The Things They Carried - Chap 1 Part 1 (2023)

Introduction

Video

All right guys, hi.

So today we're gonna start the things they carried we're gonna start on chapter.

One of the things it's called the things they carried on page one.

But this is a really long chapter.

So I'm gonna break it up over probably three days.

So today, we're gonna read from page one to page, 15 there's, a break in the page on page, 15 so we'll.

Stop there.

So here we go.

Okay, well, actually before we start.

So remember your words, tangible and intangible.

Okay.

So tangible means you can physically hold it.

Okay, you can hold it in your hand.

Intangible means you cannot hold it in your hand.

So I can hold my phone.

I can hold a pen, but I cannot hold in my hand, happiness or sadness, I can still feel those things I can feel them emotionally.

But I cannot hold it in my hand.

Okay.

So intangible of something you cannot hold first lieutenant, Jamie cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount.

Sebastian College in New Jersey.

They were not love letters, but lieutenant cross was hoping so he kept them folded in a plastic in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack in the late afternoon after a day's march.

He would dig his foxhole wash his hands under a canteen unwrap, the letters and hold them with the tips of his fingers and spend the last hour of light pretending he would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

So that should be a annotation right there because you live in New Hampshire.

He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.

Yeah, first lieutenant Jimmy Cross is weird more than anything.

He wanted Martha to love him as he loved her.

But the letters are mostly chatty elusive on the matter of love.

She was a virgin.

He was almost sure she was an English major at Mount Sebastian.

And she wrote beautifully about her professors and room and midterm exams about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf.

She often quoted lines of poetry, she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself, the letters, weighed four ounces.

They were signed love Martha.

But lieutenant cross understood that love was only a way of sing signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.

It does keep and carefully returned letters to his rucksack slowly a bit distracted.

He would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter then a full dark.

He would turn return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin The, Things, They Carried were largely determined by necessity.

So what is a necessity when you are a soldier among the necessities or near necessities for p38 can openers pocket? Knives heat tabs wrist watches dog, tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of kool-aid, lighters matches sewing kits, military payment certificates, sea rations and two or three canteens of water.

Together.

These items weighed between 12 and 18 pounds, depending on a man's habits or rate of metabolism.

Henry Dobbins was a big man carried extra rations.

It was especially fond of canned peaches and heavy syrup over pound cake, Dave Jensen who practiced field, hygiene carried a tooth fresh dental floss and several Hotel sized bars of soap.

He had stolen on R&R in Sydney Australia RNR stands for rest.

And relaxation Ted lavender who was scared carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Tonchi in mid-april by necessity.

And because it was SOP so that's it's like a standard order practice.

So you things that you carry, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds, including the liner in camouflage cover.

They carried the standard 14 jackets and trousers very if you carried underwear on their feet, they carried jungle boots, 2.1 pounds and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks.

And a can of dr.

Scholl's foot powder as precaution against trench foot.

So don't go look up trench foot because it is disgusting it's.

Basically when your feet are wet for too long until he was shot, dead lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity, Mitchell Sanders, the RTO radio person carried condoms.

Norman Valkyr carried a diary rat Kiley carried comic books.

Kiawa devote Baptist carry the illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school, Oklahoma City Oklahoma as a hedge against bad times.

However, kiawa also carried his mother's distrust of the white man, his father's old, hunting hat, hunting, hatchet, necessity, dictated so kiawa is Indian a Native American, actually so that's, why he's saying he carry, he also carries his mother's destroy his grandmother's distrust of the white man.

So so far we have been given a list of tangible things dental floss gum boots.

Don't, marijuana.

Condoms.

Those are all tangible.

And now we get this intangible distrust that is something you cannot hold in your hand.

Okay.

So we have our first intent, intangible object because the land was mine the movie trapped.

It was SOP for each man to carry a steel centered, nylon covered flak jacket, which weighed six point, seven pounds.

But which on hot day seems much heavier because you could die.

So quickly each man carried at least one large, palm pressed bandage.

Usually in the helmet banned for easy access because the nights were cold and because the monsoon for wet, each carried a green classic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or ground sheet or makeshift tent.

Let's put the liner, the poncho, weighed almost two pounds.

But it was worth every ounce in April.

