# data[].attributes.body
"...There were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die" (18).

# data[].attributes.body
"...It was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum...and so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne" (22).

# data[].attributes.body
"I remember Mitchell Sanders sitting quietly..." (30).

"I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers..." (31).

"I remember Mitchell Sanders smiling..." (34).

"I remember these things, too" (35).

# data[].attributes.body
"Eddie Diamond, the ranking NCO, made a small motion with his hand..." (89).

# data[].attributes.body
"They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, 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, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos and much more...They carried plastic water containers, each with a soda pop"(13).

# data[].attributes.body
"Not to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife" (37).

# data[].attributes.body
"My daughter Kathleen tell me it's an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony" (33).

# data[].attributes.body
"In the beginning the idea seemed purely abstract, the word Canada printing itself out in my head; but after a time I could see particular shapes and images, the sorry details of my own future - a hotel room in Winnipeg, a battered old suitcase, my father's eyes as I tried to explain myself over the telephone" (42).

# data[].attributes.body
"You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorous, the purply glow of napalm, the rocket's red glare" (77).

# data[].attributes.body
"For a while it went back and forth, but Dave Jensen was much bigger and much stronger, and eventually he wrapped an arm around Strunk's neck and pinned him down and kept hitting him on the nose" (59).

# data[].attributes.body
"It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river...It's about love and memory..." (81).

# data[].attributes.body
"And as a result his friend Kiowa was dead" (163).

# data[].attributes.body
"...listening to the rain and explosions and bubbling sounds" (164).

# data[].attributes.body
"He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee.... He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks" (75).

# data[].attributes.body
"They told stories about Ted Lavender's supply of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn't feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was" (19).

# data[].attributes.body
"As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry," (5).

# data[].attributes.body
"Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone?" (11).

# data[].attributes.body
"They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or the weak" (14).

# data[].attributes.body
"He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men" (5).

# data[].attributes.body
"they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that carried him away" (3).

# data[].attributes.body
"They carried M-14s and CAR-15s and Swedish Ks and grease guns and captured AK-47s and Chi-
coms and RPGs and Simonov carbines and black market Uzis and .38 caliber Smith & Wesson handguns and 66 mm LAWs and shotguns and silencers and blackjacks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives" (7).

# data[].attributes.body
"I hated dirt and tents and mosquitoes" (39).

# data[].attributes.body
"The AO lay along the South China Sea, where things had the feel of a resort, with white beaches and palm trees and friendly little villages" (83).

# data[].attributes.body
"I'm young and tan and fit," (52)

# data[].attributes.body
"Rat tells her what a great brother she had, how together the guy was, a number one pal and comrade" (64).

# data[].attributes.body
" It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done" (65).

# data[].attributes.body
"  First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey," (1)

# data[].attributes.body
"I saw a sixteen-year-old kid decked out for his first prom, looking spiffy in a white tux and a black bow tie, his hair cut short and flat, his shoes freshly polished" (55).

# data[].attributes.body
"They lose it. They get on the radio [...] They get arty and gunships. They call in air strikes [...] They make jungle juice [...] They blow away trees and glee clubs and whatever else there is to blow away [...] They walk napalm up and down the ridges. They bring in the Cobras and F-4s, they use Willie Peter and HE and incendiaries [...] They make those mountains burn" (O'Brien 71).

# data[].attributes.body
"First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross began composing a letter in his head to the kid's father, not mentioning the shit field, just saying what a fine soldier Kiowa had been [...]" (O'Brien 157).

# data[].attributes.body
"In the evenings, [...] she would sometimes fall into long elastic silences, her eyes fixed on the dark, her arms folded, her foot tapping out a coded message against the floor" (O'Brien 95).

# data[].attributes.body
"My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony" (33).

# data[].attributes.body
"War is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love" (76).

# data[].attributes.body
"They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried" (7).

# data[].attributes.body
"When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote" (169-170).

# data[].attributes.body
"When it was available, they also carried M-16 maintenance gear - rods and steel brushes and swabs and tubes of LSA oil - all of which weighed about about a pound" (5).

# data[].attributes.body
"When she was nine, my daughter Kathleen asked if I had ever killed anyone" (125).

# data[].attributes.body
"On my last full day, the sixth day, the old man took me out fishing on the Rainy River" (52).

# data[].attributes.body
"What would you do?

Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?" (54)

# data[].attributes.body
"...Rat Kiley put on a tourniquet and administered morphine and ran plasma into him." (63)

# data[].attributes.body
"I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me" (42).

# data[].attributes.body
She wore her pink sweater and a white blouse and a simple cotton skirt" (105).

# data[].attributes.body
"There was plenty of cold beer, three hot meals a day, a tin roof over his head" (87).

# data[].attributes.body
"His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole." (118)

"His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut and the other was a star-shaped hole." (120)

"He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole. eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole." (127)

"His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole." (172)

# data[].attributes.body
"they carried hot chow in green mermite cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop". (13)

# data[].attributes.body
"They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct." (14)

# data[].attributes.body
"Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal" (19).

# data[].attributes.body
"It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." (81)

# data[].attributes.body
"Looking out across the water hazard that fronted the small flat green, a seven iron in his hand, calculating wind and distance, wondering if he should reach instead for an eight" (160)

# data[].attributes.body
"I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything" (39).

# data[].attributes.body
"But it was real, I know that much, it was a physical rupture-a cracking-leaking-popping feeling." (44)

# data[].attributes.body
"No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No lemon, no Rat Kiley. No trail junction. No baby buffalo. No vines or moss or white blossoms. Beginning to end, you tell her, it's all made up" (81).

# data[].attributes.body
"Behind me, in the jeep, my daughter Kathleen sat waiting with a government interpreter, and now and then I could hear the two of them talking in soft voices" (174).