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"There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have, and all you may lose forever."

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"There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have, and all you may lose forever."

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- Tim O'brien

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Soldiers occupy the Song Tra Bong River in 1965

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Soldiers occupy the Song Tra Bong River in 1965

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The river involved in the "In The Field" chapter of the book.

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"I realize it as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story"

The novel incorporates  lot of "coming to age moments." The author  talks in the third person about his younger self, Timmy, and his current self, Tim in order to convey the idea that his reflection on his past has helped him cope

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“But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget...”

“I survived, but it's not a happy ending...”

Throughout the story, guilt is a major theme, especially survivors guilt. Even though Tim Obrein never actually killed anyone, he blames himself and the guilt of being there is enough

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There Was No Rules At All
Stories from Vietnam

Haywood T. "The Kid" Kirkland from Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984)

In an article in the New York Times Magazine on March 24, 1968, reporter Sol Stern observed, "In Vietnam between 1961 and 1964, Negroes accounted for more than 20 percent of Army fatalities, even though they represented only 12.6 percent of Army personnel in Vietnam" and even less in the general U.S. population. "Simply put, the statistics show that the Negro in the army was more likely than his white buddy to be sent to Vietnam in the first place; once there, he was more likely to wind up in a front-line combat unit; and within the combat unit was more likely than the white to be killed or wounded." Black Vietnam vets who were not killed in Vietnam returned from the war to encounter persistent racism and widespread unemployment. Many became openly critical of the war and joined organizations fighting against war and for civil rights. Stern quotes one returned Black veteran from Vietnam as saying, "I would never fight on a foreign shore for America again. . . . The only place I would fight is right here." Here Haywood Kirkland describes the Vietnam war and its aftermath from the standpoint of a Black GI.

-Introduction from Zinn and Arnove's Voices of a People's History of the United States

I got drafted on November 22,1966. I had been working for a book distributor and as a stock boy in some stores coming out of high school. A lot of dudes were trying to do things to get deferments. One of my brothers put some kind of liquid in his eye and said he had an eye problem at the physical. He never went.

I didn't try anything. I knew when I got drafted I was going to Vietnam, no matter what I did. I knew because of the vision I had when I was twelve.

As soon as I hit boot camp in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, they tried to change your total personality. Transform you out of that civilian mentality to a military mind.

Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call everybody gooks, dinks.

Then they told us when you go over in Vietnam, you gonna be face to face with Charlie, the Viet Cong. They were like animals, or something other than human. They ain't have no regard for life. They'd blow up little babies just to kill one GI. They wouldn't allow you to talk about them as if they were people. They told us they're not to be treated with any type of mercy or apprehension. That's what they engraved into you. That killer instinct. Just go away and do destruction.

Even the chaplains would turn the thing around in the Ten Commandments. They'd say, "Thou shall not murder," instead of "Thou shall not kill." Basically, you had a right to kill, to take and seize territory, or to protect the lives of each other. Our conscience was not to bother us once we engaged in that kind of killing. As long as we didn't murder, it was like the chaplain would give you his blessings. But you knew all of that was murder anyway.

On May 15, 1967, I came into Vietnam as a replacement in the Third Brigade of the Twenty-Fifth Division. The Cacti Green. It was the task-force brigade that went anywhere there was trouble. The division was down in Cu Chi, but we operated all over II Corps and Eye Corps.

At the time I basically had a gung ho attitude about being a soldier. But could I get in the best situation and not get hurt was a legitimate concern of mine. So I checked out that the line companies-ones making all the heavy contact-are the ones who are getting overran. I thought maybe I should avoid that and volunteer for one of these long-range recon patrols. It was a smaller group, and I had an opportunity to share my ideas and help make some decisions. With a line company, you're really just a pin on the map for sure.

The recon unit was basically to search out the enemy and call in air strikes or a larger military force to engage the enemy. Most of our activities was at night. We was hide by day, and out by night.

The politics of the war just had not set in when I got there. They told us not to fire unless fired upon. But once we enter into a village, we literally did anything that we wanted to do. There was no rules at all. I began to see a lot of the politics....

You would see the racialism in the base-camp area. Like rednecks flying rebel flags from their jeeps. I would feel insulted, intimated. The brothers they was calling quote unquote troublemakers, they would send to the fields. A lot of brothers who had supply clerk or cook MOS [Military Occupational Specialties] when they came over ended up in the field. And when the brothers who was shot came out of the field, most of them got the jobs burning sh-- in these 50-gallon drums. Most of the white dudes got jobs as supply clerks or in the mess hall.

So we began to talk to each other, close our ranks, and be more organized amongst ourselves to deal with some of this stuff. The ones like me from the field would tell the brothers in base camp, "Look man, you know how to use grenades. If you run into any problems, throw a grenade in their hootch."

When I came home, I really got upset about the way my peers would relate to me. They called me a crazy n----- for going to the war. And I was still dealing with Vietnam in my head.

Well, they sent me to Fort Carson in Colorado to do the six months I had left. I really didn't want to give no more of myself to the Army. So I played crazy.

I told people I ain't know what rank I was. I told them I was busted in Vietnam. I didn't wear no emblems. I was a buck private. I don't know where the papers at.

They made me cut my bush. What I did, I did not get another size hat. So the hat was falling allover my eyes.

Then I convinced the doctor that my feet was bad. I had jungle rot. I couldn't run, couldn't stand for a long time. I couldn't wear boots. All I could do was wear these Ho Chi Minh sandals I had.

And I would fall out in formation in my sandals, my big hat, and my shades. I rode them right to the point they was about ready to kick me out of the military.

Then on my twenty-first birthday they said they was going to the Democratic convention. Our unit was going to Chicago to be the riot squadron. I told them I'm not going there holding no weapon in front of my brothers and sisters. The captain said, "Kirkland, you going to Chicago if I have to carry you myself." But I went to the doctor and told him I had a relapse of malaria. He said he couldn't really tell me anything. I would have to stay in the hospital for the weekend. He thought he was getting me. I said, "That's fine."

