If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

“Snipers yesterday, snipers today. What's the difference?”

O'Brien says these words to his fellow soldier, Barney, as they "lay quietly, waiting for the shooting to be over" (1).Barney has been remarking on the astonishingly terrible amount of gunfire they face today—unprecedented, Barney thinks: "You ever see anything like this? Ever?" (1). The above quote is part of O'Brien's reply; he has seen things like it, over and over, day after day. This passage, with its placement on the book's very first page, highlights the way O'Brien's war experiences resist being narrated. It's not that nothing happens in the war. Plenty happens: they are shot at, they walk through mine fields, people are killed. But these things happen over and over, so that O'Brien cannot tell his war stories as part of single, grand narrative arc. 

“Wear the yellow bastards down, right?”

O'Brien says these words to Barney. They are discussing their mission. Barney says, "Captain says we're gonna search one more ville today" (4). They have searched numerous villages already, and O'Brien thinks the search is pointless. They won't find the enemy, because "Charlie finds us," as O'Brien says (4). However, perhaps searching village after village, exhausting themselves, will wear the enemy down, too. This is the