This is a classic, and really one of my favorite books about war. I'm not really into the non-fiction war stories, as the blood and guts and killing tends to not have any larger purpose. But this fictionalized account tries (and I think largely succeeds) to try to create some meaning from the meaningless death that war is really all about.
The book is presented as a series of stories that the author tells about his experience as an American soldier in Vietnam. The first story sets the theme; in an almost lyrical style he tells of the literal things the soldiers carried - everything, even the minute stuff, and also the psychological and emotional weight that they carry. It makes a point about how what we choose t to carry (or choose not to carry) says something about us as human beings. Our identity is caught up in our objects, and our memories. Those that we keep and those that we discard. But it's the act of keeping or discarding, rather than the objects themselves, that really speaks to who we are.
I think we, as a culture, have gotten confused and have mistaken the objects as the true representatives of identity. I am what I buy. But our true identity is not in the objects that we buy, but rather in our psychological need to buy stuff in order to prove that we are better, or different, or whatever. It's not the surface appearance that really matters.
O'Brien seems to be communicating this throughout the rest of the book. Because it is the stories, in the end, that serve to identify the author and, by implication, all of us. Stories of bravery, of cowardice, of survival, of saving lives and taking lives, of redemption, of loyalty, of life.
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