I was successful playing crazy. I got an honorable discharge. Because I was a veteran with medals and an honorable discharge, Washington city had a job offer for me. The police force or the post office. The police force had too much military connected to it. My whole thing was to get the military out of my system. I chose the post office. Basically I was sitting on a stool sorting mail. Stuffing mail, sorting mail, do it faster. The supervisors were like the first sergeants. Six months later I resigned. I just got tired of it.

I was also enrolled in a computer-operations school. They fulfilled out none of their promises. It was a $2,200 rip-off of the VA [Veterans' Administration] money I got for school. They folded at the graduation of my class.

Well, I was getting more of a revolutionary, militant attitude. It had begun when I started talking with friends before leaving 'Nam about being a pan of the struggle of black people. About contributing in the world since Vietnam was doing nothin' for black people. They killed Dr. [Martin Luther] King just before I came home. I felt used.

Back To History Is A Weapon's Front Page

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There Was No Rules At All: Stories from Vietnam | Haywood T. “The Kid” Kirkland

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There Was No Rules At All Stories from Vietnam Haywood T. "The Kid" Kirkland from Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984) In an article in the New York Times Magazine on March 24, 1968, reporter Sol Stern observed, "In Vietnam between 1961 and 1964, Negroes accounted for more than 20 percent of Army fatalities, even though they represented only 12.6 percent of Army personnel in Vietnam" and even less in the general U.S.

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On March 25, 1973, the role of overt American intervention in the Republic of Vietnam ended. On May 7, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford proclaimed the end of the "Vietnam era."

Nearly a decade later, Congress asked the VA Administrator to conduct "a comprehensive study of the prevalence and incidence in the population of Vietnam veterans of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological problems in readjusting to civilian life." That study, funded by the VA and based on independent peer review, became known as the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS). Its findings became the empirical basis for many policy changes on veterans health.

Decades later, Congress asked the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to "enter into a contract with an appropriate entity to carry out a study on post-traumatic stress disorder using the database and sample of the previous study." This follow-up study, known as the National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study (NVVLS), was also funded by the VA.

Based on peer review, it was designed, implemented, analyzed, and interpreted by a multidisciplinary team of health and mental health professionals from Abt Associates (a leading health and social science research firm) and the Department of Psychiatry at New York University. That group included three co-principal investigators from the first study. The research team submitted the new study to the VA in December 2013. The VA shared the findings with Congress in August 2014.

What follows are some preliminary findings about Vietnam veterans for the 25-year span between the 1986-88 NVVRS and the 2012-13 NVVLS.
STUDY DESIGN

The NVVLS is a follow-up study of two cohorts of veterans who participated in the original NVVRS study: service members who were deployed to the Vietnam War ("theater veterans"), and a comparison group who served during the Vietnam era but were not deployed to the Vietnam theater ("era veterans").

For theater veterans, warzone stress exposure and other combat-related experiences were assessed in the original NVVRS during hour-long interviews. Dimensions of warzone stress included combat exposure, abusive violence, deprivation, loss of meaning, prisoner of war status, and exposure to the wounded and dead. A quarter of theater veterans living today reported high levels of warzone stress exposure, versus low to moderate for the others. In both studies, all veterans were assessed for postwar physical and mental health problems. Some veterans also were interviewed by experienced mental health clinicians, who focused on PTSD, major depression, and substance abuse.

The NVVLS follow-up assessment of the veterans' physical and mental health was conducted via three components: (1) a self-report survey booklet; (2) a telephone interview with an experienced survey interviewer; and (3) for some randomly selected veterans, a diagnostic mental health interview conducted over the phone by a well-trained, experienced, and licensed mental health clinician. Of the 1, 839 veterans who were eligible, 1, 450 participated in one or more components, a response rate of 79 percent.

KEY PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Mortality . Because more than twenty years had passed when the follow-up began, the initial challenge was to locate the NVVRS participants. We checked two national death registries and found that, as of April 2011, 428 of the 2, 348 participants had died. Death certificate information indicated that the majority of deaths were due to chronic and non-communicable diseases (78.7 percent) or external causes, such as injuries, suicide, and drug overdose. Analyses of these data indicate that male theater veterans who had PTSD in 1987 were nearly twice as likely to have died compared to those who did not have PTSD, and that male and female theater veterans with high exposure to warzone stress were also nearly twice as likely to have died than those with low or moderate warzone stress exposure.

Demographics. The average age of the living Vietnam theater veterans as of 2013 was 67. Twenty-eight percent of all living theater veterans were high school graduates; 38.3 percent took college course work; and 26.7 percent completed college. Among theater veterans, more women than men completed college (69.9 percent vs. 26.6 percent). More than half (58.6 percent) of all theater veterans in the NVVLS were retired; one-third (33.3 percent) were working.

In 2012-13, more than one-third of era veterans reported annual family income of more than $75, 999. Approximately 12.1 percent reported family income of less than $25, 000.

The household income of the majority of theater veterans supported two people (63.6 percent); one-fifth (20.2 percent) supported only one person. Female theater veterans were twice as likely as their male counterparts to support only one person with their household income. Male theater veterans were more likely to support two to four people.

Mental Health. Among theater veterans, we found that the prevalence of current PTSD based on full DSM-5 criteria ( see a summary of DSM-5 criteria in the PTSD/SA Committee Report) to be about 11 percent for male and 7 percent for female theater veterans. Based on these rates, we estimate that some 283, 000 male and 400 female theater veterans had warzone PTSD in 2012-13, forty or more years after their wartime service.

We also found that 3 percent of theater veterans had many PTSD symptoms but fell short of meeting the DSM-5 criteria, referred to as "subthreshold warzone PTSD." Extrapolating from these estimates, about 83, 500 male and 150 female veterans had subthreshold warzone PTSD in 2012-13.

We also examined changes in PTSD symptom patterns from the late 1980s to the second assessment in 2012-13 by creating four categories of change: (1) low symptom levels at both times, (2) decreasing symptoms, (3) increasing symptoms, and (4) high symptoms at both times. We found that 75 percent of theater veterans reported low symptom levels at both times, 5 percent reported decreasing symptom levels, 13 percent reported increasing levels, and 7 percent reported consistently high symptom levels at both times.

