This vignette is one of the more depressing in the book, one where O'Brien makes it impossible to think about the Vietnam War as a whole. Instead, he forces us to look at the war person by person. The entire event of searching for Kiowa's body is like a break from the political war — something that men do for their friends rather than for their country. The three centers in the story, Lt. Cross, the young, nameless soldier, and the rest of the troop searching for Kiowa's body each have their own perspective. This vignette is a compilation of their perspectives, not a story with facts and details.
Lt. Cross is laden with guilt, not only as a commander but also as someone who feels personally responsible for Kiowa's death. As a matter of protocol, he is responsible because he ordered the camp to be made, but Cross feels his responsibility and remorse more deeply than his duty dictates. Although O'Brien tells us about how Cross does not desire to command, Cross himself focuses on Kiowa's father and the letter that he must now write. To Cross, Kiowa's death personalizes his fears and his responsibility not just to care for his men, but that he must answer for them to others — like fathers, commanders, and even God.
The men searching for Kiowa's body are themselves upset and terrified. As they wade through a river of excrement, searching for a friend and soldier, they feel respect and awe. Azar's jokes about irony and death bother Bowker because of his feelings about the tragic death of his friend and comrade, but also because of a sharpened awareness of his own mortality. When they uncover the body, Azar himself feels these same forces, but he needed the reality of a corpse to drive it home. Until then, he felt more invincible. But Kiowa's death means that his luck ran out, and luck could run out for any of them at any time.
