Quotation

"They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. Its what brought them to the war in the first place. Nothing positive, no dreams of glory and honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor" (The Things They Carried.77).

This is a great quote that I found from Tim O'Brian as it partially answers one of my questions about why do people kill? Vietnam is infamous for being a needless war, no one really wanted to go to it and yet people still killed and died for it, so what I learned was that it wasn't just to survive as what I originally thought, but more or less just to not face the embarrassment of letting down your fellow soldiers. This book really has showed that there is more to war then just surviving sometimes, its about bond ship, or as O'Brian says, its a love story 

Slang

EM: Enlisted man.

Trung sisters (d. 42 C.E.) Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, were daughters of a powerful Vietnamese lord who lived at the beginning of the first century. (Chapter: The Man I Killed and Ambush)

Tran Hung Dao Famous general who defeated two Mongol invasions in late thirteenth-century Vietnam.  (Chapter: The Man I Killed and Ambush)

Gook: Racial slur for Vietnamese people 

Tot Dong Field in 1426 where the Vietnamese routed the Chinese. Two years later, the Chinese recognized Vietnam's independence. (Chapter: The Man I Killed and Ambush)

48th Viet Cong Battalion One of the most effective Viet Cong military units.

AO: area of operations

Hump: march or hike carrying a rucksack; to perform any arduous task

M-16: the standard U.S. military rifle used in Vietnam from 1966 on. M-60 the standard lightweight machine gun used by U.S. forces in Vietnam

M-79: a U.S. military hand-held grenade launcher

mama san: slang used by American servicemen for any older Vietnamese woman