People with PTSD often meet criteria for other psychiatric disorders, particularly depression and substance abuse disorders. We found that 37 percent of theater veterans with current warzone PTSD also met criteria for major depression, and that 31 percent of those who have subthreshold warzone PTSD also met that criteria. By comparison, less than 1 percent of veterans without any PTSD met criteria for major depression.

Among theater veterans meeting DSM-5 criteria for current warzone PTSD, 2 percent met criteria for current alcohol abuse. Only 0.7 percent of those with subthreshold PTSD and 3 percent of those without PTSD met criteria for current alcohol abuse. Assessments of current drug abuse in theater veterans indicated rates of 2 percent among current warzone PTSD cases, 2 percent among subthreshold cases, and 0.6 percent among those negative for PTSD.

Physical Health. Not surprisingly, NVVLS veterans reported more chronic health conditions than they did in NVVRS, given that chronic conditions typically begin later in life. Males averaged 5.4 lifetime conditions, and females averaged 6.6.

More than half of theater veterans reported musculoskeletal (e.g., arthritis, rheumatism) conditions. Nearly one-third reported circulatory (e.g., heart attack, hypertension) and nervous system (e.g., deafness, paralysis) diseases. Theater veterans with current warzone PTSD were more likely to report a host of chronic conditions (e.g., musculoskeletal, circulatory, nervous system, endocrine). Veterans with current warzone PTSD reported having more of these conditions than those who do not have current warzone PTSD.

Use of Physical and Mental Health Services. Nearly 60 percent of Vietnam theater veterans reported receiving outpatient health care in the previous six months for physical health conditions. Of those who reported receiving outpatient care, 37 percent received care within the VA system. Male and female theater veterans whose PTSD symptoms remained elevated or worsened over time were more likely to report recent VA outpatient service use than those with low symptom levels. Furthermore, two-thirds of theater veterans with current warzone-related PTSD discussed behavioral health or substance-use concerns with their primary care providers.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Because PTSD became a recognized psychiatric disorder in 1980-five years after the Vietnam War officially ended-the veterans who served in that war were the first to be told about, assessed for, and treated for PTSD. NVVRS was the first study to assess the prevalence of PTSD among a representative sample of those who served. NVVLS is now the first study to assess the health and mental health of Vietnam theater veterans based on survey and clinical assessment of a representative sample as they grow older.

NVVLS findings confirm the NVVRS finding that the majority of Vietnam theater veterans are mentally and physically healthy four or more decades after their warzone service. However, we also found that a significant number are suffering from persistent and chronic PTSD symptoms related to their experiences in the war.

Additionally, we found that theater veterans who had current warzone PTSD continued to experience high levels of psychiatric disorders and chronic health issues. Most notably, rates of depression are more than fifty times greater in theater veterans with current warzone PTSD compared to those who do not have PTSD. These findings are important to clinicians and policymakers because the course of warzone PTSD has not yet been charted over the long term.

The substantial rate of current subthreshold warzone PTSD also represents an important public health concern, given the literature that suggests that it is associated with levels of functional impairment that are comparable to or approaching levels associated with full PTSD. One hypothesis is that some PTSD symptoms may wax or wane over time, sliding a veteran back and forth between meeting PTSD diagnostic criteria and not. When the population prevalences are 11 percent for current warzone PTSD and 3 percent for subthreshold PTSD forty years after the traumatic exposure, the 3 percent are likely veterans with one or more waning PTSD symptoms. These findings support the hypothesis that PTSD is a chronic, episodic disorder.

The findings concerning the relationship between PTSD and chronic physical health conditions were interesting. They revealed that theater veterans who had warzone PTSD at the first assessment were almost twice as likely to have died before the second assessment as those who did not have PTSD. Similarly, we found a statistically significant correlation between the number of chronic physical health conditions in living theater veterans and current warzone PTSD at the second assessment. Although these findings do not mean that current warzone PTSD creates chronic physical health conditions or early death-or vice versa-they do suggest that there may be information in the relationships that could help identify veterans in need of health care.

Similarly, findings concerning the use of health services indicated that more than half of the theater veterans reported receiving outpatient health care in the past six months, and that almost 40 percent of those who got care received it at VA facilities. Additionally, two-thirds of the theater veterans who had PTSD reported discussing behavioral health or substance-use concerns with their primary care providers. Taken together, these findings suggest a continued need for integrated health care and mental health care services among Vietnam veterans.

This study provides a 25-year representative national longitudinal assessment of Vietnam veterans to help inform the nation's policies to better address their health needs and to improve access to care. Findings also have implications for anticipating the long-term needs of veterans of more recent conflicts, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and demonstrate the importance of investing in robustly designed longitudinal studies to understand the long-term health effects of warzone service.

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Four Decades Later: Vietnam Veterans and PTSD

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On March 25, 1973, the role of overt American intervention in the Republic of Vietnam ended. On May 7, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford proclaimed the end of the "Vietnam era."

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Forty years after the war's end, twice as many vets with combat-related PTSD are getting worse as those who are improving

smithsonian.com

War is hell, and for many of the U.S. veterans who served in the Vietnam conflict, the psychological nightmare rages on even 40 years after the last Marine left Saigon. Psychological surveys suggest that some 271,000 veterans of the war may still have full post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. And for many vets, the PTSD symptoms are only getting worse with time.

"Roughly 11 percent of Vietnam veterans, over a 40-year period, continue to suffer from clinically important PTSD symptoms, either having the full diagnosis or very strong features of the diagnosis that interfere with function," says study author Charles Marmar, director of The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Veterans Center at the NYU Langone Medical Center.

The latest study follows up on participants in the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study conducted in the 1980s. According to Marmar, who co-authored the original report, the work serves a dual purpose in assessing the long-term affects of wartime trauma: "We owe it to the Vietnam generation, it's an amazing sacrifice that they made," he says. "But it's also the path ahead for the Iraq and Afghanistan generation, and we have to do better than we did for Vietnam."

PTSD may be a relatively recent psychological concept, but historians are exploring its impact on soldiers from the American Civil War and even back to ancient Assyria circa 1300 B.C. Clinical symptoms include reliving events through nightmares or flashbacks, avoiding people or situations that might be reminders of traumatic events, negative changes in feelings toward oneself and others and a state of hyperarousal that makes it hard to concentrate or sleep and includes a common feeling of imminent danger.

