The list of items that the men carried is pretty vast, and makes up much of the content of the first chapter. O'Brien divides the things into various categories: what all of the soldiers carried (i.e. "one large compress bandage" and "a green plastic poncho"), what some of the individuals chose to carry (Kiowa carried "an illustrated New Testament," for example), and what they carried as "a function of rank" or "field specialty," such as medic Rat Kiley's "satchel filled with morphine." He writes that other things were determined by the mission; in the mountains, for example, they carried "mosquito netting, machetes, canvas tarps, and bug juice."
The individually chosen items probably have the most significance. Lt. Jimmy Cross carries a picture of his girlfriend and a pebble from a beach that she sent him, illustrating his obsession with her virginity and faithfulness. Before he was killed, Ted Lavender carried several ounces of "premium dope," indicating his fear, as well as his desire to escape the war. Norman Bowker carried a diary, ostensibly to document his exploits, in hopes of satisfying his father's expectations that are later discussed in the chapter "Speaking of Courage."
More telling, however, are the intangible things that O'Brien mentions. On page 21, he writes, "[t]hey carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die." He goes on to say that they carry their "reputation," "grief, terror, love, [and] longing," and their "shameful memories." A close examination of this chapter will probably allow you to link the physical items the men carried to these "intangibles" on a character-by-character basis, but the larger point that O'Brien makes is that the physical weight of their supplies, as great as it is, was still far less than the emotional and psychological weight that each soldier was saddled with. As made evident in "The Man I Killed," the burden of guilt was greater than anything O'Brien had to "hump" across the landscape of Vietnam.
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