Metaphor-- The rain was the war (Ch. 17)

I think one of the hardest things about the Vietnam War was the terrain upon which the U.S. soldiers were fighting. The dense jungles, continuous rain, mountains, and heat wore them down enough for guerrilla war tactics to be used by the North Vietnamese. Kiowa, one of the soldiers form the Alpha Company, had been literally killed by the rain as he was swept under in a river. The soldiers fought with the rain as it added to the mud caked on them as the trudged along and the never-ending rain did nothing for the morale of the company. Almost as much as the war itself, the rain poured down on the soldiers and beat them down. They had to fight the rain because it was the war. Therefore, if you didn't fight it, well then there was no use fighting the actual men who had machine guns and grenades. O'Brien quotes a thought from Lieutenant Cross, "The filth [rain and mud] seemed to erase identities, transforming the men into identical copies of a single soldier..." The rain made the men not themselves, and they had to fight an element that did not care whether they had lives or families, just like the Vietnamese did not care.