If I Die in a Combat Zone Book Review

Note: As we come up on the 50th Anniversary of the Pentagon Papers, and with the recent release of the Afghanistan Papers, nosotros felt information technology was timely to look back at the conflict in Vietnam. Over the next few months, I am doing an examination of several Vietnam-era historical works that examine both sides of the conflict. Part I was the biography Ho past David Halberstam, a deep-swoop into understanding the nationalist movement of Vietnam. Part II will be If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O'Brien, one of the seminal works of the American combat experience in the war. Office Three will be They March Into Sunlight past David Maraniss, a wait at the domestic turmoil the state of war on the ground caused at The Academy of Wisconsin-Madison in October 1967. Role IV will be Patriots by Christian Appy, a reflection of the war by those who fought on both sides. Y'all tin buy this book here.

Throughout his book If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien seeks to convey to his readers non only the hardships of combat common amidst soldiers in Vietnam merely also to demonstrate the moral ambiguity that many men faced equally they went to Southeast Asia. Written on the heels of the end of the conflict in 1975, O'Brien uses Socrates consistently throughout his piece of work to highlight some moral arguments he frequently had with himself throughout his long nights in Vietnam. The author tells us that Socrates fought for Athens but also questioned war in of itself and the idea of fighting as a brave soldier in an immoral war are central themes that O'Brien sought to reply while he was deployed. By investigating O'Brien'south experience and conversations with the Greek philosopher, we see the conundrum and inner disharmonize he felt on the battlefield as he fought in Vietnam.

Socrates had fought for Athens: Information technology could not have been a perfectly just state of war, just Socrates, it has been told, was a brave soldier. Y'all wonder if he had been a reluctant hero? Had he been brave out of the spirit of righteousness? You wonder how he felt as a soldier on a nighttime like this one, with the rain falling, with just the temperature and sound. Then y'all think of him equally an old man, you lot remember his fate, you think of him peering through the iron confined as his ship sailed in…his land, for which he had been a hero, catastrophe the near certain of good lives…certainly he must have missed something. ¹

Behind bars facing execution by his own city-state, Aristotle had the chance to flee, merely argues that his community had served him fairly for over 70 years. O'Brien faces the same questions of balancing community and land versus what he thought was morally correct on every stride of his war journey, from the draft, to bones training, throughout his well-nigh-AWOL excursion, on the battlefield, and, finally, when he returned home.

O'Brien was a product of the Midwest and certainly felt the same pressures of customs that Aristotle alluded to. He "grew out of 1 state of war and into some other" into a "nation giving bridle to its own expert fortune and success."^two . Hubris, to cite some other central Greek theme, was central to the armed services attitude in America at the time, and the pocket-size town Americana into which O'Brien was born into felt "the war was right…and it had to be fought."³ Like to a lot of the draftees that O'Brien encountered, he felt an obligation to his family to avoid backing out from the war, saying "I come from a minor boondocks, my parents know everyone, and I couldn't hurt or embarrass them" because of a "fear from society's censure."⁴ Despite the fright of society's displeasure, he couldn't assistance but harbor his ain feelings:

I was persuaded then, and I remain persuaded now, that the state of war was incorrect. And since information technology was wrong and since people were dying as a result of information technology, it was evil. Doubts, of grade, hedged all of this: I had neither the expertise nor the wisdom to synthesize answers; the facts were clouded; there was no certainty as to the kind of government that would follow a North Vietnamese victory or, for that thing, an American victory…merely peradventure I was mistaken, and who really knew, anyway?⁵

Fifty-fifty equally he was about to go to basic training, he made signs protesting the war earlier eventually trigger-happy them apart and going to the military facility; he "did non desire to upset a peculiar rest between the order I knew, the people I knew, and my own private world."^half-dozen

O'Brien was drawn to politics and spent the summertime of 1967 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In that location he met a North Vietnamese scholar who argued that the war was one of American aggression, that government in Hanoi was trying to stabilize things, and that the idea of a divided Vietnam was historically and politically wrong. O'Brien'due south largest complaint seems to be that he saw no divergence in the regimes, north and south. He cannot justify the state of war past placing religion in i assistants or the other. Who is he to say which ideology or political regime is correct? Should he blindly follow the will of his country despite his ain internal conflicts?

