Status Updates From The Things They Carried

You hate it yes, but your eyes don’t

Wasn’t fair to the baby water buffalo

And he called it a baby

A true war story is never moral. It
does not instruct, nor encourage
virtue, nor suggest models of proper
human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted or feel some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie

They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.