There is truth to the saying that you never know till you have walked a mile in a man’s shoes. To be more specific, I am referring to stories told by soldiers from the Vietnam War. Most of these stories are powerful and have a great impact even on today’s generation. The following story called, “How To Tell A True War Story”, by Tim O’Brien compiles a few war stories from soldiers during the Vietnam War that to some may seem a little too extreme to believe. Since these stories are filled with so much violence, so much emotion, one must wonder: were all the parts of the story true? So what really matters, the validity of each story or the impact it has on the person or persons it is being told to? The narrator states that, “You can tell a war story if…you don’t care for truth.” If you are to tell a war story the narrator thinks that you must be able to carelessly toss the truth aside and tell a story that carries an “allegiance to obscenity and evil” if that’s what it takes to get the point of the story across. What needs to be understood is that it doesn't matter if little details here or there are being changed to tell a story consciously or unconsciously, as long as the desired affect is reached. The people who the story is being told to usually weren’t involved in the war so these stories are there for these people who were lucky enough to not experience war’s horrors. These stories make it so they are able to if not fully then at least partially understand what these brave people went through.
The following story revolves around a soldier currently involved in the Vietnam War and the emphases isn’t on the war at hand but rather with the stories told by fellow soldiers, fabricated or not. It starts out with the narrator retelling the story of how his friend and fellow soldier was killed. When he finishes the story he reflects on the extremes of the story such as his friend stepping on a booby trap and being blown apart. As he examines the different parts of the story he admits how ridiculous it sounds that his friend could be spread across the trees with his own body but then he realizes that’s what war stories are all about.
After he tells them he focuses on the fact that the validity of the story could be questioned. When the narrator first tells the stories that he has either experienced or heard from a second source he tells them as if they are all 100 percent true. The way he described his friend’s death was the sun came down and threw him into the trees. He described it as, “His face was suddenly brown and shining…the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree.” Now any reasonable person would think that the thought of the sun coming down and ripping a person apart sounds ridiculous. But He was there and all he is doing is recounting what he saw. He knows it sounds ridiculous and yes he knows that it didn’t actually happen that way but the way he described it added a certain amount of emotion that was able to emphasize the great light that was caused by the explosion.