Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Easy War

O'Brian writes,

For a medic, though, it was ideal duty, and Rat counted himself lucky. There was plenty of cold beer, three hot meals a day, a tin roof over his head.  No humping at all. No officers, either. You could let your hair grow, he said, and you didn't have to polish your boots or snap off salutes or put up with the usual rear-echelon nonsense. The highest ranking NCO was an E-6 named Eddie Diamond, whose pleasures ran from dope to Darvon, and except for a rare field inspection there was no such thing as military discipline (87).

O'Brien reveals that war is hard for everyone except certain types of soldiers.  He shows that some soldiers, like the medics, have the war life easy compared to the rest of the soldiers.  O'Brien gets his idea across in the passage by using examples of why the medics had such ideal duty, like the cold beer and not having any military discipline.

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