As he went into bones grooming and subsequently avant-garde infantry training, O'Brien tried to vox these concerns to his battalion commander and his chaplain at the base. Both of the commanders tried to reinvigorate his faith in his state, telling him that if he believed America is great, "and so you follow what she tells you."^vii The battalion commander fifty-fifty goes and so far every bit dismissing his concerns as an try to substitute morality for fear of deployment. O'Brien took considerable time researching countries where he could desert to, even getting his funding and passports ready to get AWOL. In the terminate, he circles back to his community arguing that "I simply could not bring myself to abscond…family unit, the hometown, friends, history, traditions, fearfulness, defoliation, exile: I could not run."⁸

O'Brien arrived in Vietnam in Jan, 1969. Peradventure the crowning achievement of O'Brien'southward work is the scenic manner in which he describes the common actions of a soldier in Vietnam. On marches, for example, O'Brien would call back how a soldier had to walk in order to avoid mines and booby traps. Simultaneously, the soldier would also have to hope that he did not get lost by losing the homo in front of him. However, the most intense words were non the physical component of the march only the psychology of the soldiers. The "moment-by-moment, pace-by-step decision making prays on your mind…the issue is sometimes paralyzing."⁹ While O'Brien had his head downward concentrating on the man in front of him to avert getting lost, his mind would wonder: What if the guy I am following is lost? Where did the soldier step? No booby trap there. I want to step there…and at that place…not there…yes, there. The mental fatigue was exhausting. Monotony and war seem to exist contradictions, but to the soldiers in O'Brien's unit they were synonymous. O'Brien related it to "waking upwards in a cancer ward, no one ambitious to get on with the day, no one with obligations, no plans, zero to hope for, no dreams for the daylight." Daylight meant the sun, which was their worst enemy every bit "the days were always hot, even the absurd days."¹⁰

O'Brien's troop tried to ignore the enemy they were supposed to be looking for to the best of their ability. "Charlie finds united states" was a mutual line of thinking in his battalion. Instead of seeking engagements, they would get from town to town to "cordon, wait, sweep, search…the mechanics were simple and sterile." Even when they did meet resistance, O'Brien conveys a tone of formality:

On the perimeter of the village, the company began returning fire, blindly, spraying the hedges with M-16 and M-70 and Chiliad-60 fire. No targets, nothing to aim at and impale. Frantically, just shooting to shoot. It had been going like this for weeks-snipers, quick little attacks, blind counter-fire. Days, days. Those were the days."11

On days in that location was no action, the soldiers in O'Brien's unit would stage a battle or call in fake missions in order to liven upward their own inactivity.

O'Brien also went into great detail on the type of mines and weaponry the Vietcong used to irksome American advances, damage American morale, and psychologically dement American soldiers. There was the Bouncing Betty, a iii-pronged explosive device that flies a yard upward into the air before detonation. There would be booby-trapped mortar and artillery rounds placed in trees and shrubbery. The G-14 antipersonnel mine, chosen the toe-popper, would be buried underground and take out soldiers' feet. Booby-trapped grenades were everywhere, even in cars where the clip would be replaced with a prophylactic band and placed in gas tanks until the corrosive elements of gasoline eroded the prophylactic a week or so later, detonating the device. Mine-detectors were constantly misreading information or picking upwards fragments of state of war that had been strewn throughout the countryside throughout decades of previous warfare.

During their raids on camps, O'Brien and his unit of measurement frequently ran into clashes with Vietnamese civilians. Equally O'Brien points out, "Charlie…is hidden among the mass of civilians, or in tunnels, or in jungles", making it about impossible to differentiate betwixt the 2. Unfortunately, some soldiers were more than ruthless to women and children and unaffiliated men as the war wore on and the casualties grew. Equally the author notes, moral righteousness was omitted in dealing with many of the civilians of the My Lai area as "it is not a war fought to win the hearts of the Vietnamese nationals, not in the wake of antipathy drawn on our faces and on theirs, non in the wake of burning a village, a trampled rice paddy, a dilapidated detainee."¹² War had inverse the character of many of the combatants and in many American soldiers' minds, such atrocities were unavoidable albeit not necessarily morally defensible. For case, after an assault on troops in a village chosen Tri Binh four, a platoon leader cutting off the ear of one of the enemy combatants. Chirapsia old men to get them to talk about Vietcong action in the area was a common occurrence. Many men seemed ambiguous to the deaths of women and children. This debate-straddling extended up the concatenation of control to the government, who would issue sums of nether thirty-5 dollars for civilians killed in a misfire on a Vietnamese village. In that location were even incidents that could non be attributed to warfare or accidental misfire, such equally when the soldiers with O'Brien threw a milk carton at an old man aiding them, striking him in the face and causing a gash. Despite these incidents O'Brien notes that "acting wisely when fearfulness would have a man act otherwise" was still a common practice for many of the more restrained American soldiers in Vietnam.

