"How to Tell a True War Story" deviates from conventional storytelling. It doesn't follow a linear, chronological narrative. Instead, it's a series of vignettes interwoven with insights on what constitutes a "true" war story.

The narrative begins with the phrase, "This is true." The storyteller then shares an account about his friend Rat Kiley, who pens a heartfelt letter to the sister of a comrade who was killed a week prior. Rat waits two months for a response, but the sister never replies.

The narrative then transitions to an analysis. "A true war story is never moral," the narrator explains. He urges the reader to "listen to Rat" as he uses profanity, asserting that a genuine war story is steeped in "obscenity and evil."

In the following section, we learn that Curt Lemon is the friend who died. This part actually takes place before the initial section. Curt and Rat are playing with smoke grenades when Curt accidentally triggers a rigged 105 mm artillery shell. The narrator states, "It's all exactly true," and offers a vivid depiction of Curt being blown into the trees.

Once more, the narration turns to commentary. The narrator contends that in true war stories, it's challenging to discern between actual events and perceived ones.

The narrator then proposes that "a true war story cannot be believed" and that conveying a true war story can sometimes be impossible. He illustrates this with a tale by Mitchell Sanders. Sanders recounts how a six-man patrol ascends into the mountains to set up a listening post, where they must remain silent for a week. As they listen, they begin to hear strange noises—music, voices, a glee club, and opera. Sanders claims that even the rocks are speaking. Eventually, the men become so terrified that they call for artillery support and destroy the mountains. Throughout his tale, Sanders insists that every detail is true.

The narrator then comments, "You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end." Later that night, Mitchell Sanders returns to the narrator, attempting to impart a moral to his story, as if he can't conclude it satisfactorily. The following morning, he approaches the narrator again, admitting he "had to make up a few things" while recounting his story. Sanders once more tries to offer a moral, saying, "That quiet—just listen. There's your moral."

While the narrator previously mentioned that war stories lack morality, Sanders persists in attempting to find one. The narrator revises his earlier stance by suggesting that, if a moral exists, it is "like the thread that makes the cloth." He further asserts that a genuine war story impacts the heart, not the mind.

The narrator then shares his own tale: the sequence of events following Curt Lemon's death and Rat Kiley's letter writing. After Curt's demise, the squad captures a young water buffalo. Rat ends up killing it gradually by shooting off various parts of its body. The narrator links this act of killing to Curt's death, and the rest of the platoon eventually joins in by tossing the carcass into the village well.

In the subsequent section, the narrator tells the reader, "The truths are contradictory." He spends considerable time illustrating the experience of being in battle, using imagery and words to convey a genuine war story to the reader. However, by the section's end, the narrator makes a typically contradictory statement, telling the reader, "In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story, nothing is ever absolutely...