Poem Analysis: Telly Robbins And The Vietnam War

When Questioned, "Why do you not like talking about the war and things that happened back then?" Telly Robbins, a Vietnam veteran answered "I don't want my kids or wife to know of the things I had once did, I don't want them to think of me as a monster. I also do not want to relive things that happened". While he explained his feelings, fear and sadness could be heard mixed in with his voice, this sadness was egregious, even though it was almost ephemeral and could not be noticed to the hoi polloi. A man, who is a human felt as if he had become a monster because of the war, not only the war though, the things that he had done to innocent civilians', and his fellow soldiers. This man is not a monster, he has a name and that is Uncle Telly.
Telly
Telly sounded like he had no choice in what he was doing, and that what he did saddened him deeply. When Telly talked about the topics he was not so sure about he tried to elucidate his feelings with the matters but could not quite find the words.
Telly could not be a ground soldier because of his deafness, and had no training to be a medic, this situation can be compared to taking a fish out of water and telling the fish to climb a tree. Telly said at one time "Well I saw a lot" when he was asked "What was the worse thing you saw?" again, he did not want to talk about the matter further, there was a hiatus over the phone, and Telly repeated "I saw a lot". Sadness was everywhere in his voice, he sounded as if he was thinking about something from the past.
There is a lot of sadness in Tim O'Brien's work The Things They Carried, just how Telly said that he had seen a lot and did not want to talk about some of the experiences. O'Brien waited awhile after he got out of the war to start talking and even writing about the war. Telly talked more outside of the interview then he did answering questions, he told a story about a little boy and how he had to shoot him because, the little boy was not with them. In the The Things
These two statements are hard to believe as the truth, and if those are hard to see as the truth, then knowing that people attacked soldiers, looked upon them as monsters, and saw them as killers, would be mind blowing.
America is supposed to be land of the free but when "The protesters used the signs to attack the soldiers and even threw urine at the veterans", were is the freedom? These men put there lives on the line, they saw their friends being killed, they had to go days wondering if they would be alive in the morning, then they come back and are treated even worse, as if what they
Pritchett