Perhaps no other variable affected the conduct of American soldiers than whom their officers were. As O'Brien notes in his writing, effective American officers were sorely lacking in Vietnam. The rush to promote officers caused many in the army to label people who had not earned their stripes equally "Instant NCO's", giving them names such as Ready Whip, Nestlé'south Quick, and Milkshake and Bake. These ineffective leaders were prevalent throughout the entirety of O'Brien's army life, from bones training to field combat. In basic preparation his squad leaders had been in the army for simply ii weeks. At advanced infantry training, the clergyman he sought assistance from complained that "there really aren't plenty chaplains to become around anymore…there's so damn many kids who want assistance, I get tired." Soon afterward O'Brien'south arrival in Vietnam, there was a fire outside the billet. Commanding officers had difficulty even getting the unit to follow orders or to take the threat seriously as the soldier'south response was to stand in their underwear and sentry.13

O'Brien does pigment a flattering portrait of his first commanding officer in Vietnam, Captain Johansen, calling him "the all-time man around" and "meticulously fair." He goes on, proverb "I could non match my captain…human beings sometimes embody valor…He helped to mitigate and melt the silliness, showing the grace and poise a man can have nether the worst of circumstances, a wrong state of war. We clung to him." Nonetheless, subsequently Johansen left in June, 1969, there was a void in leadership. The man who replaced him, Captain Smith, was "a brusk, fat ROTC officer" who was every bit inexperienced in the field. He would exist tardily for assignments, never certain where he was nor certain where he needed to go next. When his troops died in a mine explosion, Smith had this to say, according to O'Brien:

Got me a niggling scratch from that mine. Here, have a look. Got myself a Purple Heart. My offset large operation, and I become a Purple Heart. Gonna be a long twelvemonth, Timmy. Only wow, I've lost a lot of men today. Damn information technology, I'grand going to suffer for this. What's my commander to think? He is gonna see a damn casualty list a mile long, and information technology'southward only my outset operation. My career is in real jeopardy now.¹⁴

More than the field duty shortcomings, Smith's command was perhaps best indicative of the poor morale that began to plague the American troops in the late 1960's.

Under Johansen, the troops felt safe and secure while nether Smith they feel expendable and parts of a procedure. When things went wrong, they often blamed the green officer who did non appear to have their best interests in his eye. Furthermore, there was increasing distrust of the men above their field commanders. Colonel Daud, a directly superior of both Johansen and Smith, met the men when they first arrived in Vietnam by proverb "yous are stronger than the dink…bigger…faster. You're amend educated…supplied…trained…supported. All you need is brains."¹⁵ Daud would oftentimes order dangerous Helicopter gainsay assaults which drove the men crazy. O'Brien notes that the troops "learned to hate Colonel Daud and his force of helicopters…when he was killed by sappers in a midnight raid…we sang in good harmony."^xvi O'Brien conveys a sense of lowest for himself, a goal to achieve fulfillment of his DEROS by every soldier and to become the hell out of Vietnam. The war became less nigh ideals and objectives and more nearly simple survival. Men would often attempt to get rear-duty by injuring themselves or, in the words of O'Brien, by burrowing your "nose gently upwards an officer's ass." The rear-duty assignments were often discriminatory based on race, highlighting bug that would plague the residuum of the state of war effort." Near the finish of August, O'Brien receives and takes a rear-duty chore as a typist.

The title If I Die in a Combat Zone came from a common song recited at bones grooming. It seems, right from O'Brien'southward first foray into army life, he is besieged past a cynicism that further entrenched his hostile morality to the war. While in Vietnam, these hardened views convinced him to "expose the abandon which people…played with my life." He did then, but still seems confused to what information technology all means, whether his office was exemplary and brave despite its lack of complete moral justification, maxim:

Now, war concluded, I am left with simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. Information technology is hard to be brave. Information technology is hard to know what bravery is. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are dreamers, drill sergeants are boors, some men thought the war was proper and others didn't and well-nigh didn't care.¹⁷

In the end, O'Brien utilization of Socrates is symbolic, equally it took the Greek philosopher'due south succeeding generation, that of Plato, to put action to thought when information technology came to the question of morality: that it is non merely the wisdom to exercise what is right but the ability to bring yourself to practice it that defines virtuous men and women.

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Source: https://rootandpress.com/review-if-i-die-in-a-combat-zone/

If I Die in a Combat Zone Book Review

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