In this famous short story "the things they carried," writer Tim O'Brien shows that you can learn a great deal about men by what they take into battle. In the case of the platoon he described slogging through the rice fields in 'Nam, those items included love letters from home, grenades and land mines, lucky charms, insecticide, copies of Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, bags of marijuana, bandages, psyop leaflets and tanning lotion. "Often," O'Brien writes, "they carried each other, the wounded and the weak." And what did Uday Hussein carry to the fight? After a hot and noisy siege last week, American soldiers found, in the rubble near his body, his briefcase. The contents, NEWSWEEK has learned, included painkillers, numerous bottles of cologne, Viagra, unopened packages of men's underwear, dress shirts, a silk tie and a single condom. Uday and his brother, Qusay, also had with them a huge stash of cash, as well as, for some reason, two ladies' purses.
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