Insanely good! O’Briens terrifying first hand accounts are beautifully written and feel more real than any pictures or statistics of the war could. Without trying to deduct any preconceived meaning out of the events he simply tells the stories of the common soldier on the ground. Just read it.

What an amazing book. This being the second of Tim O’Brien’s books I have read I have found both to be insightful, dramatic, as well as disturbingly peaceful. This author takes you into his mind, body, and spirit in a way few writers can. Describing the horrors of war, in a war that he never wanted to participate in. I can only imagine his feelings are mirrored by so many who participated in this brutal conflict. This cathartic experience, of putting pen to paper, to try to explain and address his time as well as others in a war that even to this day we are trying to understand is a truly harrowing undertaking. I feel privileged for having been able to read this and receive a small glimpse of what so many others have experienced.

Great book

'Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not.
He can tell war stories.'

Some good sketches of combat in Vietnam, but the author spends way too much time trying to convince you he's above it all -- the poetry references, the anti-war posturing, the easy sneers at boot camp and military discipline. The NEW YORKER loved this book, and the inside cover blurb describes the author as "intelligent and thoroughly nice." 'Nuff said?

Do you ever find yourself wondering about war, the military training, and what the battlefields look like? In the book If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home by Tim O’Brien it lays out the training at fort Lewis, the battlefields and what it's like to go to My Lai in the Vietnam war.
Throughout the book Tim O’Brien writes about his hometown where he grew up. In Chapter Two, Pro Patria on page thirteen within O'Brien's hometown some of the town's folks were talking; and one said: “Nothing to do with causes or reasons; the war was right, they muttered, and it had to be fought.” This is important because O’Brian finds himself wondering about the war later in life when he gets a draft letter in the summer of 1968. Throughout that summer his family didn't talk about the war; O’Brien spent that summer like most of his others drinking beer or coffee and playing pool.
When O’Briens is at Fort Lewis in Washington in the beginning he doesn't plan to make any friends; although he ends up making friends with Erik. One day in late September while Erik and O’Brien were polishing their shoes, and cleaning their guns; the drill sergeant, Sargent Blyton, finds them sitting in the barracks. He calls them “A couple of college pussies” (page 47). Later that night sergeant puts them on night duty and they feel the most “Free” they ever felt in the weeks that they've been there. This being most likely because there was not a sergeant yelling at them and because they can talk about whatever they want.
In Addition, O’Brien gets assigned to be a footsoldier, and Erik signs up for one more year of infantry training. While O’Brien is a footsoldier he lays out what it's like to be in the battlefields of My Lai. Also in the book it says, “ On the perimeter of the village, the company began returning fire, blindly, spraying the hedges with M-16 and M-70 and M-60 fire. No targets, nothing to aim at and kill. Aimlessly, just shooting to shoot. It had been going like this for weeks - snipers, quick little attacks, blind counterfire.” (page 7). This is one of the examples of how O’Brien paints a picture of how the war is. There are many brutal parts in the war, and many positive sides as O’Brien explains about in If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.
In the end of the book, it is really sexist. This is because O’Brien writes about girls like they are toys. In the book a character named Mad Mark says “Bullshit, who's gonna eat a goddamn dink? I eat women, not dead dinks.” (page 84) This shows that Mad Mark is comparing women to dead vietnamese people. By doing so, comparing women to dead soldiers dehumanizes women. Women are more than just toys and objects to compare to vulgar things. Another quote from the book that shows it is sexist is “If I die in a combat zone, Box me up and ship me home. An’ if I die on the Russian front, Bury me with a Russian cu*t” (Page 43-44) This shows it is sexist because it call a woman a cu*t and they don’t care about women. This is so, because there is no point in calling women who sleep with one man names.
In the end I really like the book altho there are downfalls to the book. For example, like the sexist parts. And the way that O’Brien paints the war is nice. He doesn't sugar coat anything. He shows the dark of the war and how everyone was treated.

