by Kasey Sailer

Created on: November 08, 2010   Last Updated: November 09, 2010

In How to Tell a True War Story, the effects of the U.S. Draft on the Vietnam War are evident throughout the story.  Over 3.5 million men and women served in Vietnam and at least 63% of them were drafted.  Drafted soldiers make up a completely different military than our usual volunteer military.  Many believe that the draft actually takes away from what is the world's strongest military by introducing non-volunteers with the volunteers.

Two of the main recurrent characters throughout the story are Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley.  They don’t resemble your average soldier but instead resemble two kids who are always looking for a good time.  When their platoon went on a march through the mountains they would treat it more as a nature hike instead of a mission.  They also wouldn’t treat their surroundings as serious as others did.  They would constantly play games and goof around.  One stupid game that they made up involved them throwing smoke grenades back and forth.  If you chickened out and didn’t catch it you lost.  The worst that would happen is you would get covered in smoke.  The smoke grenades are usually safe, at least if you don’t do stupid things with them.  They don’t take what is meant to be a weapon of war seriously and instead treat them as toys.

Curt Lemon doesn’t pay attention to his surroundings as much as he should.  One simple mistake of not paying attention ends with him stepping on a land mine.  This not only affects him but also his fellow soldiers since they have to pick up all his bloody remains.  After his death his buddy Rat writes a letter describing all of his feelings and mails it to Curt’s sister.  She doesn’t even bother to write back, probably because she is pissed off that he got drafted and had to die for what appeared to be no reason in her opinion.

The effects of Curt not paying attention, his death, and his sister’s choice not to respond to the letter results in Rat Kiley shooting, torturing, and killing a baby water buffalo.  When he does this no one else in his platoon even bats an eyelash.  It is like after all of the suffering they have endured throughout what they view as a pointless war will never end and no matter what they do it won’t make a difference. 

The entire underlying tone of the story centers on the idea that all of these men were placed in horrible circumstances in which they never should have been placed.  In seeing the narrator of this piece of meta-fiction waking to nightmares of what happens in the story twenty years after they happened is evidence of this.  Many of the men that were drafted to serve in the Vietnam War have these exact feelings.

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