50 Fun Facts About The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried, what does big machine gunner Henry Dobbins wear around his neck as a protective charm?

His girlfriend's pantyhose stay around his neck even after she dumps him, because, as he puts it, the magic doesn't go away.

By the end of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", what is the necklace worn by Mark Fossie's girlfriend made of?

Human tongues hang from the necklace of a girl who had flown in wearing a pink sweater and culottes. Rat Kiley swears every word of the tale is true.

In The Things They Carried, what good-luck charm does Martha mail to Lt. Jimmy Cross, who keeps it in his mouth?

A pebble she found on the Jersey shoreline, where things felt "separate-but-together", becomes the charm he daydreams over instead of watching his men.

In "On the Rainy River", which country does Tim O'Brien nearly flee to after his draft notice arrives in the mail?

Canada lay just twenty yards from the fishing boat when O'Brien broke down crying and stayed in his seat, too embarrassed to swim for it.

In "How to Tell a True War Story", which animal does grieving medic Rat Kiley shoot piece by piece?

A baby water buffalo takes the bullets as Kiley, crying, shoots it bit by bit after Curt Lemon dies. O'Brien insists the episode is really a love story.

In The Things They Carried, which frightened soldier carrying tranquilizers is shot dead outside Than Khe?

Ted Lavender falls on his way back from relieving himself, and Jimmy Cross, who had been daydreaming about Martha, blames himself for years.

In "The Man I Killed", what shape is the hole Tim O'Brien keeps describing where the dead man's eye was?

A star is the shape he fixes on, repeating that one eye was a star-shaped hole while he invents a whole gentle life for the stranger.

In "Speaking of Courage", what does veteran Norman Bowker circle again and again in his father's Chevy?

The town lake is a seven-mile loop he keeps driving because nobody is left to hear his war story. At dusk he parks and wades in.

In "The Dentist", how does swaggering soldier Curt Lemon react when he first steps into the Army dentist's tent?

He faints before the dentist even touches him, a humiliation for a soldier who loved playing the fearless tough guy in combat.

In The Things They Carried, which young soldier blows up an adopted puppy, then protests "I'm just a boy"?

Azar straps the puppy to a mine and sets it off, then wonders why everyone is upset. O'Brien notes the platoon's average age was about nineteen or twenty.

In "Friends", what do Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk agree in writing to do if either suffers a wheelchair wound?

They vow to kill the other, yet when a mortar round takes Strunk's leg he begs Jensen not to. Jensen seems relieved when Strunk dies on the way out.

In The Things They Carried, what does Lt. Jimmy Cross burn in his foxhole the morning after a soldier is shot?

Letters and photos from Martha go into the flames, though the burning strikes him as a futile gesture and he still feels responsible.

In "On the Rainy River", where does Tim O'Brien spend his draft summer removing blood clots from dead pigs?

A meatpacking plant in his hometown of Worthington, Minnesota, left him smelling of pig all summer. He couldn't get a date, and the draft notice sat in his wallet.

What does Tim O'Brien call himself in the last lines of "On the Rainy River", after choosing to go to war?

A coward is his verdict on himself: he went to the war, he says, only because he was too embarrassed to do what he believed was right.

In "The Lives of the Dead", what illness kills Linda, the nine-year-old classmate young Timmy O'Brien loves?

A brain tumor takes her at nine, and the grown narrator says he still brings her back in dreams and stories, where the two of them go ice skating.

In "Ambush", which weapon does Tim O'Brien use to kill a young man walking a foggy trail outside My Khe?

A hand grenade is in the air before he has thought it through, and he fights an urge to shout a warning. He believes the man would simply have walked past.

In "Speaking of Courage", on which holiday does Norman Bowker drive around his hometown with no one to talk to?

Fourth of July fireworks end his day, and he decides the show is pretty good. Earlier he fumbles a burger order at the A&W, baffled by its new intercom.

In "Night Life", how does worn-down medic Rat Kiley get himself flown out of the war to Japan?

He shoots his own foot after weeks of night marches leave him picturing his friends as corpses, and Jimmy Cross reports it as an accident.

In The Things They Carried, what do villagers use the muddy field where Kiowa dies under mortar fire for?

A latrine for the whole village, the field floods when the Song Tra Bong overflows, and Kiowa sinks into the muck. Locals had warned the platoon not to camp there.

In "Field Trip", which ten-year-old relative travels with Tim O'Brien back to the field where Kiowa died?

His daughter Kathleen finds the place smelly and dull, and cannot see why he is unable to forget something that happened twenty years earlier.

In The Things They Carried, which US Army unit do Lt. Jimmy Cross and his platoon belong to?

Alpha Company is where O'Brien places his invented men, and he dedicates the book to them by name, one way he gives made-up stories the form of a war memoir.

In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", which elite soldiers does Mark Fossie's girlfriend join on night ambushes?

Green Berets, six of them, kept their own hut at the edge of the medics' compound. She returns from one three-week mission with them a changed person.

How does "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" end for Mark Fossie's girlfriend, as Rat Kiley hears it?

She walks into the mountains and never comes back. No body is found, and the soldiers who knew her believe she is still out there in the dark.

In "Style", what is a girl doing outside her burned house while the platoon carries out her dead family?

Dancing is her answer to the wreckage, hands pressed over her ears. When a soldier later mocks her moves, Henry Dobbins dangles him over a well.

In "Spin", which orderly board game do Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins play every evening as the platoon watches?

Checkers was restful to watch, O'Brien says, because it had two clear armies and fixed rules, everything the war around them lacked.

