Jimmy Cross Analysis

The morning after the incident in the sewage field, the soldiers look for Kiowa 's body.
Jimmy Cross helps in the search and watches his men. He sees a young soldier (this is presumably O 'Brien, but O 'Brien has chosen to tell this story in the third person) standing off by himself, shaking, in his own world.
Cross thinks about Kiowa 's death, and how Kiowa, a brave and decent kid, absolutely didn 't deserve to die in a field of sewage.
He thinks about what he 's going to write to Kiowa 's father, and how he shouldn 't mention the sewage field.
Azar, of course, is cracking jokes about how Kiowa drowned in poop. Bowker tells him to shut up, but Azar, being Azar, just keeps making horrible puns. They still haven 't found the body.
Halfway across

Norman Bowker finds Kiowa; his heel is sticking out. Mitchell Sanders, Bowker, and Azar try to pull Kiowa out of the mud, but he 's stuck. They call Henry Dobbins and Rat Kiley over, but the body still won 't come out.
The men start to dig. The rest of the platoon comes over, except for Jimmy Cross and the young soldier. They finally get Kiowa out. It 's horrible.
They clean the body off and call in to the radio to get someone to come take the body away. The men relax.
Azar apologies to Norman Bowker for the jokes. (Any time Azar acts like a decent human being, we 're a little suspicious, but he seems to mean it this time.) He tells Bowker that he feels that, by telling the jokes, he 's responsible for Kiowa 's death. Bowker says that it 's nobody 's fault, and everybody 's.
The young soldier wants to confess his part in Kiowa 's death to Jimmy Cross—how he turned on his flashlight and drew the mortar fire—but Jimmy Cross isn 't listening. He 's thinking about blame.
He 's thinking that while you could blame the war and every cause of the war and God and everything else there is, in the field, blame needs to be more immediate.
He thinks that maybe when the war is over he 'll write a letter to Kiowa 's