Introduction
It's already tough for and individual (ex. soldiers & civilians) to be in war, but the living conditions can get plain out nasty. There will be times when there is nothing to eat at all besides the things that you would never imagine a human would eat like rats, bats, cats, dogs and other rodents & insects! A persons natural instinct to survive and the stress of being in war for an extended periods of time can fell like hell it self. In the book "The Things They Carried"( a fantastic book of the Vietnam war and the nature of war) the author Tim O'Brien gives us an insight of the hell the soldiers had to got through in a daily basis which is credited due to the fact that Tim himself served as a US soldier in the Vietnam war!
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty, war is thrilling. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty, war is thrilling. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
The Contition Of the war in Vietnam.... The things they went throughz
- The Vietnam war was a jungle warfare and they battled snakes, leaches, mosquitoes, not to mention the the south Vietnamese. There were booby traps every ( land mines, clay mores etc..) which were planted by the Vietcong's. Soldiers were new to a jungle terrain. The American soldiers fought in mud, tropical rains, in the blazing heat.
What made a the war itself harder was that it was extremely hard for a soldier to tell if a person was an ally or not. Also, a lot of times, the South Vietnamese soldiers would hide in civilian areas. Initially there was countless killing of innocent lives which tore some soldiers apart because they were not killing the evil they sought out to destroy.
The Things They Ate!
The C-Rations is a type of canned food for US soldiers.They may contain crackers, packed rice, vegetables, meat( in the form of jerky, etc. I really feel for these poor soldiers of the past because I can't go a week with canned food but they had to go months at a time!
The living dead!
The sculptor, Charles Parks, conveyed both the tragedy of war and compassion in this bigger-than-life statue in Brandywine Park.
Soldiers made many friends and they lost even more. The ones who passed away will always remain in our hearts.
Related quote from the book The Things They Carried
A soldier suffering from pain from being shot & stress from the war.
“They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march.” (Page 15 of the things they carried)
Commentary: This quote, coming early in the book, explains how the Vietnam War was different from WWII. Instead of engaging in open battle with a distinct front, Vietnam was more about search and destroy. Locating the enemy was more difficult than killing him. The endless monotony of the march deprives the soldiers were quite harsh!
Commentary: This quote, coming early in the book, explains how the Vietnam War was different from WWII. Instead of engaging in open battle with a distinct front, Vietnam was more about search and destroy. Locating the enemy was more difficult than killing him. The endless monotony of the march deprives the soldiers were quite harsh!
Thematic colsure!
Men often choose to go to war for their country and for thir loved ones. War is hell because it is not a humain place to live with the worst of contitions weather it's what they live through or see them self!
Sources and useful links:
1. http://www.statisticbrain.com/vietnam-war-statistics/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
3. http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html
4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2441235/Historic-images-Vietnam-War-courageous-AP-photographers.html
5. http://www.ushistory.org/us/55.asp
1. http://www.statisticbrain.com/vietnam-war-statistics/
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
3. http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html
4. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2441235/Historic-images-Vietnam-War-courageous-AP-photographers.html
5. http://www.ushistory.org/us/55.asp
Some videos that may help you understand Soldiers at war better!