Through the use of his the objects he describes he also shows the symbolic meaning of everything they had to carry. They had fear and memories two of the heaviest burdens a human can carry, they had memories of friends lost in this world and one left behind in the old world. "Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot" this shows the weight of fear in Lavender, the need to take a just so he could stay straight on missions. It also shows how men could just die that easy all the time and that alone is a mental burden almost to heavy to bear. In the conversation between Sanders and Dobbins they talk about the moral of finding the VC solider. The moral turns out to be that there is no moral, showing that they knew that they shouldn't have been there in the first place. They were fighting an enemy much bigger than the Viet Cong they were fighting their own minds, their own fears, their own burdens. "They carried the land itself--- Vietnam, the place, the soil--- a powdery orange-red dust- This quote shows exactly how heavy a burden the war was. It wasn't a battle it was a march, an endless march from one village to the next doing what they had to. Patting old men and children down. To hump something was to carry it but it implied beyond the literal meaning. It implied so much more than just carrying something, it meant a burden you could hump a tent or you could hump your memories, your love; it meant hardship and that's all they felt.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried the heaviest burden out of anyone, the burden of love. Cross-knew that Martha didn't feel the same way about him though, but he still dreamed of it. "He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire." Nothing can be harder than loving someone that doesn't feel the same way about you, this must have made it even harder getting letters that were "mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love.