The "Things They Carried" (Bloom's Guides) [Hardcover]

Most of us will never be in a war zone battlefield. For those who have, I salute you for your honorable duty. But for those who have not, all we have are instances of storytelling. Tim O' Brien skillfully weaves a web of these tales into one master collection, recounting realistic stores from the Vietnam War.

Depicting the physical burdens each soldier bears, O' Brien introduces the novel simply with their grunt work. But as the story progresses, all the tangible factors become insignificant compared to the heavy responsibility and knowledge of a comrade's death. The story integrates a cornucopia of emotions that each character struggles with to coincide with all the trauma and chaos.

Starting with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the author explains the leader's personal conflicts. Distracted by thoughts of his girl back at home, the commander blames himself for the death of Tad Lavender. Following that, Rat Kiley, the normally calm and cool medic, explodes in a fury of sentiments when his close friend Curt Lemon is blown to pieces by a booby trap. Yet another soldier, Norman Bowker suffers from post-traumatic stress, constantly visualizing the scene where he had failed to save his friend Kiowa from the muck of the s*** field.

The war stories are presented in a personal portrayal, revealing the intrinsic values and actions of many soldiers. Expressing the story in a narrative perspective, O' Brien reminisces in his novel about the gruesome, yet profound events of the underappreciated Vietnam War.

... is a quote from O'Brien's daughter, Kathleen, in the story "Field Trip." Kathleen had just turned 10, and O'Brien had taken her back to Vietnam, to show her where her dad had been. He was trying to convey what it was like to have been a soldier in that war. As the story is written, clearly he had not been very successful. Going back to the sadness and failure of Vietnam is so totally different from strolling along the high cliffs of Normandy, where purpose and success reigned.

"The Things They Carried" is widely recognized as the classic soldier's account of the Vietnam War. It now has 702 reviews on Amazon. What more can be said? Hopefully a number of things, including a few personal parallels. When the Second World War commenced, Norman Mailer, the author of that war's classic account, "The Naked and the Dead," asked himself one thing: From which theater of the war could he write a better book? He consciously chose the Pacific. You never get that sense of ambition from O'Brien's stories; rather you feel that he was haplessly swept along with the events, and his eclectic montage of images reflect the experiences he is still trying to understand.

O'Brien was a "grunt" in the ill-starred Americal Division, in Quang Ngai province, mostly in 1969. I was in the next province south, in Binh Dinh, at the end of 1968, as a medic in a tank unit. Like O'Brien I would stare at the hills to the west of the coastal plain, and dream of waking up one morning, and walking through them, away from the war, a fantasy that he turned into another moving book, "Going After Cacciato." O'Brien was certainly right in taking his daughter back to the `Nam, in the hopes of transmitting to the next generation our experiences. I did the same thing; my first of three trips back was in 1994. This is probably the same year O'Brien took Kathleen, since I saw his signature in the ledger at the memorial at My Lai. "Ill-starred" became the most common adjective for the Americal, due in part to the massacre of what was official determined as 504 civilians in this hamlet. This event was only revealed to the wider American public thanks to the courageous actions of a couple soldiers, Ron Ridenhour who wrote numerous American leaders, and Ronald Haeberle, whose photographs were published in Life magazine. Others in the military hierarchy, including Colin Powell, tried to cover up the massacre.

A few of O'Brien's stories did not resonate. I remain puzzled as to the significance of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" which truly had to be a stoned-out fantasy. But most of the stories overwhelmingly hit resonance, including the suicide of Norman Bowker in "Notes," the hauntingly tragic portrait of a young Vietnamese school teacher in "The Man I Killed," and the philosophical underpinnings of "How to Tell a True War Story." O'Brien shifts in his story-telling, so that it is hard to tell what really happened, and what was imagined, and if there was a difference. Oh memory, speak truly.

It was only on my third trip back to Vietnam, in 1996, that I thought it was "safe" enough to take my wife and two children. At the time, my daughter was 12, my son 11, and I experienced some of the similar problems that O'Brien had in trying to convey what had happened in this now peaceful country. I insisted on climbing the hills surrounding the Mang Yang pass, site of ambushes for both French, and later American forces. Climbing in the heat, and through tough "elephant grass," my daughter turned around and said: "Dad, I think you are just a little bit crazy." Yes, the obsession.

Our post-war actions were not sufficient to stop a repeat of the same stupidities in Iraq, though I at least was successful in ensuring that my own children would not participate.

Perhaps O'Brien's most haunting story is the one which describes his mindset before he went to the Nam - "On the Rainy River." He concludes with: "... and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and home again. I survived, but it is not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war."

This book is our own "All Quiet on the Western Front," deserves more than 5 stars, and should be read in every American school.

a memoir but also like a series of short stories which flow together seamlessly into almost a dreamlike tale. It is a great read even for those of us who have no real conscept of what war is really like. Many hidden jewels inside. Well worth the read.