// War Literature

In “How to Tell a True War Story,” Tim O’Brien writes that in war stories, the “only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity.”  Funnily enough, once you’ve read that, it’s hard not to apply it to every other story in the book.  On the surface, “In the Field” is about the abrupt death of O’Brien’s fellow soldier and friend, Kiowa, in a shit field.  But as the soldiers scour the field for Kiowa’s body, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the others ponder the question of fault and blame in their comrade’s death.

The lieutenant considers his own misjudgment when it came to setting up camp and his responsibility for his men (which he never wanted), how when he writes his letter of condolence to Kiowa’s father, he will praise his son and be straightforward, “apologize point blank. Just admit to the blunders.”  Mitchell Sanders blames the lieutenant as well: “Some lieutenant…camps us in a toilet….ten billion places we could’ve set up last night, the man picks a latrine.”  The soldier who was with Kiowa is dealing with his own guilt, “still remembering how he had killed Kiowa.” It was he who turned on a flashlight in the dark, giving away their presence and causing the ensuing attack: “The flashlight had done it. Like a target shining in the dark.”

But when Jimmy Cross mentally revises his letter to Kiowa’s father, he decides not to apologize, because casualties are a part of war: “It was one of those freak things and the war was full of freaks and nothing could ever change it anyway.”  He feels the need to blame someone or something because a man’s life is over, but there is a laundry list of people and things to blame: the war, those responsible for the war, the enemy, God, the munitions makers, all the way down to Karl Marx or “an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote…A moment of carelessness…carried consequences that lasted forever.”

And then comes the declaration from Norman Bowker : “Nobody’s fault. Everybody’s.”  After reading about Jimmy Cross blame himself, blame everyone else, the young soldier and his flashlight, the shit field, Karl Marx, whoever, whatever, you start to realize that Norman Bowker is right.  It’s not really anyone’s fault because so many different things factor into the moment of Kiowa’s death that it would be impossible to pinpoint just one person or thing. Immediate or over time, you realize that fault and blame when it comes to war is ambiguous.  And you know it’s real.