Comrades: Yet another word we use without understanding the etymological significance. Tim has comrades; Henry has comrades. Check out this definition and etymology at Dictionary.com and compare that with Henry’s relationship to his comrades in the first fifteen chapters and O’Brien’s interrelationship of characters (especially in “Friends and Enemies”). Pay particular attention to the way the characters are revealed.

A comrade is defined as a person who shares one’s interests or activities; a friend or companion. In the chapters “Friends” and “Enemies” Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk supposedly “learn to trust eachother”, meaning they become friends or comrades. I don’t think they can truely be reffered to as comrades because a comrade is also defined as a friend. They had many similar interest and experiences that they could bond over, but they definitley were not both friends to eachother. The proof that they weren’t trusting is when Strunk repeatedly asks Jensen not to kill him, and Jensen kills him anyways and after his death (that the rest of the guys don’t know how he was killed) Jensen seemed to be releived of an “enormous weight”. These soldiers just bonded over common interests, they were very warped and would stab their so-called “comrades” in the back.