For instance, when had lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up than to carry him across the paddy and then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

So we've already been told about Ted lavender being killed three times.

They were so-called legs or grunts to carry something was the hump it as when lieutenant Jimmy cross humps, his love for Martha up the hills and to walk through the swamps.

So he carried his love for Martha through the hills and through the swamp.

So again, love intangible and it's intransitive form.

The hump meant to walk or to March.

But it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive, almost everyone humped photographs in his wallet lieutenant cross carried two photographs of Martha.

The first was a quote of color snapshot, find love, though he knew better.

She stood against a brick wall.

Her eyes were gray and neutral.

Her lips slightly opened as she stared straight on at the camera at night.

Sometimes lieutenant cross wondered who had taken the picture because he knew she had boyfriends because he loved her so much.

And because he could see the shadow of the picture taker spreading out against the brick wall.

The second photograph had been clipped from the 1960 out 8 mountain.

Sebastien yearbook.

It was an action shot.

Women's, volleyball, Martha was then affords on foot to the floor, reaching the palms of her hands.

In sharp, focus, the tongue taught the expression Frank and competitive.

There was no visible sweat.

She wore white gym shorts her legs.

He thought were almost certainly the legs of her virgin dry and without hair, the left knee, cocked and carrying her entire weight, which is just over 117 pounds.

Lieutenant Krauss remembered touching that left knee a dark Theater.

He remembered the movie was Bonnie and Clyde and Martha wore tweed skirt.

And during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked in a sad sober way that made him pull his hand back if he would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath it.

And the sound of the gun fire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was how slow and oppressive.

He remembered kissing her goodnight at the dorm door, right? Then he thought he should have done something brave.

He should have carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long.

He should have risked it.

Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should have done.

So yes, he is talking about taking her up to her room against her will and times into the bed.

What they carried was partly a function of rank and partly a field specialty as a first lieutenant of the tune leader, Jimmy cross carried a compass Maps code, books, binoculars and a 45 caliber pistol that way 2.9 pounds fully-loaded.

He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.

All right, he carried a strobe light, tangible or intangible, yes, tangible.

He carried the responsibility for the lives of his men.

Handable are intangible.

Yes, it in tangible intangible.

You cannot hold that in your head as an RTO Mitchell, Mitchell, Sanders carried the P R C, 25.

Radio, a killer 26 pounds with its battery as a medic rat Kiley carry to canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books.

And all the things that medic must carry, including M&Ms for especially bad wounds for a total weight of nearly 18 pounds.

So M&Ms I've looked this up each time that I've read this, and we are never really sure they're like M&Ms or something else.

So we'll see.

And the reason why I mean it could definitely be something else and not just regular M&Ms, but we'll see as this book continues that a lot of stuff that Tim O'brien writes, we think is true, and we think has one meaning.

And then in the next sentence, he tells you that's, not the meaning.

So this M&M thing is a little little mysterious as a big man there for a machine-gunner Henry Dobbins carried the m60 which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded.

In addition Dobbins carried between 10 and 15 pounds of ammunition draped and belts across his chest and shoulders as PFCs or specforce.

Most of them were common grunts and carried the standard m16 gas.

Operated assault rifle.

The weapon weighed seven point.

Five pounds, unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full 20 round magazine, depending on numerous factors such as typography and psychology, the rifleman carried anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines, usually in clock, bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 pounds at minimum 14 pounds at maximum when it was available.

They also carried m16 maintenance gear, rods and steel brushes and swabs and tombs of LSA oil, all of which weighed about a pound among the grunts, some carry the m79 grenade launcher 95.9 pounds, unloaded, a reasonably light weapon, except for the ammunition, which was heavy a single round, weighed 10 ounces.

Their typical load was 25 rounds, but Ted lavender who was scared carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Tonchi.

And he went down under the exceptional burden more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers.

And all the rests plus the unweighted fear.

He was dead weight.

There was no twitching or flopping.

Yeah, who saw it 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 does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle.

Not like that yahwah said, the poor bastard just flat fell boom down.

Nothing else.

It was a bright morning in mid-april.

Lieutenant cross felt the pain.

He blamed himself.

They stripped off lavendar's canteens and ammo, all the heavy things and rat Kylie said, the obvious, the guy's dead, the Mitchell Sanders use his radio to report.

