This story questions not only what we as readers think about the Vietnam War but also what those fighting in it believed. In this vignette, "O'Brien" gets wounded twice and is taken away from the fighting to serve in a battalion supply company, a transfer that he discovers tears him away from what he knew as Vietnam. The story revolves around the character of Bobby Jorgenson, but Jorgenson serves as a tool for O'Brien to illustrate important lessons of war and friendship.
Like many of O'Brien's stories, the most important pieces of this vignette are set at night. It is roaming around at night that "O'Brien" feels the sharpest pangs of hatred and yearnings for revenge against Jorgenson, it is at night that he hangs out with his old company and discovers how things have changed, and it is at night that he enacts his revenge against Jorgenson. This vignette and the following one, "Night Life," both deal with how the night affects people. To O'Brien, the world is different at night: The stifling darkness is maddening and intoxicating, able to confuse and enliven a soldier. It is at night that Vietnam comes alive — not the country as much as the experience of being a soldier. In this story, "O'Brien" must act at night in order to be like a soldier again against Jorgenson.
