On page 83 we see some literal relief in the last sentence: “But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing ‘Lemon Tree’ as we threw down the parts.” Even though it's a little rude this shows the reader what these men went through during their service in Vietnam. Before they knew combat they were normal people, the same as you and me, but now they make mean jokes and take death for granted. This one sentence shows the reader that not only was it used as comic relief, but it was also comic relief the day it happened. Trying to deal with the horrible atrocities on a daily basis caused them to become mean in the mind of a person living a normal life. However, to the soldier these rude jokes were the only way they could deal with witnessing such hideous acts.
O’Brien calls Curt Lemon’s death a “love story” instead of a “war story.” He calls it this because instead of focusing on the worst involved with his death he chose to focus on the beauty of the sunlight as it touched his face a second before he stepped on the mine. This may correspond with what O’Brien said earlier in the chapter about the “proximity to death bring[ing] with it the corresponding proximity to life.” That is, it is not until you experience the horror of death that you begin to see things in a different manner, you begin to really see life in a different perspective. They begin to cherish every moment.
These two points were a way for soldiers who witnessed the horrors of war to attempt to keep things off their shoulders. They would try to make the problems seem somewhat funny in an attempt to not focus on the problem itself in all of its horror. They would also look at things as a great love story rather than a horrifying war story.
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