Really like this O’Brien guy if you can’t tell

Author Tim O'Brien's memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home tells about his experiences during the Vietnam War. As one of the first autobiographies of the Vietnam War, several critics have regarded this novel as one of the best pieces of literature that came out of the Vietnam War. His service in Vietnam lasted a year, from 1969 to 1970. Throughout the novel, he emphasizes his opposition to the Vietnam War, considering it pointless and not worth the thousands of lives lost. That being said, he also emphasizes how brave the soldiers unwilling sent to war, even while confronting their misgivings.
The novel generally follows in chronological order, although at the beginning of the novel there are a few inconsistencies. During the first chapter of the book, O'Brien and another soldier hold still as bullets shoot over their heads as they lie motionless. Time and location are not named in the first chapter which is somewhat confusing. Although they are clearly in Vietnam, O'Brien says, "Tell them St. Vith," naming a Belgian town that played a crucial role in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. This chapter was written to put readers in the shoes of a soldier and shows that even though war changes, the emotions soldiers feel don't.
After the first chapter, the book follows something close to chronological order. The book examines how O'Brien wound up in Vietnam by going back to the beginning, his childhood in Worthington, Minnesota. He explains that his family and community were very patriotic, but oddly enough he had decided that he was against the war. He then receives his draft notice, which prompted him to flee to Canada to dodge the draft. He decides not to flee because he didn’t want to feel ashamed and he didn’t want to tarnish his family's reputation by dodging the draft. He was assigned to the Alpha Company of the Landing Zone Crocodile. During his time in Vietnam.
As the book comes to an end, If I Die in a Combat Zone discusses both the moral and legal issues surrounding the war. Alpha Company was protecting a village when it accidentally got bombed, O'Brien was airlifted out of the village and offered a job as a typist at the rear. Major Callicles, who O’Brien is under order, is an officer under investigation due to the My Lai Massacre. As the investigation gains more public attention it causes him to second-guess himself yet again..
When O'Brien leaves Vietnam and boards a plane back home, he arrives in Minnesota. As the soldiers boarded the plane, O’Brien could feel the feeling of depression seeping out of the other soldiers. The moral complexity of the war had taken such a heavy toll on them and had each of them weighing their own scales pondering their fate. In contrast to other war stories, If I Die in a Combat Zone does not end on a triumphant note. Rather, he sees himself as a pawn on a chess board, being served up to a war he doesn't believe the U.S. can win.

All of O'Brien's Vietnam War novels are hands down the best fiction written on the Vietnam War. He is the Hemingway of Vietnam War fiction, and I'm not saying that lightly or flippantly.

This was the first of O'Brien's three great Vietnam novels and the other two are actually better than this one. His writing is so good because he conveys all of the emotions and messiness associated with war without glorifying or vilifying anyone in particular.

The point of his works seems to be catharsis or record of the feelings and experiences associated with the war for people to consider before engaging in conflicts - which is something that has been taken too lightly over the last decade and a half.

O'Brien weaves his conflicted thoughts on the ethics of the war, possibility and responsibility associated with dodging the draft or fighting in a war he doesn't believe in, pressures of duty and obligations to please others, fear, boredom, bravery, and death. In this work, these all come together into a pseudo journal layered over snapshots of events and experiences during his time there which give a general impression of what his time was like.

This, The Things They Carried, and Going After Cacciato should be widely read and thought about in depth before making the decision to engage in armed conflict with others, because soldiers and - to a different extent - their families bear the sacrifices and struggles associated.

EXTRA LIBRIS:

Q. why have you continued to write about Vietnam over your entire career?

A. America gave me Vietnam. I want to give it back.


watching the excellent vietnam war PBS series made me gravitate towards this frank and sensitive memoir. it’s a worthwhile read, in fact, i will read more of his.

Loved it. Short, powerful, honest, and conveyed with an economy of language to make his own favorite writers proud, O’Brien nails the memoir format, illuminates the experience of war, and captures multiple aspects of the quagmire that was Vietnam.

In many ways it reads like The Things They Carried, divided up into 19 pretty short chapters of 10 pages or less, each focusing on one scene, one part of his life, one idea that permeates the war experience. I’ve always thought that “war stories” are hard to nail because one person’s war story may not be like another’s – but this O’Brien’s format here works very well as he pulls together a wide variety of experiences and scenes and people to portray an overarching picture of war. He gives us a short, 4-page chapter about his hometown, a 10-page chapter about boot camp, a 3-page chapter about a scene with an old man at a well in Vietnam, a couple 10-page chapters about different patrols and sweepings of villages, and a couple of unabashed chapters confronting the notions of courage, cowardice, opposition to the war, and even detailing his 90% completed plan to avoid the war and live in Europe instead. His honesty in confronting each of these tough subjects is formidable and laudable, especially in this age of expectations and pressure. And he certainly doesn’t shy away from conveying his own fear, his own inability to act, his own separateness from the rest of the soldiers.

What I found most interesting was the sections that really showed the daily life of a grunt, and especially the sections that portrayed the soldiers (and officers) dinking around, dealing with the monotony by creating a stir and throwing grenades at nothing in the night, and even going to lengths by avoiding certain missions – even faking raids by calling in phony reports throughout the night. I was surprised by how often supply choppers brought beer into the field and everyone would sit around drinking, how often they would head back to some LZ to lounge around with the amenities of home. Granted, he doesn’t make it sound like a Spring Break trip, but I’m just saying, it jumped out at me – I don’t remember any scenes like this in any other book about WWII, Vietnam, Iraq where soldiers are smoking pot, drinking beer, swimming in the ocean without worry. I guess I’ve just read so much lately about the wars in the Middle East that this seemed… shocking? Surprising? Most of all, I felt like I could really empathize with O’Brien’s perspective – out of college, against the war, feeling the cultural pressures around him, frozen and observing: I can’t even imagine if we had the draft nowadays and I was forced to go at 22.

Great read. Short, easy to follow, well-organized, and captures the full range of a soldier’s emotions and experiences.

Absolutely HATED this book. The writing was long and dull. The story (actually it is a memoir) is just another anti Vietnam rant. I will NOT be reading any of his other works and DO NOT recommend that anyone read his stuff. It is awful!