Just over 1,800 participants of the original study were still alive when the followup was conducted between 2012 and 2013. Amazingly, 1,450 of those veterans participated again-nearly 80 percent of the initial cohort. The study assessed how many Vietnam vets suffered PTSD symptoms in four categories: re-experience and avoidance, withdrawal and numbing, arousal and emotional control and self-persecution or survivor guilt. Participants shared their experiences via a one-hour self-reported health questionnaire, a one-hour computer-assisted telephone interview and a three-hour clinical diagnostic phone interview.

"It tells you something very profound about the commitment of these veterans, who are now in their mid- to late-60s and still really wanted to tell their story," says Marmar. "There is something very powerful in the social fabric of the American experience about Vietnam and how controversial Vietnam was, and maybe for these veterans the fact that many of them were unwelcome when they returned. For them it's very important to be able to tell their story now."

The veterans symptoms were measured on the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD, which Marmar calls "maybe the best measure ever developed to capture wartime PTSD-related symptoms and problems." The responses showed that while 7.6 percent have seen significant decreases in their PTSD symptoms over the past decades, 16 percent had their symptoms become significantly worse. More than one-third of the veterans with current war-zone PTSD also suffer from major depression, according to the research, which appears this week in JAMA Psychiatry. Those categorized as improving or as getting worse experienced 20-point swings on the scale, which Marmar says is a sign of significant change.

The study can't yet explain why some veterans saw improvements with time while others deteriorated. Marmar and his colleagues are now trying to model a wide range of factors to attempt to explain what's at work in the minds of each group. "We're looking at things such as age at entry into the war-because some data suggest that being younger when you enter a war favors a more chronic or worsening PTSD pattern-education level at entry to the war, how many tours of duty were served, levels of war zone exposure, whether or not a soldier is injured in combat and whether someone was welcomed home favorably or unfavorably."

Marmar suspects that aging is a potential factor that may lead to worsening symptoms. "Imagine someone home from three tours in Iraq who has three kids in the house and a demanding job, many responsibilities and an active social life. They've got a lot to pay attention to and a lot of distraction," Marmar notes. "Fast forward to age 60-something when they may retire, their social supports may erode, their health gradually declines and they begin to face their own mortality. They don't have the same kinds of structures and responsibilities. More time to reminisce may not be helpful in this situation and may lead to an intensification or reactivation of trauma-related experiences in memory."

Data from other studies suggest that roughly 70 percent of the men and women who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan do not develop major psychiatric problems. But work like the Vietnam vets study offers some lessons to better help those who do, Marmar adds.

"We can help them to identify these problems earlier, encourage them to seek care, de-stigmatize care and make services more affordable and accessible-including remote technologies like telemedicine and telemental health," he stresses. Perhaps more important, he notes, is doing everything possible to help veterans protect their two main sources of social support-their families and those they served alongside. "Those two groups are more important than anyone else to protect their mental health over time."

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Over a Quarter-Million Vietnam War Veterans Still Have PTSD

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smithsonian.com War is hell, and for many of the U.S. veterans who served in the Vietnam conflict, the psychological nightmare rages on even 40 years after the last Marine left Saigon. Psychological surveys suggest that some 271,000 veterans of the war may still have full post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

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Interview with Tim O'Brien 20 Years After the Book 

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Interview with Tim O'Brien 20 Years After the Book 

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subscribe to NPR's Book of the Day podcast

In war, there are no winners. That's what readers take away from Tim O'Brien's book about the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, in the 20 years since its publication.

O'Brien wrote parts of The Things They Carried 20 years after his service in Vietnam. 40 years since the war, he still carries it with him. "I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam - the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers," he tells host Neal Conan. "More importantly," he continues, "I carry the weight of responsibility, and a sense of abiding guilt."

But O'Brien carries joyful memories, too, "the friends I made, the conversations at foxholes where, for a moment or two, the war would seem to vanish into camaraderie and friendship."

Still, the memories of near-death moments remain the most vivid. "There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have, and all you may lose forever." Those things range, for O'Brien, from "the sublime, your parents, down to the petty - a Big Mac, and a cold Coke. When you're really really thirsty and you're drinking paddy water, the mind will lock on a can of cold Coke the way your mind might, you know, back in high school, have locked on a pretty girl."

O'Brien never anticipated the universal appeal his story would have among young people. They "bring such fervor to it that comes from their own lives, really. The book is... applied to a bad childhood or a broken home. And these are the things they're carrying."

NEAL CONAN, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. Im Neal Conan in Washington.

Twenty years ago, writer Tim O'Brien released a book of stories about young men and war, his war, Vietnam. Among many other things, he listed the weight of each soldier's clothes, canteens and can openers.

From the book: Every third or fourth man carried a claymore antipersonnel mine, 3.5 pounds with 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 tear gas 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.

And that's also the title of that book of stories. "The Things They Carried" is now a staple of college and high school English classes, celebrated as one of the most important books about the experience of war.

The author joins us in just a moment. Today, we want to hear from veterans. What did you carry? What do you still carry? Tell us your story. Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our Web site. Thats at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Later in the hour, the great play-by-play man Jon Miller, on the art of play by play. But first, novelist and National Book Award winner Tim O'Brien joins us here in Studio 3A. Nice to have you back on the program.

Mr. TIM O'BRIEN (Author, "The Things They Carried"): Great to be here, thanks.

CONAN: And parts of that book were framed from a distance of 20 years. It's now another 20 years since you wrote the book. What do you still carry?

Mr. O'BRIEN: Well, I carry the memories or the ghosts of a place called Vietnam, the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers. More importantly, I guess, I carry the weight of responsibility and a sense of abiding guilt. I carry joyful memories, too, friends I made and the conversations at foxholes where, for a moment or two, the war would seem to vanish into camaraderie and friendship.

The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.

CONAN: In some ways, you write how the experience of being close to death so often made things extremely vivid. Do those remain the most vivid memories of your life?

