Several years after the Vietnam war Kathleen, O'Brien's daughter, askes him if he has ever killed a man. He responds to this question with a no, but thinking to himself he hopes that one day when Kathleen is older he can tell her that he in fact has killed a man. O'Brien then goes in to a flash back to the day he killed a man in the war. It was a foggy day, he and Kiowa where hiding in the woods preparing for an ambush. Then a person wearing an ammunition belt walks into the clearing. With out thinking O'Brien pulled the pin on his grenade and threw it. The man tried to escape the grenade , but could not. The man's death hit O'Brien hard. Kiowa tried to tell O'Brien that he did the right thing and that the man was going to die anyways. Even twenty years after the war O'Brien sometimes will see the man walk out of the woods then pass by harmlessly. He thinks that if he never threw the grenade then the man would not have seen him and just passed by without noticing them.

"I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth."(149)