Field Trip

        Their color was green. Not light green or dark green, but shrubs and bushes green. With a helmet, maybe too big for their head they would walk silently through the forest. Five of them, without a sound merged with the trees as they leaned on them or turned to liquid as they passed the stream of water. There was though, one of them, the new one, he was unsure. He moved awkwardly between the wind and the rocks. Not part of the trees or shrubs or the river or the wind. There was a small moment in which the contrast of  his face could be seen. Not really making an expression, just two scared blue eyes surrounded by green. He might have been invisible because of the darkness but the night was not his friend.

           In a matter of seconds, 10 actually, all stopped. The world didn't spin, the wind didn't play around the leaves and everyone was a part of the forest. All of them, not moving. They'd been trained so that their breath could not be heard. You would of walked at that moment and not notice the man with green smudges in his face, breathing silently to himself, or the one loudly praying in his head and cut abruptly by the sharp sting of a .45 with a lead round nose.

         He was a young 5.6 man, a believer, and taken as a last resort. What he was doing there, he did not know. Why he was there was very clear, there simply weren't enough. He was neither a man or a child, just a scared green face with two blue eyes. He started seeing his mom crying as he left to this unknown land. He saw his sister, two or three years old, not even knowing who he was, tell him, a stranger, goodbye. It was this that made him not want to leave yet it was what made him want to go in the first place.  It all merged into the sky in a dark blue and then black as he fell to the ground. 

         Nobody cried, nobody moved. The wind began to play with the leaves again and the men did not move.  The trees returned to being trees and the world turned again. In the ground laid a  young man, who's blue eyes were opened, his mouth opened and the green of  the bushes trickled down his cheek as the red found its way to the soil.

            There is nothing there now, just some trees and shrubs and bushes and streams. Nobody walks by that part of the forest, nobody knows or hears about that part of the forest. Few wonder and come back saying, "there's nothing there." But there is. The trees and shrubs have eyes. Limbs that curl around the branches and feet that have long ago turned into a portion of earth. Eyes that stare and judge along with a silent breathing. How little do they know, those who enter, that right were they step is voice that prays loudly, a body that used to hold a little girl in his arms, and feet that walked for miles. There is something there, two blue eyes, long closed, smiling at the sky as it wraps around them.

Ambush/The Man I Killed

      In The Man I Killed the character telling the story is Tim O'Brien. O'Brien knowing many details from the man he killed comes from his imagination trying to make him feel guilty. I believe that he is in fact guilty because even though we are uncertain if he killed the man or not he himself believes he did, making himself guilty.
       On both chapters, Ambush and The Man I Killed, O'Brien finds himself guilty. The guilt is generated by his mind which also arouses anger at himself. This guilt is what makes us believe that the story he's telling is true; how it's unbelievable. He is letting his imagination shape his reality and creates a scene in which a true war story is being told.

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

        What transforms Mary Ann Bell into a killer in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is the crude reality of Vietnam. By spending so much time with the soldiers she, in difference to them, became curious about the land and it's culture and wanted to become part of it. She is a fast learner and as her time in the combat zone passes she has drastic changes happening to her. From being a "body" of what america was to the soldiers and suddenly becoming a native to the land she surprised the soldiers.

         I don't believe that her being a woman does have an effect. It can happen to any of us. Though her being a stereotypical american teenager girl does. She'd been meant to come as a piece of eye candy or so to speak for the soldiers, as a sign of hope that things after Vietnam would never change, that they would be able to like it through like nothing happened.

         O'Brien lets Rat Kiley tell part of the story because Kiley knows it from a different perspective. Although Kiley tends to exaggerate it does fit O'Brien's criteria that it is a true war story due to the fact that it was unbeleavable.

Spin

"All That Peace Man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back."

          What I believe it means  is split into two. For starters I think it means that the soldiers had seen so much misery, so much sadness that a small amount of peace, a rest, would make their day. They decided though that not only they should feel that air from the war but also the ones who had nothing to do with the war. They tried to pass on their happiness,  to feel even more by sharing it with the Vietnamese.

         Yet I also believe that they were know so accustomed to not being able to rest that they no longer want to feel that peace. Maybe they feel that  they don't even deserve it.  That they can't even be in peace anymore due to their constant alertness.

War Letters

 Dear Mom,

     I love you mom. I love you and everyone back home. I know I should tell you that I love you more often, I should of told Andrea that I loved her more often. War is War you know? People are dying everyday and I barely know who should of been alive. I'm still alive and I pray that I can return home and maybe eat a taco on Wednesday like nothing happened. For now I have to stay here, fighting to stay alive or to win this war. I want you to remember that even if I die, I love you. I love each and every aspect of you and each centimeter that surrounds our home. Just maybe then when I'm home, it'll be a Wednesday and we will eat some tacos like the war is just a memory and I never left.

Love,

Ximena

      If  I were to write a letter to someone, anyone, it would be my mom.She wouldn't want me to go to war for sure, she wouldn't want to lose her baby. I decided to write to this person because besides my sister I believe she would cry everyday knowing that for me there might not be a tomorrow. I wouldn't want to worry her about the war details or moments which might make her tear up. I would want to distract her from all the darkness and try to stay positive.

The Things I Carry

        To be honest I don't carry much  in my back pack other than my books and homework. Hell even my pockets are empty.I would be lying to you if I said I walk around with a purse. I keep it simple, I carry my book in my hand and a pencil in the other.Other people might say that they carry there lipstick or their Ipad or fancy touch computer, but I don't. I don't care for those things.

       Only these too are precious to me. Every great idea starts as a scribble by a pencil.  I believe one should always carry a pencil or a pen with them, one never knows when they might need it. You never know when you feel like drawing. I shouldn't even tell you why I carry a book. Hell, why shouldn't you carry a book. It can take you places and help you when you are bored. it's way better than sitting there staring at a screen flinging birds at pigs. There is just something about books that makes me carry them around.It might be how I love the feeling of a page curled around your finger as you are about to turn it. Or maybe is the way that you just enter it, letting it take you to a school of magic or to a graveyard at night.

The Vietnam War

     

      Many times I've heard people mention the Vietnam War and I simply stood there clueless. I had no interest in knowing about the war, I don't like hearing about wars as a matter of fact  Yet there is something different about this war that sparked my curiosity. That would be why it was fought.

      I have to be honest here, what I know from the war came to me about two days ago and I still consider it  to be nothing. The war was fought in Vietnam in the  mid 1960s and was the first "living Room War" meaning the first war to be televised. if we look back as to those times they had no idea how it was out there, to see more than 50% of underage kids fight against communism. To see them crawl in tunnel complex  or through jungles not knowing if they were coming back. Most of them middle class or lower men since the military didn't have enough men. They were fighting because they believed that if one place turned toward communism the rest would eventually be commies too; this is called domino theory and is what supported there believe to fight. Both sides had risky operations in place that would take in millions of lives. On ef these would be Operation Ranch Hand, which used Agent Orange, a substance that would cause genetic mutation and kill everything it touched. Many lives were lost until finally the U.S. decided to quit and left Ngo Dihn Diem.