Mr. O'BRIEN: Very much so. I just finished talking with a group of high school students here in D.C., and the conversation eventually got to just that question. And there's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have and all you may lose forever, which goes from the sublime, your parents, down to the petty, the Big Mac and a cold Coke. When you're really, really thirsty and you're drinking paddy water, the mind will lock on a can of cold Coke the way your mind might, you know, back in high school lock on a pretty girl.

CONAN: Does it surprise you that all these years later, your book is taught in high schools around the country?

Mr. O'BRIEN: Yes. I had written the book for adults. I had imagined an audience of literate people on subways and going to work and in their homes reading the book. But I certainly hadnt imagined 14-year-old kids and 18-year-olds and those even in their early-20s reading the book and bringing such fervor to it, which comes from their own lives, really.

The book was taken is applied to a bad childhood or a broken home, and these are the things theyre carrying. And in a way, it's extremely flattering, and other times, it can be depressing.

I had a kid come up to me not long ago, though a book-signing line and say, yours is the only book I've ever finished. And of course, it was meant in a flattering way, and I took it that way, but in the back of my mind, I thought, God, all the pleasure that this kid has denied himself.

CONAN: Yeah, but he's got all those great books in front of him.

Mr. O'BRIEN: That's the thing. It opens a door. Some of these kids is the wrong word. It sounds, you know, sort of derogatory. These human beings who are young, a door's been closed to them through their own doing or that of their parents or their schools. Who knows why? And if a book can open that gateway or that doorway and encourage someone to find the pleasures of reading, then what a great thing to have accomplished in your life.

CONAN: Here's one of those literate people, writing with an email, Shannon(ph) in Lyndhurst, Ohio. I'm a professor and I've been teaching your novel for six years now and consistently fall in love with it every time I read it. What I would like to know is: What is the single most important message you would like your readers to take away from the novel? P.S. my students love to hate Azar. I say that because you are Azar.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. O'BRIEN: Well said. Oh goodness, to take one thing away, it's a little bit like having a piece of cloth, you know, unravel a strand and the cloth dissolves as you look at the strand.

The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.

And in a way, for me, although on the surface, of course, it is a book about war, it's I've never thought of it, really, that way in my heart. Even when I was writing it, it seemed to be a book about storytelling and the burdens we all accumulate through our lives, our moms and dads and backyards, teachers, which I mean, my dad died, I don't know, four years ago, and he is as gone as anybody I knew in Vietnam.

But like the ghosts of Vietnam, all I need do is, you know, close my eyes a moment and there he is throwing me a baseball. And there's something about carrying the image of him, the symbol, the emblem of carrying that, at least in my experience, is pretty important to being human, I mean.

CONAN: We're talking about "The Things They Carried," and we're asking veterans to call us today to tell us about the things they carried and the things they continue to carry, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And we'll begin with Jeff(ph), Jeff calling us from Des Moines.

JEFF (Caller): Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my call.

CONAN: Sure.

JEFF: I was just telling your screener, I'm an Iraq War veteran. I was there in 2005, 2006, and there's never really thought about it, but there's three things I carry with me every day. I still wear my dog tags every day. I'm retired now. And I've got a P-38 can opener from...

CONAN: Those things work better than most everything.

Mr. O'BRIEN: They do.

JEFF: And when I was in Iraq, my driver made wristbands out of 550 cord for everybody in the section, and I wear that every day.

CONAN: What's 550 cord?

JEFF: 550 cord is a nylon cord that if you've ever been in the infantry, it's got a million-and-one uses, probably some I haven't learned yet, but pretty much every infantry that I was ever in...

CONAN: The ones you don't know about are probably the ones in the manual.

JEFF: Yeah, probably, probably. But I wear a suit and tie every day, and a lot of people comment that that's a little jarring to see a piece of green nylon braided into a wristband on my wrist, but I wear it every day, so - just to remember that time, so...

CONAN: And what do you take away, Jeff?

JEFF: You know, I think it's because I was in the military for so long, I hope nobody takes offense at this, but that's a completely different world than the civilian world. And it reminds me of all of my experiences in the past and a lot of good memories. So, I don't know. It's habit now, but...

CONAN: Well, Jeff, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it.

JEFF: You bet, thank you. Bye.

CONAN: Bye-bye. You don't still have your P-38, do you, Tim?

Mr. O'BRIEN: I wish I did. You're right, that thing worked, and most of the can openers I use these days, you know, break in three minutes.

CONAN: Yeah, they do. Terry's(ph) on the line, Terry with us from Gainesville.

TERRY (Caller): Hi.

CONAN: Go ahead, Terry.

TERRY: I've still got my P-38.

CONAN: Oh well, maybe you can make those for the civilian market.

TERRY: Actually, you can get them still through Ranger Joe's at Fort Benning.

CONAN: All right.

TERRY: But I also carry shrapnel in my leg, a bitterness.

CONAN: Where'd you collect the shrapnel, Terry?

TERRY: My last I spent my first nine months as a rifleman and a squad leader west of Chu Lai in 198th Light Infantry. And the last three months, I managed to get a job as the door gunner on an observation ship and I got hit carrying a marine artillery observer out of Da Nang.

You know, I'd like to say that one of the things that I still carry is the wonder that people voted to keep us there. I came back and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and I found that you couldn't tell anybody what you had witnessed. Without having some experience, it just, they either didn't want to hear it or they couldn't relate to it.

But the people that sent us there and kept us there, I count Johnson and Nixon and Kissinger and the rest of them, they knew that we weren't there to do anything but have a geopolitical influence on the Russians. Unfortunately, I didn't do a research project on why we were in Vietnam until after I got back, and the reasons were not what they told us.

CONAN: It's interesting...

TERRY: I got nobody to blame but myself, but I felt very foolish for having trusted the government with my life.

CONAN: Terry, it's interesting what you say about stories. A lot of Tim O'Brien's book is about war stories and how, if you if they sound believable, they're almost certainly not.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Yeah, thats - I mean, I identify with virtually everything that our caller just talked about. I, too, was in the 198th Light Infantry Brigade near Chu Lai.

TERRY: All right. Way to go 198th.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Yes. Our AO was area of operations was near where the My Lai Massacre occurred, Quang Ngai Province. And my memories are much like yours, and I think I carry with me the same thing you're carrying.

