Soldiers lugging onward in the heat or freezing air with a hundred pounds of gear through tough terrain in gunfire or silence they must keep moving forward to accomplish what they were sent out to do. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien it is made evident that the men and women who go to war face many struggles and make many sacrifices. Brave military personnel have to overcome personal issues, physical hurdles, and mental barriers while under the pressures of fighting a war. Everyone has personal issues something that is going on in their lives that ponder their minds and can be a distraction to our daily lives. That goes for those in the military as well; personal issues don’t just vanish in the face of war, although that may be …show more content…
nly one who carried with him something of personal interest they all had something that reminded them of home, loved ones, friends, or who they were before the war; “Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an …show more content…
Soldiers have to face the fact that they leave their loved ones behind and contact is limited and sometimes its appropriate to think about them, but sometimes it’s a distraction. In the case of Lieutenant Cross he felt responsible for one of his fellow soldier’s death because he wasn’t thinking about his men, though rather a girl that he longed for; “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and that was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 377). Cross would not only have to overcome his mental distraction of Martha, but also the blaming upon himself for Lavender’s death. These men have to watch their fellow soldiers die in front of them and carry away their bodies and then overcome sadness as a feeling in order to move forward. War can be mentally draining and it changes a person who has witnessed it and in the face of a battle that have to overcome these mental challenges to complete the order at