If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

The platoon spends a day in a village, attended to by a kindly old blind man. He draws water from the well for them, saying, in his ingratiating way, "Good water for good GIs" (99). They lounge in his hut, eating and drinking cold beer and food from the resupply helicopters. The old man bathes the soldiers in an outdoor shower, soaping them up like a servant. Village children look on. "The day was as hot and peaceful as a day can be," O'Brien observes (100).

The old man is in the midst of showering a soldier when another solider heaves a carton of milk at the old man's head. The carton breaks, cutting the old man; he drips milk and blood. The man stands there, momentarily stunned, "with the ruins of goodness spread over him" (100). Then he resumes his kindly ministrations. He drops the bucket in the well again and "[comes] up with water, and [begins] showering the next soldier" (100).

In April, O'Brien gets a letter from Erik, his friend from basic training. Erik works as a transportation clerk in Long Binh. In his letter he gravely, judiciously analyzes a poem of O'Brien's, titled “Dharma.