The Little Wars

The chapter Ghost Soldiers adds to the harsh description of Vietnam. The narrator of the chapter is currently at base as a result of being shot. He tells the reader of the first time he got shot, Rat Kiley, the medic, had done an amazing job of treating the wound, allowing the narrator to return to fighting. The second time, however, the medic was a newbie named Bobby Jorgenson, who was so afraid to move that he almost let the narrator die of shock. Even after he got to the narrator, he did such a poor job of addressing the wound that it became gangrenous, and that's why the narrator is at base and not in combat.

The narrator is frustrated by his time on base. He mentions that although it does have its perks, he wishes he could be back in the fire, taking down "spooks" again. His frustrations come to a boiling point, however, when his old team returns to base for a little rest. The team appears tightly knit, with bonds like family, except this time, the medic is with them, and not the narrator. The narrator becomes upset because he should be with the team, but the medic, who is the reason that the narrator is out, is there instead. The last straw occurs when the narrator approaches Mitchell Sanders to ask him if he will help to scare Jorgenson a little. Sanders is disgusted by the narrator's intentions, and when the narrator mentions feeling that he is no longer part of the family, Sander's tell him that he guess he isn't.

What O'Brien is saying is that the war is always with soldiers, whether or not the enemy is the same one the whole time. The narrator, like many of the soldiers, is probably young. What this means is that he probably didn't have much of a life of his own outside the war. So when he is cut off from his family, he suddenly feels the need to exact revenge from the person who cut the bonds. The narrator mentions that prior to being a soldier, he never felt the need to take revenge. But the war had done something to him. It had changed something inside him. Even though he had left combat, the war was still with him. And now his enemy was an American soldier. This idea that the war never stops is an important one in The Things They Carried.