Assignment One                                                                                  Kaedyn Drake

This man was thrown into the war with hardly any experience at all. During a road sweep one morning, George Watkins was walking along with his platoon and some others as well. As they walked along everything seemed fine, until George stepped on a pressure detonated landmine. The mine had been passed over by around forty people, but as George walked over the mine it went off, which caused him to lose both of his legs and eyes. Moments before this, he had told one of the other soldiers in his group to move away from him because he was too close. The soldier did so, and moments after that the pressure-mine was detonated. The soldier that had just moved lost his left ear and eye, and some movement, but other than that was just fine.

George had no idea that he was going to lose both of his legs and eyes that day. Many men passed over that mine without it detonating, but George just happened to be the one that set it off. There is a positive side to this story though. George lived through the explosion, and he also saved another soldiers life by telling him to not walk so close. If he wouldn’t have told that soldier to move, he probably would’ve died. This story is very credible because the man has proof of the incident. He lost both of his legs and both of his eyes to that mine, which is definitely proof enough.

Part Two

The story of Ngo Vinh Long was rather disappointing. The events of the story were pretty bland and unexciting. He spent much of his time with his father learning English and studying for school. The story didn’t really get into anything serious, other than him roaming around and mapping out the country of Vietnam.

The story wasn’t all bad though. After Ngo got a little older he came to the United States to study at Harvard. While he was here he spent time trying to let people know that the war in Vietnam wasn’t going to end up the way they thought. This is a positive side to the story, because it shows that Ngo really wanted to show people that the war was going to be a very negative experience and that there were other ways of dealing with the situation.