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54 pages 1 hour read

Tim O'Brien

If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1973

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Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 16 Summary: “Wise Endurance”

Captain Johansen tells O'Brien, "I'd rather be brave than almost anything" (134). O'Brien ponders bravery, wondering what it is and who has it. He recalls Laches, a philosophical dialogue by Plato. In Laches, Socrates and Laches consider the nature of courage. Laches says courage is "an endurance of the soul" (137). Socrates points out enduring is not always courageous, so they amend their definition of courage to "wise endurance" (137). The courageous person must know why they are enduring, and for what purpose.

In a village near Pinkville, the soldiers come upon some boys and cows. The soldiers fire at them, and the boys run, "but one cow stood its ground" (139). The cow is not showing courage, according to Socrates' definition, because she doesn't understand the danger she is facing. To be courageous, one must survive through more than dumb luck. O'Brien points out many men of Alpha Company are determined to survive the war, and they are not above faking illness or injury to do so. Their endurance is also not wise, O'Brien thinks.

O'Brien decides caring about courage is a common trait of the courageous. He thinks about his pre-war heroes, who were all fictional characters: Humphrey Bogart's character, Rick, in the World War II movie, Casablanca; or Frederic Henry, from Ernest Hemmingway's war novel The Sun Also Rises. In Vietnam, O'Brien finds fictional heroes insufficient; he must make a hero from among the men around him, and Captain Johansen is the only candidate. The captain cares about courage.

Whether O’Brien himself endures wisely or stupidly is a question he asks himself. Any courage he shows in Vietnam is perhaps balanced by his failure to refuse to serve. In taking part in the war, O'Brien is perhaps like the cow, stupidly enduring for no good reason. He wonders about his inability to refuse to serve. In the end, O'Brien concludes most soldiers are somewhere in the middle, acting courageously at some moments and cowardly at others. 

Chapter 17 Summary: “July”

At the end of June, Captain Johansen leaves. His replacement, Captain Smith, is rotund, blustering, and incompetent. He lasts a month, during which he leads the company on several disastrous missions.

Returning to the "My Lai—My Khe area," the company goes on a patrol in wet, muddy rice paddies (149). They are supported by "tracks," slang for tanks. When the company comes under fire, the tanks take standard evasive action, immediately going into reverse at full speed and running over the men of Alpha Company. The mud and water provide some protection, as the men simply sink under the weight of the tanks. But one man, Paige, loses a foot, and another, Ortez, suffers a broken leg. When Alpha Company resumes the mission, they again come under fire, losing seventeen men in just half an hour.

Not all the disasters are Smith's fault, entirely. The tank commander at one point insists the men of Alpha Company should not ride on the outside of the tanks and instead walk in front of the tanks. The reason behind this is that the area is thick with mines, and the tank commander thinks infantrymen should walk ahead with minesweepers. Captain Smith rightly argues this turns his men into mine fodder.

However, being right isn't enough. Smith blusters and barks, but he doesn't carry the sway. When push comes to shove, he gives in to the tank commander: "Smith knew it was a crazy order, but what could he do?" (158). The platoon leaders refuse to carry out the nonsensical order. After the tank debacle, Smith never regains leadership. He is "openly ridiculed" and there is "half-serious talk about his being a marked man” (158).

Smith continues to rack up the disasters. He gets lost. He sends out a patrol, and later, when an explosion is heard, he shrugs it off. But the explosion had been "a big mine"; several men are dead, and others are trapped (161). A battalion commander has to rescue them. In early August, Smith is "relieved of his command" after barely a month of service (162).

Chapter 18 Summary: “The Lagoon”

During the disasters under Smith, Alpha Company catches something of a break. They are ordered to guard a small village situated on a lagoon. "It is not a village Gaugin would have painted," O'Brien remarks (165). (The 19th-century French painter Gaugin famously spent time painting the islanders of Tahiti.) Rather, it is an ugly village made of squalid tin Army huts, and the beach is sown with mines. However, day-to-day life is peaceful there. The fishermen bring in crayfish, and Alpha Company has a feast.

There are casualties in the midst of the calm. A lieutenant steps on a rigged mortar round and dies during the medevac flight. A soldier using hand grenades to fish—exploding the grenades and scooping up the dead or stunned fish—accidentally "blew his belly away" (167).

Disaster strikes from an unexpected direction. At a nearby firebase, American mortars are frequently fired at night, to make sure the mortars are accurately targeted for the defense of the village. One night, there is a mix-up about the coordinates, and the mortars shell the village. Thirty-three villagers are wounded, and thirteen are killed. O'Brien notes the American forces make "solatium payments" to the families of the victims, somewhat like damages awarded by a court (168). The calculation seems brutal: "twenty dollars for each wounded villager; thirty dollars and ninety cents for each death" (168).

Chapters 16-18 Analysis

O’Brien states that in contrast to the brave Captain Johansen, who cares about courage, "[m]ost of the soldiers in Alpha Company did not think about courage" (141). Partly this is because the soldiers do not want to think about death. The custom among soldiers in the Vietnam War was to avoid talking about death, so that a soldier didn't accidentally bring death on himself. O'Brien shows how this avoidance is part of the soldiers' language; they never say anyone died, only that they were "wasted" (141).However, because soldiers avoid thinking about death, they can never acquire any wisdom about warfare. Therefore, they lack the wise endurance that Plato defines as courage.

Captain Johansen is unfailingly courageous. His replacement, Captain Smith, seems incapable of getting anything right. He rails against the orders of the top brass, giving himself an enlisted man's freedom to grumble and complain. But he cannot change those orders and he lacks the nerve to disobey them. His complaints about the orders' folly are actually a kind of resignation.

As is typical for O'Brien, he settles on a middle path, in matters of courage. While he admires Captain Johansen and despises Captain Smith, he recognizes most soldiers "are neither cowards nor heroes" (147). This is not to say most men in war are not afraid; they are, O'Brien says: "You look at the other men, reading your own caved-in belly deep in their eyes" (147). When the immediate fear of battle wears off, "You promise, almost moving your lips, to do better next time; that by itself is a kind of courage" (147).

While Smith's derelictions are especially bad, O'Brien is capable of turning a jaundiced eye on any of the officers. When some of Smith's men are pinned down, due to Smith's incompetence, the battalion commander flies in to rescue them. O'Brien remarks, somewhat cynically, that the battalion commander "got a Distinguished Flying Cross for that, an important medal for colonels" (161).

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