Chapter 14, Step Lightly Summary and Analysis

O'Brien details with great anger the different types of mines one comes across in the My Lai. Bouncing Betty is the explosive that scares the soldiers the most. Once a soldier steps on the three pronged mine, it leaps up one yard and kills. Booby-trapped mortar and artillery rounds are often suspended from tree branches or buried, particularly beneath the floors of thatched huts. The M-14 anti-personnel mine takes off toes and feet. Booby-trapped grenades in tin cans attached to trip wires blow a man to pieces. The Soviet TMB and Chinese anti-tank mines detonate under vehicles or large soldiers. The directional fragmentation mine has the effect of a twelve-gauge shotgun fired at close range. The corrosive action car killer is a grenade wrapped with a rubber band tossed into the gas tank, where the gas eats...