CONAN: Terry, thanks very much for the call, appreciate it. It's 20 years since "The Things They Carried" hit the store shelves. We'll talk more with author Tim O'Brien in just a moment. We also want to hear from veterans today. What did you carry? What do you still carry? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. Im Neal Conan in Washington.

More than two million copies of "The Things They Carried" have sold since 1990. It's been read and passed around by countless veterans from Vietnam to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tim O'Brien's book has also been optioned for a film, but so far it's not made it to the big screen.

Now to mark the 20th anniversary, a new hardcover edition is out. To read a selection about the acidic boredom of war, you can go to our Web site at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Tim O'Brien is with us here in Studio 3A. We want to hear from veterans today. What did you carry? What do you still carry? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our Web site. Thats at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

And let's go next to Rich, and Rich is with us from Sunman in Indiana.

RICH (Caller): Yes, sir. I actually carry two things personally. I do have a P-38, and I also have what Air Force crew chiefs called a church key, which was your normal, everyday, metal can opener.

I was a crew chief on 141s and KC-135s during the very end of the Vietnam War, stationed with the 619th Mass at Hickam Air Force Base, and during the first Gulf War I was stationed with the 512th aircraft generational squadron out at Dover Air Force Base.

But the things that I don't personally carry, but I used to carry every day, were the coffins coming back from Vietnam, the nuclear warheads coming back out of I guess I can say it today, Subic Bay, because we used to catch them at Barbers Point Naval Air Station outside of Hickam Air Force Base. And the nights that I spent at Dover during the first Gulf War with 145,000 to 150,000 pounds of JP4 on a C-5 and 30 to 40,000 pounds of small arms and rocket ammunitions or motors, and you would see the lightning and then all of a sudden...

CONAN: Oh boy. JP4 is jet fuel, by the way.

RICH: You can't refuel anymore, you know?

CONAN: Oh boy. It's hard to believe, isn't it, Rich? I was just talking with Tim O'Brien, just before we started on the show, that it was 20 years after his tour that he wrote this book. It's 20 years since then, but it's almost 20 years since the first Gulf War.

RICH: The first Gulf War. It's almost hard to believe. I mean, I went in as a kid. I entered the Air Force in 1973, my senior year of high school, and then I went back, joined the Reserves and was in the Reserves for about 18 months, got called up, I believe it was in September of 1989 to go active duty during the first Gulf War.

And I was still a staff sergeant because I had been out for that long, and I was the old man, and it was hard to believe that the things that we put on the shoulders of the young people in the military, because I had been out long enough to say I'd worked now for Proctor & Gamble for a while, you know, and things were important, but they weren't like it was when, you know, you go out there and you're sitting on that bird, and there's lightning and stuff around you.

You, you back then you didn't think about it, but then that was when I was 17, 18, 19, 20. Now you get up to 35, and you say, man, you know, I could be gone in a split second. I mean, we did lose a bird at Dover, got hit with lightning, and it tore the wing off between Number 2 and Number 3 engine, you know?

CONAN: Wow. That is the reminder that is consistent in your book, not just the what you then considered an old man looking back you're a much older man now but the incredible youth of, well, you and the others in Alpha Company.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Yeah, at the time it seemed I was among people who were fairly mature. I mean, looking back on it, these were 19, 20, 21-year-olds. People who at the time looked ancient to me turned out to be 27 or 28.

It's I think it's an important reminder for all of us that those who do our killing and our dying, they're not kids exactly, but they're not they're certainly not mature adults who have been schooled by life and what life can deliver to us. And that is a lesson probably worth tucking away.

CONAN: Email from Charles in Portland, Oregon: I wasn't old enough to serve during the Vietnam War. My step-brother was. I made a knife sheath for him out of leather that held his fixed-blade knife, and it had another compartment for a pair of needle-nose pliers that he found useful for a variety of purposes. I could imagine how that could be useful.

Let's see if we can go next to this is Daniel, Daniel with us from Greenville in Tennessee.

DANIEL (Caller): Yes, sir. I was in First Battalion, Second Marines in Somalia. At the time I was a 19-year-old kid and I picked up there and I've carried since an empathy for other people's suffering. And now I currently work in the mental health field, and I want to thank Mr. O'Brien because when I was in college his book was one of the books that we studied.

CONAN: That was after your tour in Somalia, I understand.

DANIEL: Yes, sir, and it was kind of cathartic for me, actually.

Mr. O'BRIEN: I'm delighted to hear that. I was talking with Neal before the show started and saying that books can sometimes have impacts on human lives that go way beyond what an author intends as the book is being written. And you can help people in ways you would never expect. I'm delighted to hear it. Maybe it helped you a little.

DANIEL: Thank you very much, sir.

CONAN: And Daniel, the things you still carry - I wonder, every day you hear about another ship being taken by pirates off the coast of Somalia or about the gun battles erupting between the government that holds three square blocks of downtown Mogadishu and the warlords. What do you think?

DANIEL: Actually, you know, at the time I was too young to truly understand, but I think we as a nation and as a military service did a major disservice to the Somali people. We left them in a vacuum that, you know, we were there to kind of take that vacuum away, but we left it almost in a worse condition than it was.

CONAN: Daniel, thanks very much, appreciate it.

DANIEL: Yes, sir.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Let's go next this is Chris(ph), Chris calling us from Fort Myers, Florida.

CHRIS (Caller): Yes, hi. Hi, Mr. O'Brien. It's an extreme pleasure to speak with you today. I actually was first introduced to the "The Things They Carried" in Dewitt Henry's(ph) class at Emerson, and I always have three copies of your book: one that I keep completely clean, one that I use for notes as an English teacher, and one that I kind of use for notes as a writer and a learner.

And I think you're crucial to me having been a now-published author myself, if only for the reason that I wear my Red Sox hat with all my book covers because Mr. O'Brien does it, so I can do it too.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: We like you anyway, Chris.

CHRIS: Of all the amazing things you've given me, probably the most crucial to my development as a person is you gave an arena for my father and I to talk, and I think I'm 35, and I think a lot of my generation, Vietnam is a lost topic for us because our fathers don't want to talk about what happened to them. The memories are too close and too horrific.

