Summary

The short story “Ambush” by Tim O’Brien opens with the narrator being asked by his 9-year-old daughter if he killed anyone in the war. She knows that the narrator used to be a soldier and she thinks that, since the narrator keeps writing war stories, he might have killed someone. The narrator finds this a difficult question. He denies it, because he says that is what he thinks is the right thing to do at the time. However, he hopes that she will ask again when she is older, so he can tell her that she was right as a child, because this is the reason why he writes about the war.

He remembers killing a young man one night during his watch. First, he recounts how he was on duty while his comrade slept and noticed a young Vietnamese man walking along the path....