Lee Strunk

Lee Strunk is another soldier in the platoon and a minor character. A struggle with Dave Jensen over a jackknife results in Strunk’s broken nose. In begging Jensen to forget their pact—that if either man is gravely injured, the other will kill him swiftly—after he is injured, he illustrates how the fantasy of war differs from its reality.

Lee Strunk takes his sling, saying that ammunition will always replenish on the spot. Lee Strunk steals the folding knife of Dave Jensen, and they fall into a fistfight over him. Jensen eventually overpowers Strunk and beats his fist in the face breaking Strunk's nose. Three men should pull them apart, and Strunk must be thrown over the air for medical help. When he returns, Jensen is paranoid that Strunk will shoot at him, so he breaks his own nose with a gun.

Lee Strunk, another member of the company, dies from injuries he sustains by stepping on a land-mind. The author remembers that before Strunk was fatally hurt, Strunk and Dave Jensen had made a pact that if either man were irreparably harmed, the other man would see that he was quickly killed. However, when Strunk is actually hurt, he begs Jensen to spare him, and Jensen complies. Instead of being upset by the news of his friend’s swift death en route to treatment, Jensen is relieved.

Lee Strunk crawled out of the tunnel. He came up grinning, filthy but alive. Lieutenant Cross nodded and closed his eyes while the others clapped Strunk on the back and made jokes about rising from the dead.

Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections as well.