Themes

Regret- O'Brien never wished to kill a man, and almost instantly regretted his decision to throw the fatal grenade. O'Brien wishes that somehow the soldier just walked on by without seeing them. "Almost certainly the young would have passed by."(149). O'Brien, even several years after the war, still visions the soldier walking right passed him the way he wanted him to. "I'll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog. I'll watch him walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he will pass within a yew yards of me" (150). He has visions of what he thought would happen if he never threw the grenade, but he will never know if that is what would have actually happened in real life. It is very possible that if O'Brien didn't throw the grenade the guy would have saw him and then killed him.

Male bonding- In the story "Ambush" the narrator and Kiowa have a strong male bond. "Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would've died anyway."(149).  Kiowa tries to help O'Brien to cope with the knowledge that he killed someone. It is not an easy weight to carry around knowing you where responsible for the death of another man."He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was war," (149).  War is not an easy thing and we can see the bond that is formed between Kiowa and O'Brien. It would be almost impossible to cope with the horrors of war without a good friend to help hold the burden.