The Things They Carried

The narrator recalls the two times he was shot. The first time, Rat Kiley tied on a compress and repeatedly checked in on him. He didn’t feel much pain. When he returned to the company 26 days later, “Rat Kiley had been wounded and shipped off to Japan, and a new medic named Bobby Jorgenson had replaced him. Jorgenson was no Rat Kiley” (181). Jorgenson was new, “incompetent and scared” (181). When the narrator is shot the second time, “in the butt, along the Song Tra Bong, it took the son of a bitch almost ten minutes to work up the nerve to crawl over to me” (181). His wound nearly becomes gangrenous, and he spends a month lying on his stomach in recovery. He imagines ways to enact revenge against Jorgenson for his injury.

His wound is a source of embarrassment rather than pride. The narrator is released from the hospital to “Headquarters Company—S-4, the battalion supply section” (182). Compared to being in the field, life is easy at Headquarters. There is rarely mortar fire, and there are many comforts and entertainments. The narrator continues to sleep on his stomach and thinks about Bobby Jorgenson’s mistake: “Bobby Jorgenson had almost killed me.