One, u.s., ki, a in to request a chopper.

Okay, means killed in action.

Then they wrap the lavender in his poncho.

They carried him down to a dry paddy established security in fact, smoke in the dead man's dope until the chopper came lieutenant, Krauss kept to himself.

He pictured Martha's smooth young face thinking, he loved her more than anything more than his men.

And now Ted lavender was dead, because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her when the dust off arrived, they carried lavender aboard dust off as a helicopter afterward.

They burnt on key.

They marched until dusk then dug their holes.

And that night kiawa kept explaining how you had to be there, how fast it was had the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete moved down.

He said, like cement, in addition to the three standard weapons, the m60 the m16 m79, they carried whatever presented itself or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive.

They carried catch-as-catch-can at various times in various situations.

They carried em, 14c, ar-15s and Swedish, Ches and grease guns and captured ak-47s and Kris, coms, ChiCom and RPGs and Ximena carbines and black-market koozies at 38, caliber, Smith, &, Wesson, handguns.

And sixty six millimeter laws and shotguns and silencers and black Jack's and bayonets c4 plastic explosives, leash, drunk carried a slingshot a weapon of last resort.

He called it Mitchell Sanders carried brass knuckles, kiawa carried his grandfather's feathered hatchet.

Every third or fourth man carried a claymore anti-personnel, mine, 3.5 pounds.

Its firing device.

They all carried fragmentation grenades, 14 ounces, each they all carried at least one M, 18 colored smoke grenade 24 ounces, some carried CS or teargas grenades, some carried white phosphorous grenades.

They carried all they could bear.

And then some including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried in the first week of April before lavender died.

Lieutenant Jimmy Kraus received a good luck charm from Martha.

It was a simple pebble, an ounce at most smooth, the touch.

It was a milky, white color with flecks of orange and violet.

Formal shapes like a miniature egg in the accompanying letter Martha wrote that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline, precisely where the land touched water at high tide where things came together.

But also separated, it was a separate, but together quality.

She wrote I had inspired her to pick up the pebble and to carry it in her breast pocket for several days where it seemed weightless, and then to send it through the mail by air as a token of her truest feelings for him, lieutenant Krauss found this romantic, but he wondered where her truest feelings were exactly and what she meant by separate.

But together, he wondered how the tides and waves had come into play on that afternoon along the Jersey shoreline.

When Martha saw the pebble and bent over to rescue it from geology.

He imagined bare feet.

Martha was a poet, but the poet sensibilities and her feet would be brown and bare and toenails on painted the eyes, chilly and somber like the ocean in March.

And though it looks painful.

He wondered who had been with her that afternoon.

He imagined a pair of shadows moving along the strip of sand where things came together.

But also separated, it was phantom jealousy.

He knew, but he couldn't help himself.

He loved her so much I'm marched through the hot days of early April.

He carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting a sea salt and moisture his mind wandered.

He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war on occasion.

He would yell at his men to spread out the column to keep their eyes open.

But then he would slip away into daydreams just pretending walking barefoot along the Jersey Shore with Martha carrying nothing.

He would feel himself, Rising, Sun and waves and gentle winds, all love and lightness what they carried buried by mission.

When mission took them to the mountains, they carried mosquito netting, machetes canvas tarps and extra bug juice.

If a mission, if a mission seemed especially hazardous, or if it involved a place, they knew to be bad, they carried everything they could in certain heavily mined AOS where the land was dense with tow poppers and bouncing Betties.

They took turns humping a 28 pound, mine detector, soto poppers and bouncing Betties.

Our ground mines, well--that's, headphones and big.

Sensing plate.

The equipment was a stress on the lower back and the shoulders awkward to handle often useless because of the shrapnel in the earth, but they carried it.

Anyway, partly for safety and partly for the illusion of safety on ambush on other night missions, they carried peculiar little odds and ends kiawa always took his New Testament and a pair of moccasins for silence.

Dave Jensen carried nitesite vitamins, high in carotene least drunk carried his slingshot ammo.

He claimed would never be a problem.

Rock, Kiley carried brandy and M&Ms candy so here's that the M&Ms for a particularly bad wound.

So I, don't know, until he was shot, Ted, lavender carried the Starlight scope, which weighed 6.3 pounds with its aluminum carrying case.

Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend's pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter.

They all carried ghosts when dark came, they would move out single-file across the meadows and patties up to their ambush coordinates where they would quietly set up the claymores and lie down and spend the night waiting other missions were more complicated and required special equipment in mid-april.

It was their mission to search out and destroy the elaborate tunnel, complex complexes in the Tonchi area, south of July to blow the tunnels.

They carried 1 pound blocks of punch.

Hence, right high explosives, four blocks to a man 68 pounds and all they carried wiring detonators and battery-powered placards.

Dave jensen carried earplugs most often before blowing the tunnels they were ordered by higher command to search them, which was considered bad news, but by and large, they just shrugged and carried out orders because he was a big man.

Henry Dobbins was excused from tunnel duty.

Others would draw numbers before Lavender died.

There were 17 men in the platoon.

And whoever drew the number 17 would strip off his gear and crawl in headfirst, the flashlight and lieutenant lieutenant crosses, 45 caliber pistol.

The rest of them would fan out as security.

They would sit down or kneel, not facing the whole listening to the ground beneath them, imagining cobwebs and ghosts whatever was down there.

The tunnel walls squeezing in how the flashlight seemed impossibly heavy in the hand and how it was tunnel vision.

The very strictest sense compression in all ways even time.

And now you had to wiggle in Assen elbows all swallowed up feeling and how you found yourself worrying about odd things.

Well, your flashlight go dead do rats carry rabies.

If you screamed, how far would the sound carry would your buddies hear it? Would they have the courage to drag you out in some respects, though not many the waiting was worse than the tunnel itself.

Imagination was a killer on April 16th when leash drunk drew the number 17, he laughed and muttered something and went down quickly.

The morning was hot, very still.

Not good.

Kiawa said, he looked at the tunnel opening then out across a dry paddy toward a village of Tonchi.

Nothing moved now clouds or birds or people as they waited.

The men smoked and drank kool-aid, not talking much feeling sympathy for least drunk who also feeling, but also feeling luck of the draw.

You win.

Some you lose some said, Mitchell, Sanders.

And sometimes you settle for a rain check.

It was a tire line.

And no one laughed Henry Dobbins.

A tropical chocolate bar, Ted, lavender popped a tranquilizer and went off to pee.

So remember Ted lavender gets shot so he's going off by himself.

So think about what might happen after five minutes, lieutenant Jimmy, Kraus, moved to the tunnel, leaned down and examined the darkness.

Trouble.

He thought Haven men, maybe and then suddenly without willing it.

He was thinking about Martha the stresses and fractures the quick collapse, the two of them buried alive at her all the weight dense fresh in love kneeling, watching the whole.

He tried to concentrate on least drunk in the war, all the dangers.

But his love was too much for him.

He felt paralyzed.

He wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe, her blood and be smothered.

He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin all at once.

He wanted to know her intimate secrets.

Why poetry why so sad why the greatness in her eyes why so alone not lonely just alone, riding her bike across campus or sending off by herself in the cafeteria, even dancing.

She danced alone.

And it was the aloneness that filled him with love.

He remembered telling her that one evening how she nodded and looked away.

And how later when he kissed her she received the kiss without returning it her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin thighs, just flat and uninvolved lieutenant cross gaze at the tunnel.

But this was not there.

He was not there.

He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey Shore.

They were pressed together.

And the pebble in his mouth was I'm was her tongue.

He was smiling vaguely.

He was aware of how quiet the day was the sudden the Solent Patty's.

Yeah, he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security.

He was beyond that.

He was just a kid at war in love.

He was 24 years old.

He couldn't help it so he's 24 years old in charge of a group of soldiers.

A few moments later at least drunk crawled out of the tunnel.

He came up grinning filthy, but alive, lieutenant cross nodded, closed his eyes or the other claps trunk on the back and made jokes about rising from the dead worms.

Rat Kylie said, right out of the grave zombie.

The men laughed, they all felt great relief.

Spook, City said, Mitchell, Sanders least drunk made a funny ghost sound kind of moaning yet, very happy and right.

Then when Strunk made that happy high moaning sound when he went, oh right.

Then Ted lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing.

He lay with his mouth open the teeth were broken.

There was a swollen black Rouge under his left eye.

The cheekbone was gone.

Oh Rach Kylie said, the guy's dead the guy's dead.

He kept saying which seemed profound the guy's dead.

I mean, really the things I carried were determined by some extent by superstition lieutenant cross carried his good luck.

Pebble.

They Jensen carried a rabbit's foot, norman valper, otherwise a very gentle person carried a thumb that he had been presented that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders.

The thumb was dark brown rubbery to the touch and weighed three ounce of that.

Most it had been cut from a VC corpse, Vietcong, a boy of fifteen or sixteen.

They'd found him at the bottom of an irrigation ditch.

Badly burned flies in his mouth and eyes.

The boy wore black shorts and sandals at the time of his death, he had been carrying a pouch of rice, a rye and three magazines of ammunition.

You want my opinion, Mitchell sander said, there's a definite moral here.

He put his hand on the dead boy's wrist.

He was quiet for a time as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach almost affectionately and used kia was hunting hatchet to remove the thumb.

Henry Dobbins asked what the moral was moral.

You know, moral Sanders wrapped, the thumb in toilet paper and handed it across the Norman Baker.

There was no blood smiling.

He kicked the boys head watch the Flies scatter and said, it's, just like with that old TV show paladin have gun will travel Henry Dobbins thought about it.

Yeah.

Well, he finally said, I, don't, see, no moral there.

It is man off so moral like what's, the meaning behind it.

What is the moral of the story? So Henry, Dobbins and saying there is no moral to this story there's.

No reason that we're here, there's, no moral to this for there's.

No bigger message behind this war.

They carried the USO stationery and pencils and pens, they carried sternum safety pins trip.

Flare 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, psyops, psyops, leaflets.

Bush hats, bolos and much more twice a week when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot Chow and green myrrh might cans and large canvas bags.

So with ice beer and soda pop.

They carry plastic water containers.

Each with a two gallon capacity, Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions.

Henry Dobbins carried black flag insecticide.

They jumped and cared in empty carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added protection least drunk carried tanning lotion.

Some things they carried in common.

Taking turns the big PRC, 77, scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with his battery.

They shared the weight of memory.

So they shared the memory of Ted lavender being killed.

They took up what others could no longer bear.

Often they carried each other.

The wounded were weak.

So they weren't.

I mean, they probably literally did carry each other like the wounded or weak your probably actually carrying them.

But you know when you say to someone and just need a shoulder to lean on, you don't, really mean, you're gonna lean on their shoulder.

You just want their support.

They carried infections.

They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese, English dictionaries insignia of rank, Bronze, Stars and purple hearts.

Plastic cards, imprinted with the code of conduct.

They carry diseases among them, malaria and dysentery.

They carried lice and ringworm leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds.

They carried the land itself Vietnam.

The place, the soil, the powdery orange red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces.

They carried the sky the whole atmosphere.

They carried it a humidity, the monsoons, a stink of fungus and decayed all of it.

They carried gravity.

They moved like mules by day late.

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.

They plotted along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking all blood and bone simple, grits, grunts soldiers with their legs toiling up the hills and down into the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down just humping one step, and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will because it was automatic.

It was Anatomy.

And the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage with everything kind of inertia the kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and consciousness and hope and human sensibility.

Their principles were in their feet.

Their calculations are biological, they no sense of strategy or mission.

They search the villages without knowing what to look for not caring taking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not then forming up and moving on to the next village than other villages where it would always be the same.

So they don't even know why they're there they're going through villages without knowing what to look for they carry their own lives.

The pressures were enormous in the heat of the early afternoon.

They would remove their helmets and flak jackets walking bare, which was dangerous, but which helped ease the strain.

They would often discard things along the route of the March, purely for comfort.

They would throw away rations blow their claymores and grenades, no matter because by nightfall, the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same then a day or two later, still more fresh watermelons and crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woollen sweaters.

The resources were stunning sparklers for the fourth of July colored eggs for Easter.

It was the great American War chest.

The fruits of silence, the smokestacks Canaries, the Arsenal's at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, my bass fields of corn and wheat.

They carried like freight trains.

They carried it on their backs and shoulders.

And for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry that was pages 1 to 15 inch.

You should have 5 annotations for today.

All right we will continue reading tomorrow.