Tim O'Brien outright tells the reader that Ted Lavender is dead throughout the first story of the novel, but the details of his death are not revealed until the end of that story.
Lt. Jimmy Cross leads his company through the countryside of Vietnam, and they come across a tunnel that must be inspected for Viet Cong who may be hiding. Lee Strunk is chosen to explore the tunnel, and the men comment on the stillness of the day, the eerie feeling that something bad is going to happen. While they wait for Strunk, the men drink Kool Aid and smoke, and Ted Lavender goes off to pee. Even with all the sense of foreboding, Strunk emerges "filthy but alive," and everyone thinks the day is going to end well. Then, Lavender is shot in the head. The moment seems like the antithesis to all the tension that was created when Strunk went in the tunnel.
After the company loads Lavender's body into a chopper, they burn Than Khe, the nearby village. They shoot dogs and chickens, call in the artillery to bomb the village, and watch the destruction. Then, they march on. Jimmy Cross blames himself for Lavender's death because Cross was thinking about Martha, a girl back home. All these moments go back to O'Brien's commentary on the "things" the men carry as they fight in the Vietnam War.
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