Henry Dobbins

 Henry Dobbins is the platoon’s machine gunner and resident gentle giant. Dobbins’s profound decency, despite his simplicity, contrasts with his bearish frame. He is a perfect example of the incongruities in Vietnam.

Henry Dobbins is a large, strong, dependable, unsophisticated machine gunner. He carries extra rations and wears his girlfriend's pantyhose tied around his neck. Henry Dobbins was represented as a brave soldier. He was a big man. Physical items he carried were bigger guns/ammo peaches, girlfriends, and pantyhose. His main intangible items were a necessity, excessive, but the sense of home, security, good luck charm and security gender gap.

Henry Dobbins, appointed for the physical force as a machine gunner, carried M-60, twenty-three pounds, plus, as a rule, tapes. Dobbins almost always wore from ten to fifteen pounds of spare ribbons, tied on his belt and over his shoulders. Appointed to the special-purpose teams, he remained infantrymen and was armed with M-16 semi-automatic assault rifles. The rifle itself weighed seven and a half pounds, and with a full magazine of twenty cartridges - eight and two-tenths of a pound. Depending on the mood, the terrain, and other things, he took from twelve to twenty spare shops in cloth bandoleers. This added eight and four tenths to fourteen pounds.

He blurs the lines between fact and fiction, then examines how and why he does just that. He challenges readers to ponder larger philosophical questions about truth and memory and brings the reader closer to the emotional core of the men's experiences.