story related to him by the Companies medic who was, briefly, working at an evacuation station deep in the jungle. It was an easy posting only interrupted by occasional helicopters carrying wounded who needed urgent medical attention prior to flying them to a full hospital. Inevitably the grunts were bored and wondered if it was possible to ‘sneak in’ a few local women. Some wise-guy suggested that the fly their girlfriends from back home instead – so one of them did just that. But things didn’t turn out quite as expected. After a few weeks 17-year-old Mary Anne Bell started asking questions – how things worked, what it was like out outside the wire, that sort of thing. So, equally bored, the grunts showed her how to field strip a M-16, set up a claymore anti-personal mine and how to shoot. Then, one day she simply disappeared – for 3 days no one saw her. When she did come back it was with a bunch of Green Berets who had taken her on patrol. Not only did she like it, she was good at it... I did laugh at that... 

This was a rather strange read at times, as you might imagine with all things Vietnam related. But it was also a very good read. Generally, the stories were of a high quality – I think the worst one was ‘only’ reasonable – and gave a lot of insight into the Vietnam ‘experience’. It wasn’t always pleasant, as you should expect from the time and place, but it was always a page turner. Definitely recommended and more to come from this author and this region/war.