The Pains of War

Throughout How to Tell a True War Story, the author struggles with one event and its meaning. The death of Curt Lemon continues to haunt the author in his dreams (a symptom of PTSD) and in its effect on him and others. O’Brien describes Lemon’s death as beautiful in the way that the sunlight wrapped around him and highlighted his features but gruesome in the pieces of him left behind once the bomb went off. This beautiful beginning and tragic ending is the way many young men felt about war. War was the opportunity to grab honor and make the ultimate sacrifice to protect your country and family. It would be the tragic death of thousands of men and the guerilla tactic warfare that would drive soldiers to despair war and battle. 

O’Brien explains the effect of Lemon’s death on his best friend Rat or Bob Kiley. The beautiful letter explaining his lost to Lemon’s sister and the rage at Lemon’s death expressed in the torture of a baby buffalo. As a reader I balked at the description of the treatment of the buffalo and surprised at the numbness of the Rat and the soldiers around him. I believe that is what O’Brien wanted; he believes that citizens who have not seen battle cannot understand a true war story. Lemon’s sister did not respond because not being a soldier, she could not understand the pain Rat faced. The detail is included to make the reader understand just how much they will never encounter the situations O”Brien faced. O’Brien says war stories are about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. It about the solitude of being in war and the solitude that continues after the war is over.