54 pages • 1 hour read
If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
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Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “My Lai in May”
O'Brien's platoon arrives in "the villages of My Lai" (115). This may surprise readers who knew of the My Lai Massacre and thought there was one village named My Lai; in fact, My Lai was the name of a collection of small villages. These villages were in the area the US Army called Pinkville, named after "the fact that military maps color it a shimmering shade of elephant pink" (114).
In March of 1968, American soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, in the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division, killed several hundred unarmed civilians in several hamlets in My Lai. Company C, or Charlie Company, had suffered twenty-eight casualties from mines and booby traps in the previous months and while the official purpose for being in the My Lai region was to try to wipe out the Viet Cong's 48th Battalion, in March 1968, Charlie Company appears to have taken personal revenge on My Lai. Women, children, and old men were killed, along with farm animals. Crops and huts were burned, and wells were despoiled.
There was worldwide outrage when the story broke in November 1968, and twenty-six soldiers were court-martialed. However, only one was convicted: Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company.
It is May 1969, and O'Brien's Alpha Company is in the same area. Pinkville is still heavily mined, and American casualties in the area remain high. As O'Brien says, "Even before the headlines [about the My Lai Massacre] […] Pinkville was a feared and special place on the earth" (116). In January 1969, before O'Brien arrived in Vietnam, Alpha Company had fought in Pinkville and suffered heavy casualties. The company "learned some hard lessons" in Pinkville, including the lesson that "a pretty Vietnamese girl" might well be "a deadly enemy" (116).
In "the villages of My Khe, a few thousand meters south of the My Lais," O'Brien and the rest of Alpha Company walk into an ambush (116). It is chaotic: "Everything was noise, and it lasted on and on" (116). When the fighting subsides, Alpha Company moves north, into the My Lai area. They question villagers but learn nothing and grow tired and upset. They spend a night under enemy mortar fire, not shooting back for fear of giving away their position. O'Brien is paralyzed with fear: "Then the bushes just erupted […] I lay there. I screamed, I buried my head" (117).
In the days afterward, the men of Alpha Company retaliate. They light huts on fire. They punch two Vietnamese women in the face, and hack off hunks of their hair. Someone else pistol whips a villager. Alpha Company is ordered to march to the sea. When they arrive, things return to a kind of equilibrium. The soldiers of Alpha Company bask on the beach, relax, and occasionally take enemy sniper fire. O'Brien describes the routine: the enemy fires, O'Brien radios for a helicopter for the wounded, and his unit moves on.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Step Lightly”
In this chapter, O'Brien gives a list of mines and booby-trap devices the American soldiers encounter in Vietnam. Among these are the Bouncing Betty, a mine that leaps three feet into the air before exploding at just the right height to damage a person's internal organs. There are grenades, booby-trapped artillery rounds, anti-tank mines, and anti-personnel mines. O'Brien also describes the fear these devices inspire. The men walk slowly, fearing death every step of the way. Other times they freak out; one solider, Philip, digs a deep foxhole and then crawls into it to sob.
O'Brien also reflects on the overall war, which he finds to be hopeless and absurd:"We walk through the mines, trying to catch the Viet Cong Forty-Eighth Battalion like inexperienced hunters after a hummingbird" (127).O’Brien adds that "Charlie finds us far more often than we find him" (127).There is no way to measure success in this war, because there is no goal. It is not a war of position, O'Brien says; the American Army is not gaining and holding territory. And it is not a war for hearts and minds, O'Brien claims. The phrase "winning hearts and minds" has a long history in counterinsurgency warfare, going back to 19th-century French campaigns in Indochina (Vietnam). It means to persuade the populace to side with the occupying or imperial army and against the insurgents or revolutionaries. The phrase was also the name of a U.S. operation in Vietnam. But O'Brien points out this aim is beyond reach, "in the wake of the contempt drawn on our faces and theirs" (127). Since the American forces are not gaining territory or winning hearts, there is no military aim left, and so "a soldier can only do his walking, laughing along the way and taking a funny, crooked step" (128).
Chapter 15 Summary: “Centurion”
The men find a Viet Cong weapon, an AK-47 machine gun, hidden in one of the villages. They search the rest of the village, and they also do some punitive damage: "We […]kicked the straw out of pig styes. And we poured sand in the well" (129). "Where there's an AK-47, there's Charlie," Captain Johansen says (130). The unit decides to take some prisoners, in order to find out more about the Viet Cong in the area. They haul three old men out of a hut and tie them to trees. O'Brien discusses the pointlessness of holding them captive, as they aren't going to talk. The next day, a lieutenant and a Vietnamese scout harangue the old men. The lieutenant "beat[s] on them," and the Vietnamese scout whips their legs (131). The old men tell them nothing, proving the pointlessness of capturing and interrogating them.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
O'Brien describes battle so that it is as chaotic and confusing for the reader as it was for those fighting. His writing is clear, and initially he orients the reader by explaining where Pinkville, My Lai, and My Khe are. He gives some history of the U.S. Army's experiences in Pinkville—the My Lai Massacre in 1968, and the heavy casualties in the My Lai villages in January 1969, "a month or so before [O'Brien] arrived in Vietnam" (116). But when the fighting begins—"we hit immediate contact"—the overview disappears (116). Our perspective shrinks from the geopolitical and historical to the immediate; there is only terror and noise and agony: "I couldn't move. I kept hollering, begging for an end to it" (117).
In Chapter 12, Alpha Company displays an unusual motivation for zealously throwing themselves into wreaking vengeance on civilians. The men of Alpha Company are elated at having survived the helicopter ride; as though some sort of valve has been released, and after the terror of the helicopter ride has been endured, they go on an exultant rampage.
In Chapter 13, the mechanism is similar: as soon as the men feel slightly safe again, they wreak vengeance, lighting huts on fire and punching villagers. But Chapter 13 also offers more commonplace justifications for American shows of force on the ground in Vietnam: "Frustration and anger built with each explosion and betrayal, one Oriental face began to look like any other, hostile and black, and Alpha Company was boiling with hate when it was pulled out of Pinkville" (116).
O'Brien ends Chapter 14 on a bitter, truculent note. He says if anyone criticizes his bitterness, they are welcome to vacation in Vietnam and sun themselves on the mined beaches. He is inviting his readers to step on a landmine and die. In doing so, he underlines the difference between soldiers and civilians. Although his writing has pulled readers in, putting them in the chaos of battle, he now distances himself from readers. There is also a with-us-or-against-us stance in this passage, a defensive, tetchy anger. Perhaps he feels shame at the dumb-luck way he survived Pinkville, lying in the dirt and screaming. Or he might feel shame at the revenge Alpha Company took on the villagers in the days after, even though Alpha Company's acts were far from war crimes.
That night, when O'Brien is on watch, he compares the three old men taken prisoner to the three present at the Crucifixion, describing them as "hanging onto their saplings like the men at Golgotha" (131). This image implies O'Brien is the centurion of the chapter title. A centurion was a professional officer in the army of the Roman Empire. The image of the Roman centurion and the weak, pitiable Jesus expresses the relative strength of O'Brien compared to the three frail prisoners.
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By Tim O'Brien
