"The Things They Carried" -Sydney Derrow 1

On page 14 & 15, Tim O'Brien talked about how they had no sense of mission. They had no idea what they were doing more than half the time. O'Brien said, " By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march. They plotted along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone,  simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down to the paddies in across the rivers  and up again and down, just humping, one stop and then the next and then another, but no violation, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, it kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission.  They search the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, forming up and moving onto the next village, then other villages, where he would always be the same." Why did they have no idea what they were doing? Were they trained for war? In my opinion, I believe they weren't trained. I believe half of them didn't even want to be there. O'Brien and his men he wandered aimlessly, lived day by day, and going village to village, for what? Did they even know what they were looking for? - Sydney Derrow