The Vietnam War, By Tim O Brien

The Vietnam War last from 1964-1975 for America and was it longest war. Throughout those eleven years many stories and letters were written and many more would come long after the wars end. While officially the conflict was considered to be a police action, many consider it be just rough and brutal as any other war fought in modern history. The majority of soldiers who did return home came back to an America far different than the one they left behind and were subject to the hatred of anti-war protestors and many came back changed and haunted by the things they had seen and done in Vietnam. Some, like Tim O’Brien, found solace several years later by writing of their own accounts of what they witnessed while overseas. O'Brien did so in his collection
Luttrell was a member of the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War and wrote this letter twenty two years later: “Dear Sir, For [twenty two] years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only eighteen years old that day we faced one another on that trail in Vietnam. Why you did not take my life I'll never know. You started at me for so long armed with your AK-47 and yet you did not fire. Forgive me for taking your life, I was reacting just the way I was trained, to kill V. C. or gooks, hell you weren't even considered human.
Over the years I have stared at your picture and your daughter, I expect. Each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. I have two daughters myself
He feels the complete responsibility of his position and for the things he must make his men do. Allen talks of how lonely he gets because he feels that he must not get too close to the men under his command. This sense of innate guilt may extend from the knowledge that he may give an order that would require them to kill or he may issue an order that may get one of them killed. The letter also says more about Lieutenant Allen. It says that he has family waiting for him back home and that he misses his wife. Little did he know that four days later he would step on a landmine and be killed (PBS). While letters like this one show a soldiers longing to return home this letter by a young soldier preparing to leave shows the fear many had when preparing to