And through "The Things They Carried," my dad and I were actually able to have conversations about his time in Vietnam, which ultimately led to me and he's very sick right now, actually, but it led to us being able to have conversations about each other. And so it really became this place where him and I could go to, when we couldn't talk about anything. We'd talk about your work and use that as a vehicle to discuss war and what he had experienced but also who he was as a person.

Mr. O'BRIEN: That's a great thing to hear. You know, the rewards of being a writer can include, you know, awards and money and that sort of thing, but a story like yours is the one that makes me remember being 24 years old and setting out on a career to be a writer.

I hear from disparate sources stories sort of like yours. I had a letter from a young woman, a 26-year-old woman in Minneapolis, a story kind of like yours. My dad was quiet and there was trouble in the family, and my mom was trying to explain to me why she had never been able to fall in love with my father, who had been in Vietnam, at least not wholly in love.

And in AP English class she encountered the book, gave it to her dad. He began talking. The mother began talking. They went to counseling, and they're still together. They're not perfect, but they're happy. And a thing like that makes me want to cry because that is nudging up against my intent in writing that book, not to heal that family in particular but to have a book transcend bombs and bullets and in some way or another worm its way into the human spirit or heart. So thanks.

CHRIS: Well, thank you very much.

CONAN: Chris, thanks very much for the phone call, appreciate it.

CHRIS: Thank you.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Let's see if we can go next to this is Brian, Brian calling us from Birmingham, Alabama.

BRIAN (Caller): Hey, how are you guys doing this afternoon?

CONAN: Not too bad.

BRIAN: Hey. I just want to thank you for your book, because, yeah, I went through a couple combat situations, and I didn't know I was one of the, like these kids that are coming back now and the kids that came back from Vietnam. I was one of those kids, and I didn't know how to talk it out. I didn't know how to get help (unintelligible) I was in my world all by myself, in this pretty much world of hell, you know, my brain.

And I read your book. I read "Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul," little things like that. Yeah, I went in with an open mind, but, yeah, I kind of figure, okay, this is just another pile of garbage to just throw onto the stack, you know, and the self-help books. But it actually - it opened my eyes to make me realize that there are other guys out there like me. And it made me wonder, well, you know, (unintelligible) counseling, you know? I signed up for VA medical benefits, stuff like that. And it really helped me.

And I just really want to say thank you, because, I mean, it's funny because my wife, you know, she's a couple of years younger than me, but, you know, I'm from the Northeast, she's from Alabama, but she never had anything to do with the military.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Mm-hmm.

BRIAN: And she has a father that was early 80s, you know, no combat or anything, so she really didn't know how to ask me questions. And it's been, you know - because of your book and other books like that, you know, and the counseling, it's actually made me be able to explain to her the stuff that I went through and, you know, be able just to talk about it instead of just keeping it in and let it become like a little bomb.

CONAN: Yeah. Brian, those of us on the radio side here, thank you for your judicious use of the word garbage.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BRIAN: Oh, yes, no problem. I have some family that worked for the NPR in Boston area so I understand.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: Trained.

BRIAN: (Unintelligible)

CONAN: Thanks very much, Brian.

BRIAN: And I also have a P-38 also.

CONAN: Really?

BRIAN: And I actually use it today as a screwdriver.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BRIAN: But I just wanted to say (unintelligible) one. Thanks again, guys.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Here's an email that we have, and this from Matt in Palmyra, Virginia. Tim, I've read your books in reverse order. Just finished your memoir, "If I Die in a Combat Zone." The thing I carry in - is a father-in-law who was a captain and reminds me of the hard-edged, anti-hippie, hard-drinking captain who took you out that night to set mines. He doesn't talk about the experience at all. How do I approach the subject or should I leave his memories to himself?

Mr. O'BRIEN: Probably a little of both. I think in the end that there are all kinds of reasons for silence. It can go anywhere from trauma to simple politeness.

War is a party pooper of a topic. You don't go to a cocktail party and say, hey, you want to hear about Nam or Iraq. Out of politeness one stays silent sometimes, at least in my own case, because I have no idea where to start, where to end, what to choose to talk about. It's overwhelming, and therefore you go quiet out of a kind of nervous - the daunting task ahead of where do you begin and where do you end.

So to encourage through books or movies is a starting place. And if a person wants to talk, that person will talk. I certainly don't think that enforced conversation is going to help anyone. But to open the door to conversation through art, not a terrible idea.

CONAN: We're talking with Tim O'Brien. His book, "The Things They Carried," came out 20 years ago. I think it was 20 years ago yesterday.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Yes, it was.

CONAN: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

It's interesting you're talking about art. Do you watch movies about war? Do you watch?

Mr. O'BRIEN: When they're good or if I'm told they're good I will. I saw a great film called "The Messenger." Have you seen this movie yet?

CONAN: Yeah.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Man, I thought it was - not in a war, but knocking on doors. And I really was touched by it. And I thought it was beautifully acted and had me in tears. Others bore me.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: Did you see "The Hurt Locker?"

Mr. O'BRIEN: I haven't seen it yet. No. Is it good?

CONAN: Yeah. It's good. It's interesting. I wonder also, the TV series, "The Pacific." Have you been watching that?

Mr. O'BRIEN: No. I've been on the road. So I think - didn't it just come out?

CONAN: Yeah, it just started a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. O'BRIEN: No, I haven't seen it.

CONAN: It's interesting. You should give it - it's challenging in a sense - I've studied that particular battle there in Guadalcanal at the moment. And I've been there, and it helps to have been there and seen these sights.

Mr. O'BRIEN: I'll bet.

CONAN: But on the other hand, it so accurately transmits the absolute sense of confusion and chaos. I'm amazed they took such risks with the lack of, you know, coherent narrative.

Mr. O'BRIEN: That's good. I'm glad to hear they're doing it that way. I mean that's my recollection of war, is chaos and which - where am I and why am I here and where are they? Utter lost feeling, almost like being trapped in a bad dream.

CONAN: Let's see if we can get another caller in on this conversation. Let's go to Ed. Ed's with us from Traverse City in Michigan.

