First Lieutenant Cross Analysis

The story is told by an omniscient narrator focusing mainly on the character First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Lieutenant Cross is in charge of a company of men who go on daily marches through Vietnam in search for the enemy, their sympathizers and supplies. He often daydreams of a college girl he is fond of back in New Jersey. Mitchell Sanders is the radio and telephone operator and known for being the ladies’ man. Kiowa is a Native American Baptist who carries an Illustrated New Testament with him. He also carries his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet given to him by his father and his grandmother’s distrust for the white man. Dan Jensen practices field hygiene by having with him a toothbrush, dental floss and bars of soap stolen from a hotel while on R&R. Henry Dobbins is a large man who carried extra rations and was excused from searching tunnels due to the size of his frame. He carries the M60, is especially fond of canned peaches, and wears his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck as god luck. Rat Kiley is the medic, carrying a canvas satchel containing morphine, plasma, malaria pills and various medical supplies and comic books. Norman Bowker is a gentle guy, he keeps a diary with him and carries a thumb from a VC corpse that Mitchell Sanders had cut off and presented to him. Lee Strunk has a …show more content…
Whether it is disease, infection, shrapnel, or a snakebite, surviving was the first priority. The character’s language was used sometimes to ease the pain of a friend’s death. The men would use terms like greased, lit up, offed, or zapped as a coping mechanism to describe a fellow soldier’s death. I felt the story was well written and seems like fact rather than fiction. After detailing all the items carried, the uncertainty of missions and the war itself, I found this statement to be the best “there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to