Richie questions his religious faith and his moral values. This is considered by some as one of the most important works to come out of the war. It is the story of one soldier's journey from safe, middle class America to the center of the horror of the Vietnam War. O'Brien emphasizes the fear and the moral dilemmas. They Carried An unusual and powerful novel in which war stories are told by various characters and narrators who sometimes retell in different ways stories already told.
Narrators dispute the accuracy of what they themselves are saying.
Occasionally a narrator will come to the end of a harrowing tale and then insist that the protagonist did not do the terrible or heroic things he has just recited, but he himself did them. Filled with romantic notions about being a combat nurse, she requested an assignment to an intensive care unit in Saigon, where casualties were brought by helicopter just minutes from the battlefield. This is Winnie's powerful, poignant story of a woman's struggle to survive the bloodbath she confronted on the ward, and the trauma that filled her life afterward. Webb explores the reasons each man became a Marine, as the reader follows him through combat. The novel also examines the difficulties veterans faced when they returned home.