In The Things They Carried, which sport is Martha playing in a photograph that Lt. Jimmy Cross carries?

Volleyball is the action shot he keeps close in the war. Years later Martha hands him a fresh copy of the same picture at a college reunion.

In The Things They Carried, which book does Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carry on the march and use as a pillow?

A New Testament rides in his pack, and the night a comrade dies he lies with it under his head, enjoying the smell of the glue and paper and the feeling of being alive.

In The Things They Carried, what keepsake does Norman Bowker carry, a gift from Mitchell Sanders?

A human thumb, cut from a dead teenage soldier, comes with a lesson: Sanders announces there is a moral to it, then admits there is none.

In "Spin", what does Mitchell Sanders seal in a USO envelope and mail to his draft board back home?

His body lice, picked off one by one as he sat under a tree, went to the Ohio office that had sent him to the war.

In The Things They Carried, which slang verb do Jimmy Cross's foot soldiers use for marching with their loads?

Humping meant marching under a load, and O'Brien stretches the idea: his men also carry what he calls the emotional baggage of men who might die.

In "On the Rainy River", which 81-year-old resort owner shelters Tim O'Brien for six days, asking no questions?

Elroy Berdahl is the man O'Brien calls the hero of his life: he steers the boat to within yards of the far shore, then quietly fishes while the young man decides.

In "On the Rainy River", what is the name of the run-down fishing resort where Tim O'Brien hides near the border?

Tip Top Lodge was empty when he arrived because tourist season had ended, so for six days it was just him and its elderly owner.

In "On the Rainy River", which board game do Tim O'Brien and the old resort owner play over six quiet days?

Scrabble filled the evenings, along with hikes and chores, and the old man never once asked why a college graduate had turned up alone at the border.

In "On the Rainy River", which university has given Tim O'Brien a full-ride scholarship when he is drafted?

Harvard had given him a full ride, which is partly why he believed he was too good for the war. He took up graduate study there once his tour ended.

In "Speaking of Courage", which medal does Norman Bowker imagine telling his father he almost won?

The Silver Star slipped away, in his telling, the night he let go of Kiowa in the flooded field. He still came home with seven other medals.

In "Field Trip", what belonging of Kiowa's does Tim O'Brien wade out and sink into the river mud?

His moccasins go down at the spot where Kiowa's rucksack was found, while an old farmer watches from across the field and then goes back to digging.

In "The Ghost Soldiers", which rookie medic is slow to treat Tim O'Brien for shock and becomes his target?

Bobby Jorgenson freezes when O'Brien is hit and later apologises, then coolly shoots the fake ghost that has been set up to terrify him on night watch.

In "The Ghost Soldiers", where on his body is Tim O'Brien shot the second time, a wound he finds humiliating?

The buttocks wound turns gangrenous after the new medic botches it, and the ointment O'Brien must apply three times a day brings endless jokes.

In "The Dentist", what does Curt Lemon wake the Army dentist at night and insist on, to salvage his pride?

A good tooth pulled was his price for peace of mind: the dentist found nothing wrong, but Lemon kept insisting until it came out.

In "How to Tell a True War Story", which relative of his dead friend does Rat Kiley write to, getting no reply?

His sister receives pages about what a great guy her brother was, written almost in tears. Her silence draws a crude insult from Kiley, which O'Brien calls the mark of a true war story.

In "Enemies", how does paranoid Dave Jensen square things with Lee Strunk after injuring him in a fistfight?

He breaks his own nose with a borrowed pistol, then asks if they are even. Strunk agrees, and later laughs that he really had stolen the jackknife they fought over.

In "How to Tell a True War Story", what kills Curt Lemon as he plays catch with Rat Kiley under the trees?

A rigged artillery shell goes off as he steps from shade into light, so to O'Brien it looked as if the sunlight itself had lifted him into a tree.

In "How to Tell a True War Story", what do the six soldiers on Mitchell Sanders's mountain listening post hear?

A cocktail party, with music and chatter, drifts through the night until the men call in an air strike on the empty mountain. Sanders later admits he made parts up.

In "The Man I Killed", which school subject does Tim O'Brien imagine the dead young soldier loved and studied?

Mathematics is the passion O'Brien gives him, along with a wife and a dread of fighting. He decides the man had been a soldier for a single day.

In "Good Form", what does Tim O'Brien call the way events felt, which he says can beat what literally happened?

Story-truth, he argues, is sometimes truer than happening-truth, which is why he can honestly tell his child both that he killed a man and that he never did.

The Things They Carried was a finalist for which major American fiction honor, though it did not win?

The Pulitzer Prize eluded it, yet the book won France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and has sold more than two million copies.

Which Tim O'Brien novel, named by the narrator of The Things They Carried, won the National Book Award?

Going After Cacciato took the award, and O'Brien first tried to fit Norman Bowker's story into that novel before rewriting it as "Speaking of Courage".

Which magazine first printed five stories from The Things They Carried, including the title story?

Esquire ran five of them, among them "The Ghost Soldiers" and "The Lives of the Dead". The title story was also picked for The Best American Short Stories in 1987.

In "Love", what has Martha become by the time Jimmy Cross meets her again at a college reunion?

A Lutheran missionary and trained nurse, she had served in Ethiopia, Guatemala and Mexico, had never married, and did not answer when he said he loved her.

Which actor played Rat Kiley in A Soldier's Sweetheart, the 1998 TV film of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong"?

Kiefer Sutherland played the storytelling medic, with Skeet Ulrich as Mark Fossie, in a film made for the cable network Showtime.