Exploration 4: Christian Koch

 A theme that was present throughout the entire book was reminiscence. Reminiscing is a method the soldiers use as a short escape from the war life. This was especially present as Tim reminisces on his childhood with Linda and through his travel to Vietnam with his daughters. Tim goes back to thoughts of his childhood as a way to cope with the awful job of dragging the dead bodies to the loading truck. The trip to Vietnam was a surprise for his daughter's birthday but I feel it was a way for Tim to finally bring closure to Kiowa's death. They reach the shit field after hours of driving and Tim head's to the water to give Kiowa a final goodbye. As he sends Kiowa's moccasins down the river and reminisces on the war with his best friend, he is at a loss for words. With a rough, chalky voice he finally managed, "Well, there it is."(pg. 178) Although, that was all Tim could muster up, it seemed to release things he was unaware he had hidden within himself. Within my own life, I too use this as a way to cope with the death of loved ones and a way to appreciate all the experiences and knowledge I have been fortunate enough to receive from them.


Something I was curious about after reading TTTC and our class discussions was the number of American POW's there were from the Vietnam war. We had talked about the number of people that had died in action as well as the number of veterans that have committed suicide since their return, but there has not been a mention of the POW's nor the MIA's. I found that the original number of unaccounted for Americans was 2,646 soldiers throughout Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China. Since the war, 1,049 men have been accounted for by recovering and identifying remains, returning alive, or recovering the remains of several individuals as a group whose remains are not separately identifiable. When compared to other wars such as WWII and the Korean war, both 14%, the number of POW/MIA compared to casualties was much smaller for the Vietnam war, around 3%.
         (http://www.miafacts.org/how_many_missing.htm)

The sculpture's 3 soldiers represent the diversity of the US military in the Vietnam War by including a Caucasian, African American, and Latino American whose service branch is intentionally ambiguous. Together, they face the Wall of the fallen.