Hyperbole-- just a side wound (Ch. 20)

As I read this chapter, "just a side wound" stuck out at me because of how okay it seemed. It reminded me of Monty Python's In Search of the Holy Grail when the knight says "It's only a flesh wound" in his ridiculous British accent as his legs and arms are being chopped off. I guess it was free association on my part. There is a point to this though and the phrase is a hyperbole because the author has been shot but it is just a side wound. I think it shows that in Vietnam, the soldiers had to be okay, the wounds were just this or just that because they needed to survive. Soldiers and friends were being cut down in the jungls everyday and were dying. I think that the author is saying that the wounded felt that they owed it to their fallen comrades to just have "small"wounds. I mean, who else is going to fight the war if they do not? I also think that the author felt guilty for being injured because he left his friends and brothers in a fire fight while he got flown to a hospital. They had to be okay because they would die if they were not.