Ted Lavender's death wasn't his fault at all. Jimmy Cross was only a young man and not yet fully mature to bear the burden of being a first lieutenant in the war. Jimmy Cross daydreams and fantasies of letters and photos of Martha. Allow him to escape the war, think about life at home. The Vietnam War was a very repetitive regular life because they had no clear mission. They simply matched village to village doing the same things over and over again. The death of Ted Lavender was a great tragedy of the Vietnam War and it was not the fault of First Lieutenant Jimmy