The Things They Carried

“Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then down—not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else.”

Kiowa often repeats these words throughout Story 1—“Boom. Down” (6)—reiterating over and over how little fanfare there had been around Ted Lavender’s death, and suggesting that perhaps death is less strange or cinematic than films or novels might make one believe. Instead, it can be as simple as “watching a rock fall” (6).

“They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos, and much more.”

Such detailed lists are common in Story 1 and provide a vivid sense of precisely what a soldier’s life entailed. Here, common objects such as safety pins and fingernail clippers suggest small daily realities of life. These mundane items mix with those that specifically evoke the war in Vietnam—“statuettes of the smiling Buddha” and “bush hats” (13).

“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.”

While the literal weight of ammunition, guns, and gear is a very real burden for the men, often the things they carry “inside” significantly slow or weigh them down. They all continue to carry these burdens after the war.