ED (Caller): Good afternoon, gentlemen. Sorry, I did not read your book. I will - it'll be the first thing on my agenda.

CONAN: Eight million and one.

ED: Well, I had served many years ago in many different fashions. But the thing I would like to most share about the war today is how sterilized it is on television and how people can see it and go, wow, that looks bad and then turn away and then turn on another channel, and not really look in the eye of the other soldier who is fighting and dying just for what they believe in as well. And I have - unfortunately have had that...

CONAN: And where was that, Ed?

ED: In Panama, in '89, for Just Cause. And I was also activated in support of Somalia, which was another interesting (unintelligible) it's an interesting deal to watch a 10-year-old kid holding an AK-47 that was darn near as tall as he is. It was just unreal. But going back to the Panama thing, you know, taking someone's life, looking in their eye up close and personal, knowing that it's just someone else, they might have kids, they might be somebody's brother, somebody's son, father. That's what war is all about. And I think Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are geniuses and I think that they have captured what it's really about. I mean, I know nothing about World War II, but I - I don't know, I give it to World War II veterans that I was even able to serve.

CONAN: Ed, I hope you tell that kid we hear in the background, you tell that kid your stories.

ED: That's my youngest. And he's keeping me running. But I try not to tell it because I still haven't - because when I got out of Panama, PSTD(ph) was nonexistent. My way of dealing with that was selling off every gun I owned in my house because I got tired of waking up in the middle of the night and shooting howler monkeys and snakes and spiders and PDF, Panamanian Defense Force guys...

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

ED: I got holes in my walls. So that's how I dealt with that.

CONAN: Ed, thank you very much for the call. Appreciate it. And Tim O'Brien, thank you so much for sharing your time today.

Mr. O'BRIEN: Great pleasure. Thanks for having me.

CONAN: Twenty years after "The Things They Carried."

Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In war, there are no winners. That's what readers take away from Tim O'Brien's book about the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, in the 20 years since its publication. O'Brien shares what he carries from his time in Vietnam.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing".

# data[].attributes.subject
"Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing".

# data[].attributes.body
-Forrest Gump

# data[].attributes.headline
Fortunate Son, by the Creedence Clearwater Revival

# data[].attributes.subject
Fortunate Son, by the Creedence Clearwater Revival

# data[].attributes.body
A song about the Vietnam War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son (Official Lyric Video)

# data[].attributes.body
“A true war story is never moral..."

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth....”

"A true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight" (85)

The author is very vague as he tells stories about what is true and what is a sensationalized version of the original stories. The whole idea of storytellings is an outlet for Obrein to reflect and cope with his PTSD and experience of war. He never directly says what is true because he knows the majority of readers will never understand what its like to be at war.

# data[].attributes.body
Fortunate Son
By Creedence Clearwater Revival

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As one of the most famous protest songs of the Vietnam War era, “Fortunate Son” revives this timeless message with the snarl and swagger of the 1960s righteous rock and roll. As

# data[].attributes.body
Tim O'brien used this old poem to create the "The Man I Killed" chapter, a pivotal section in the book.

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because —
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I —
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."

# data[].attributes.body
"Your never more alive then when your almost dead" (81)

"I did not want people to think badly of me" (5)

“I was a coward. I went to the war”(41)

The biggest fear among the soldiers is the "fear or blushing." The soldiers were courageous, not because they were brave, but because  they didn't want to look like a coward.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. In Vietnam men were constantly telling one another stories about the war. Our unit lost a lot of guys around My Lai, but the stories they told stay around after them. I would be mad not to tell the stories I know."-Tim O'Brien

Award-winning author Tim O'Brien is best known for his fictional portrayals of the Vietnam conflict. He was born in 1946 in Austin, Minn., and spent most of his youth in the small town of Worthington, Minn. He graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 1968. From February 1969 to March 1970 he served as infantryman with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, after which he pursued graduate studies in government at Harvard University. He worked as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post from 1973 to 1974.

Tim O'Brien is the author of Going After Cacciato, which received the National Book Award in fiction, and The Things They Carried, which received France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was also a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In the Lake of the Woods, a work of fiction published in 1994, received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named best novel of the year by Time magazine.

O'Brien's other books are If I Die in a Combat Zone, Northern Lights, The Nuclear Age, Tomcat in Love and July, July. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary and popular magazines, including The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, The Atlantic, Playboy and Ploughshares, and in several editions of The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 1987, O'Brien received the National Magazine Award for his short story, "The Things They Carried," and in 1999 the same story was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike. The Things They Carried, published in 1990, is a collection of interrelated stories about the men of Alpha Company, an infantry platoon in Vietnam. The title page of The Things They Carried says the book is "A Work of Fiction." It is narrated by a character named Tim O'Brien, who the author says is not himself despite many similarities. The blurring of fact and fiction in storytelling is one of the most intriguing aspects of his writing.

The book explores the process of storytelling and why "story truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." In an interview with Publishers Weekly, O'Brien said that "If there is a theme to the whole book it has to do with the fact that stories can save our lives." In "How to Tell a True War Story," O'Brien wrote, "A true war story is never moral. 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. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."

"My life is storytelling," O'Brien said in an interview in 1990. "I believe in stories, in their incredible power to keep people alive, to keep the living alive, and the dead. And if I have started now to play with the stories, inside the stories themselves, well, that's what people do all the time. Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. In Vietnam men were constantly telling one another stories about the war. Our unit lost a lot of guys around My Lai, but the stories they told stay around after them. I would be mad not to tell the stories I know."

O'Brien is the recipient of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been elected to both the Society of American Historians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. O'Brien currently holds the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Chair in Creative Writing at Southwest Texas State University. His most recent novel is July, July, published in 2002 by Houghton Mifflin.

Sources

Coffey, Michael. "Tim O'Brien." Publisher's Weekly 237, 1990.

Current Biography Yearbook 1995. H.W. Wilson Co., 1995.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. In Vietnam men were constantly telling one another stories about the war. Our unit lost a lot of guys around My Lai, but the stories they told stay around after them.

# data[].attributes.body
The Things They Carried
By Tim O'Brien

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The New Canon celebrates outstanding works of fiction published since 1985. This installment focuses on The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

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Background: https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-history