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BOQ
Killed in action.
KIA Quotes in A Rumor of War
The A Rumor of War quotes below are all either spoken by KIA or refer to KIA. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter Seven
Quotes
Before the fire-fight, those marines fit both definition of the word infantry, which means either a “body of soldiers equipped for service on foot” or “infants, boys, youths collectively.” The difference was that the second definition could no longer be applied to them. Having received that primary sacrament of war, baptism of fire, their boyhoods were behind them […] We’ve been under fire, we’ve shed blood, now we’re men […] some were trying to master their emotions by talking them out; others masked their feelings under a surface toughness.
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The horror lay in the recognition that the body, which is supposed to be the earthly home of an immortal soul, which people spend so much time feeding, conditioning, and beautifying, is in fact only a fragile case stuffed full of disgusting matter […] The sight of mutilation did more than cause me physical revulsion; it burst the religious myths of my Catholic childhood.
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KIA Term Timeline in A Rumor of War
The timeline below shows where the term KIA appears in A Rumor of War. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Ten
...marines. It is a complicated task due to the military’s elaborate procedures for everything. The KIA reports are particularly long and complicated, as these forms require additional information pertaining to burial...
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...out how many enemy casualties there are. Webb Harrison tells him there are four, all KIA. Caputo walks into the colonel’s tent and makes the appropriate changes on the scoreboard where...
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...and the doctor think in terms of human suffering, not statistics. He mentions the twelve KIA from April in the context of “twelve wrecked homes.” Caputo loses his temper but apologizes...
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Chapter Eleven
...tied to bamboo poles “like bagged game.” Caputo adds two to the number in the VC-KIA column on the scoreboard. The next week is the same, with additional probes of the...
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Chapter Thirteen
...when the 2nd platoon in C Company suffers two killed and three wounded. The first KIA is a corpsman who suffered a GSW through the head. The second is First Lieutenant...
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