In the Field

"The filth seemed to erase identities, transforming the men into identical copies of a single soldier, which was exactly how Jimmy Cross had been trained to treat them, as interchangeable units of command." In the Field was a hard story to read with the vivid imagery created seeing those eighteen men going through the field searching for a corpse. The bonds these men built with each other were almost impossible to understand, they were friends but yet they would make jokes when someone died, like Azar did about the irony of the shit field.

The relationship between the Lt. and his soldiers he was suppose to see them as not humans beings but soldiers, however he refuses to let another soldier go and won't stop searching for Kiowa. Then you have the young unidentifiable boy standing in the muck not searching for Kiowa but looking for the picture he had of his girlfriend when the mortar rounds hit. It made me feel that during war there isn't a right way to feel about death, it's whatever gets you through it. Human nature is all about survival whether its emotional survival or physical survival these soldiers found their own ways to survive. Lt. was imagining being home in Jersey on the golf course, the young boy was thinking about finding his picture instead of Kiowa, Azar was trying to find the irony in it, and Norman Bowker couldn't handle the guilt he felt. After reading this I feel like I understand how relationships in the war work, you have friends but you keep a certain type of distant whether through imagination or humor in order to remain sane when death occurs. 

Who is responsible for Kiowa's death or can we blame one person?
Why didn't Lt. Cross use his better judgement and camp somewhere else?
How do some veterans transition so easily while others struggle?