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The men rely on each other for entertainment to break up the endless days of marching though the Vietnam wilderness. With hours and hours of marching and no action the men need a release or the boredom would drive them crazy. An example of this is "Kiowa teaching a rain dance to Rat Kiley and Dave Jensen, the three of them leaping around barefoot while a bunch of villagers looked on with a mixture of fascination and giggly horror" (O'Brien, 36). They play checkers and tell stories. These men looked to each other for emotional support and reassurance since none was coming from the home front. .
One of the most important things that helped the soldiers through the war was their friendship with each other. This bond that the soldiers formed helped them to survive, and helped the men of Alpha Company to cope with the war after they returned to the United States. "The bond that men form with each other in the heat of battle is incomprehensible to those who have not experienced warfare for themselves.You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood - you give it together, you take it together." (O'Brien, 192) This bond of friendship helps the men of Alpha Company survive on a day to day basis. The men have the same experiences, fears and hopes. They rely on each other for support to face the new day. The men show this support as they talk about home, their sweethearts and their dead friends. The men come together to joke about death, making light of a situation that surrounds them at all times. .
The men of Alpha Company trusted each other with their lives. Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk are a good example of this trust, "In late August they made a pact that if one of them should ever get totally fucked up - a wheelchair wound - the other guy would automatically find a way to end it" (O'Brien, 65). This pact allowed the two men a measure of peace, confident in the knowledge that if it came down to living their entire life in a wheel chair, the other would end it there in Vietnam.