Checkers

In chapter 3 "Spin", I like the little side story about how 2 soldiers would play checkers every evening when it turned dark. The author explains on page 31, "There was something restful about it, something orderely and reassuring...the pieces were out on the board, the enemy wass visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules." I really like this passage becuase it is a great metaphor for how the Vietnam war is not. The war that they were fighting was pretty much an all out guerrila war through a thick jungle and the Americans were far outnumbered, and their more advanced weapons did not help them much. The game of checkers was completely the opposite where there was an organized manner to things. Another thing that stuck out was the phrase: there was a winner and a loser. In the war, neither of the sides seemed to be winning the war and thats what probably what drove a lot of the soldiers crazy.