The novel opens with the narrative of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, a soldier currently on active duty in Vietnam. He travels with his Alpha Company, dreaming of Martha, an English major from New Jersey, despite the fact that he knows that she will never return his love.

O'Brien describes the things the men of the unit carry, from insect repellant, to pocket knives. Each man carries a unique combination of items. Ted Lavender carries a stash of marijuana and tranquilizers to calm him down. Henry Dobbins, the portly machine gunner, carries extra rations and dons with girlfriend’s panty hose for good luck. Kiowa, one of the only religious characters, carries a bible that he received from his father. The men also carry the necessary provisions: tents, tarps, rations, shovels, M-16’s and grenade launchers. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries the maps and the compass, while Rat Kiley, the medic, carries morphine and drugs for some common Vietnamese ailments.

The company is working to destroy tunnel complexes in the Than Khe region when Lavender is shot. Although Lavender is wounded, Lieutenant Cross is distracted by thoughts about Martha’s virginity. The men smoke Lavender’s supply of marijuana while the helicopter arrives. Soon, the men are on their way and pass through the town of Than Khe, where they burn and pillage senselessly. As the men stop for the night, Cross digs a foxhole and cries, sitting in the hole. Kiowa and Norman Baker, meanwhile, discuss the meaning of life on Earth, commenting on the non-dramatic death of Lavender.

The next morning, Lieutenant Cross, burns all of his letters and photographs of Martha. He concludes that he must be ultimately responsible for the men’s health, and cannot be distracted. He plans to take responsibility for Lavender’s death, reminding himself that his role is that of a leader. The author’s cunning use of the tokens that each soldier carries as a reflection of an actual burden, whether it be loss or other somber memories. Cross’s obsession with Martha serves as his own burden, represented in his photographs and poetry-riddled letters. Cross, however, is forced to confront this fantasy with Lavender’s death. The incident of Lavender’s death pushes Cross into a recession as he rejects his light-hearted fantasy. The fantasy, he feels, led to a negligence that rendered Lavender dead.

The young age and inexperience of the soldiers magnifies the weight of their emotional burdens. Not yet set in their individuality, the burdens of war weigh down the most.

Curt Lemon also dies in Vietnam while playing catch with a grenade and the medic Rat Kiley. O’Brien narrates a story about how Curt went to a military dentist and insisted on having a perfectly good tooth pulled. Lee Strunk dies from his wounds from a landmine. Lee Strunk and his good friend Dave Jensen have a pact that is either one of them was seriously hurt, the other would see to it that he was killed. But after the injuries, Strunk begs for mercy and Jensen is relieved.

Kiowa’s death is the most painful death in the story, given that he is one of O’Brien’s most beloved friends. Kiowa’s fateful death is told through the eyes of Norman Bowler, twenty years after the war.  Although Kiowa’s was killed by a fatal mortar round, Bowler blames himself for not being able to save him. O’Brien writes that he learned to deal with this guilt in another way, avoiding Bowler’s deep recession.

Many of O’Brien’s stories are told from a forty-three-year -old writer’s perspective, twenty years after the fateful events. Connecting with his fellow veterans, O’Brien chronicles the man he killed on a trail outside of My Khe. He imagines what the man’s life would have been like if he had not thrown a grenade at the man’s feet.  In the following chapter, “Ambush,” O’Brien wonders how he will tell his daughter, again confronting the guilt and pain of the memory.

The novel closes with the chapter, “The Lives of the Dead,” remarking how stories can have the power to save people. He also states the his imagination in Kiowa’s and Lemon’s stories has helped him cope with the grief of their passing, and the passing of his first childhood love, Linda.