Kiowa

The death of Kiowa in the chapter In the Field, was incredibly depressing to me. Kiowa was the character who did not deserve to die; he was kind, religious, a good friend and soldier, and caring. Furthermore, he did not deserve "to be lost under the slime of a shit field." In my mind, he deserved to die with honor and dignity. However, I suppose O'Brien is making a point. The war did not choose it's victims; it did not care if a soldier was a good person. War only cares about winners and losers. In this particular circumstance, Kiowa happened to be on the losing side. Kiowa had the great misfortune of being a casualty of a series of stupid mistakes made by the other members of his platoon. As a result, his fellow soldiers felt awful for Kiowa and this is clear in the way O'Brien wrote about his friend. "'We can't just leave him there,' and the men nodded and got out their entrenching tools and began digging. It was hard, sloppy work. The mud seemed to flow back faster than they could dig, but Kiowa was their friend and they kept at it anyway." It is important to understand that these men truly loved Kiowa; he was a friend to each of them when he needed them. They all felt the responsibility of his death being place squarely on their shoulders. The men knew they could blame the war, or the climate, or the enemy, or God, but the real blame must be accepted by those soldiers who had "a moment of carelessness or bad judgement." I believe this connects to real life too; we must accept responsibility for our actions. We cannot place the blame on others when we know it is our fault. We must take the blame, and move on with our lives, trying not to commit the same mistake.