The Things They Carried

What happened and why do you think rat behaved the way he did?

In "how to tell a true war story" O'Brien retells the horrifying story of rat kiley and the baby water buffalo.

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The day that Curt Lemon died, the company found a baby water buffalo in the woods. Rat Kiley tortured it. He shot it in all the places in its body where a wound would not be fatal. Kiley had just lost his best friend, O’Brien explains, to help justify the story. He tortured the buffalo and cried.