You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who had made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar round. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics.
You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munition makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote. This paragraph is pretty self explanatory and although there is not much analysis to get from it, it is important to understand the the essence of the chapter lies in the sense of guilt, remorse and responsibility.
Finally, there is the young soldier who is not named. He has no name because he is no one in particular, just any soldier who could have made a simple mistake and caused his own or someone else's death.
He is, of course, filled with guilt and sees Kiowa's death as his personal fault, just as Cross does. They both believe that "when a man died, there had to be blame. Perhaps the flashlight signaled the enemy as to their position, but the rest of the soldiers know that it was just bad luck. The Viet Cong soldier killed by "O'Brien" was killed because his luck had run out, nothing more than wandering down the wrong path at the wrong time. The nameless soldier does not understand this, and it is so terrifying an idea that he cannot think it.
Instead, he searches for the lost picture of a past girlfriend, needing something he knows and trusts. Reality, randomness, luck, and war are too much for both Cross and the boy. MIA Missing in action. A person in the armed forces who is lost during combat and who cannot be accounted for as a known casualty. GI Member of the U. Karl Heinrich Marx German social philosopher and economist. Marx was the founder of modern socialism. The truth is unclear. It could have been no one's fault.
Three is no moral to this story. The young soldier seems panicked and doesn't look up when Jimmy Cross gets to him. The young soldier keeps saying, "Right here…Got to be right here. The young soldier says Kiowa is dead, and asks instead about Billie , his girlfriend in the picture.
He had lost it, but he kept it wrapped in plastic so it should be OK. Cross insists the young soldier can get another picture from her, but the young soldier says Billie isn't even his girlfriend anymore and he has to find it. He keeps searching through the muck. Cross walks away, thinking about the letter to Kiowa's father. O'Brien is frantic to find the picture of Billie because he feels that's all he has left. The picture links him to home and a person he cares about that is still alive.
He feels like he can't lose the picture if it's the reason Kiowa died, because then Kiowa would have truly died for naught. Cross feels pity for the young soldier, but he's too preoccupied with his own guilt to help in the soldier's search. He has to keep thinking of the best way to write his letter to Kiowa's father. Azar , Norman Bowker , and Mitchell Sanders are across the field still searching.
It's almost noon when Bowker finds Kiowa. Bowker looks at Azar after touching the protruding boot and asks where the joke is, but Azar says there isn't one. They find Kiowa's other boot in the muck and start to pull hard, but there's little give.
Azar moved to the bank with a pale face, gripping his stomach. The rest get out their tools and begin to dig around Kiowa. Everyone else comes over to watch except for Jimmy Cross and the young soldier. Even Azar has no jokes left at this unspeakable situation. It makes this boy, who thought nothing of blowing up a puppy, sick. Jimmy Cross and O'Brien are off alone in the field, still reeling from their own guilt. They finally pull Kiowa out. Part of his shoulder is gone and his chest, arms, and face were cut from shrapnel.
Dobbins said it could be worse. Jensen asks him how, but Dobbins doesn't answer. They all carry the body, trying not to look at it, over to the dike where they used towels to clean off some of the muck. Rat Kiley goes through Kiowa's pockets and puts his things in a plastic bag, then tapes it to Kiowa's wrist. Then he radios the chopper to come. Dobbins says it could be worse to mean Kiowa could look a lot worse.
Jensen asks how it could possibly be worse because no matter how Kiowa looks, he's still dead. There's no way it could be worse. Rat Kiley moves quickly so that he can get away from the body to try to escape the reality of Kiowa's death. The men move away from the body.
Some smoke, some open up cans of food, others stand in the rain. They are all relieved to be done with the search, now they can look forward to being somewhere else. They all feel bad for Kiowa , but feel a secret happiness that they were still alive.
In an earlier story O'Brien commented that coming close to death made you cling to life. In the Field The morning after the incident in the sewage field, the soldiers look for Kiowa's body.
Jimmy Cross helps in the search and watches his men. He sees a young soldier this is presumably O'Brien, but O'Brien has chosen to tell this story in the third person standing off by himself, shaking, in his own world. Cross thinks about Kiowa's death, and how Kiowa, a brave and decent kid, absolutely didn't deserve to die in a field of sewage.
He thinks about what he's going to write to Kiowa's father, and how he shouldn't mention the sewage field. Azar, of course, is cracking jokes about how Kiowa drowned in poop. Bowker tells him to shut up, but Azar, being Azar, just keeps making horrible puns. They still haven't found the body. Halfway across the field, Mitchell Sanders finds Kiowa's rucksack.
When Bowker wants to tell Cross that they found it, Sanders says no. He blames Cross for deciding to camp in a latrine. Bowker points out that none of them knew the field was the village toilet until it was too late.
Cross has finished writing the letter to Kiowa's father in his head, anyway. He wishes he were playing golf.
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