![]() ![]() ![]() Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. ![]() Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds-and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April.īy necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. They were signed “Love, Martha,” but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. She often quoted lines of poetry she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. ![]() She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. You can find every Esquire story ever published at Esquire Classic.įirst Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. This passage originally appeared in the August 1986 issue of the magazine. A collection of linked short stories told from the ground in Vietnam, Esquire would publish five of the vignettes. “We know that some discussions need more than 280 characters, and bringing people closer to the ideas, content, and creators they know and love is core to Twitter no matter where the conversations take place,” Twitter said in a blog post announcing the test feature.This is the first chapter of what would become Tim O’Brien's award-winning book The Things They Carried. also listen to podcasts monthly, has not disclosed when it will roll out the podcast integration to all users. The company, which said 45 percent of its users in the U.S. Users can also submit “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” reactions to podcasts to further customize their recommendations.Īs of the test launch, Twitter appears to be following a Pandora-esque model for podcasts rather than trying to compete with Spotify and Apple Podcasts. To bring the podcast episodes onto the platform, a Twitter spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter that the company is pulling from existing RSS feeds and will tailor the recommendations based on the topics a user follows and the general interests tied to their accounts. Mark Zuckerberg's Sneak Attack: Twitter Rival Threads Launches Earlier Than Expected ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |