What did they carry?

The soldiers carried many things, that of memory's of home and of loved one's and that they may not be home to see them. They carried that of burden and of sacrifice that they must be hero's for their country and for themselves. They carried Love, lust, hate and remorse of their time in Vietnam, the love of the feelings the lust for blood, reward and accomplishment the hat of themselves for a fallen comrade and the remorse of the measures taken to protect their land and home. Most of all they carried themselves, they were forced to carry all of these things and many more inside and outside of themselves, and it seems to me the one's that would carry it all on their sleeves would be the ones that would get through this all and not the ones who pretend that they love the kills and the death and the terrorism that it is to be at war in a foreign land.
Ted Lavender was a scared individual, he needed drugs to keep him calm. I cannot say he is the only person that has ever suffered from this affliction, as a man at war he knew that scruples were that of which you could not carry with you for a weak man is a man who gets killed, as he did. He was one of the lucky ones as far as i am concerned, to not have to experience all of the turmoil and grief which is caused through the war and get to experience the loving embrace of death and get to experience the ethereal dream that will undoubtedly happen to all of us one day. Ted Lavender is that of a man that was not scared of the war but scared of himself, he did not want to have to live with himself and death was the greatest thing he could have bestowed upon himself.
THE NOVEL, THE MOVIE AND THE RESEARCH ALL GO TOGETHER BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL BASICALLY ABOUT THE SAME THING.

The things i've carried

9/11 2001 i wake up in my house and everyone is silenced and as i wonder why i head upstairs and there is my Father, Brother and room mate Hank all sitting there in stunned silence as the a plane hit tower 2. When i went to school that day i had no idea that an incident of such magnitude had happened, and even though they tried to explain it to us my second grade mind all i cared about was getting to recess and playing Pokemon. Now that i look back on this incident and if it happened today there are a few things that roll through my mind, that it was a horrible incident and if it truley had nothing to do with any of the recent conspiricy theorys then it was a horrible horrible thing. My views upon it are entirly different (as if this is any surprise) i believe that it was a tool used to build fear among the citizens of thi contry and those in the middle east and to build the term coined "Post 9/11 patriotism" as a way to get the American citizens to along with this war and the search for WOMD, but really it was just a way to infiltrate, get oil and set up a democracy instead of letting them figuring it out for themselves but i digress, we shoulld not be in Iraq but to pull out now would show weakness, i mean pulling out over time is the definate plan of action we should take just like they did in vietnam and the vietnam war was also the same story as iraq, just fake an attack to build suppport and go in for oil. "Fight wars for virtue. your virtue is greed, Say it's for god but your god is naive".