This inability to tell the complete story, shit and all, is linked to the conflict between memory and nostalgia in the chapter. O'Brien deliberately chooses to set the story on the Fourth of July, which creates a counterpoint between cliché conceptions of patriotism and heroism and the reality of what war demands from those who participate in it. As Norman continues to play out the scenario in his mind about telling the story of the shit field, it becomes clear to him that he cannot tell the crux of the story, his attempt to save Kiowa from drowning: "He could not describe what happened next, not ever, but he would've tried anyway." This inability recalls "O'Brien's" admission in "On the Rainy River," also a story about courage, that he had never told that story before. Their shared inability is related to a sense of shame and embarrassment that both men carry, O'Brien for going to war and Norman for choosing to live, releasing Kiowa's boot and thinking, "Not here…Not like this."
After his eleventh revolution around the lake, Norman thinks about telling his father that "the truth is that I let [Kiowa] go." His father's response, one dismissive of the death but praising of Norman's other seven medals, indicates that he has missed the entire truth of the story, which is his son's desperate sense of guilt. Norman cannot even get that far in telling his story; he cannot tell the story because survivors and witnesses tell the stories that become history. Through his symbolic wading into the lake and putting his head under and tasting the water, readers understand that Bowker sort of died in Vietnam and cannot recover because he cannot find meaning in his life after the war.
