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Read this section from “The Man Who Stained His Soul” by Vu Bao, which is about a group of Vietnamese soldiers fighting in a battle. Make a claim about the two main characters—the narrator and Vinh—and support your claim with evidence from the excerpt. Then, explain what the characters reveal about a point the author might be making about war and bravery.

We divided the front unit into two V-shaped lines. Half of the men crept after Luat, the other half after me. Only Vinh lay prostrate in his place.

I crawled back to him

“What the hell are you doing?”

Vinh’s voice was strained. “How can we advance — the bullets are pouring in like rain.”

“Would you rather lie here waiting for death?”

“Death’s waiting up there also.”

With the bullets zeroing in on us, this wasn’t the time or place to try to turn a coward into a brave soldier. “Give me your cartridge belt and grenades,” I yelled at him.

“Then I’ll be killed in the enemy’s counterattack.”

My blood was boiling. I yanked his sub-machine gun from his hands. “I have to advance. Hang onto the company flag.”

I crawled low under the fire, keeping my eyes on the muzzle flashes. Suddenly the fire pecking at us from the bunker’s loophole ceased. The enemy gunners must have been changing the belt. I sprang up and rushed the bunker. Someone threw a grenade at me. I snatched it up and tossed it back into the loophole. Then I thrust the barrel of my rifle through the opening and sprayed in a full magazine, sweeping the area inside.

Shouts of joy sounded from all around. Fourth Company had penetrated the base. But what followed was our hardest battle. We struggled to take one fortified position after another, and it was nearly morning before we managed to blow up their headquarters.

Afterwards, the battalion commander ran up to us. “Hurry and scrounge up whatever supplies and equipment you can,” he said. “It’s nearly dawn — you’ll start shitting when the enemy’s long range artillery begin firing.”

I turned around to see Vinh standing nearby. His left trouser leg was sticking like glue to his thigh. I tore out the bandage I had tucked into my belt.

Luat seized my hand. “Don’t bother. He just pissed himself,” he said, nodding at Vinh’s saturated trouser. “Pissed on his own soul.”