Physical and emotional burden is shown throughout the book. The soldiers would carry more than a heavy physical item, they would hold emotional feelings like terror, composed of grief, love, and longing. For an example “He liked putting his nose into the nylon and breathing in the scent of his girlfriend’s body; he liked the memories this inspired; he sometimes slept with the stockings up against his face, the way an infant sleeps with a flannel blanket, secure and peaceful.” (Stockings/pg 111). Henry Dobbins would carry his girlfriend’s pantyhose having the thought of being comforted and secure. The soldiers who would survive the war would carry psychological burdens that would affect them as life goes on for them. They would carry grief,guilt, etc. “Turning on his headlights, driving…show more content… “So after a couple days the guys start hearing this real soft, kind of wacked-out music. Weird echoes and stuff. Like a radio or something, but it’s not a radio, it’s this strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks… And every night they keep hearing that crazyass gook concert.” (How to Tell a True War Story/pg 69-70). Sanders later on tells everyone that he added some stuff so he could get his point across. The next theme that is also shown throughout the book is loneliness and isolation. “So after a couple days the guys start hearing this real soft, kind of wacked-out music. Weird echoes and stuff. Like a radio or something, but it’s not a radio, it’s this strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks… And every night they keep hearing that crazyass gook concert.” (How to Tell a True War Story/pg 69-70). This quote also shows Mitchell Sanders’s story concerning soldiers made so paranoid by their experience on listening patrol that they hear strange noises emphasizes how the imagination can take over instantly in the lonely
