The general view is that soldiers die heroic deaths in the Battlefields. But the soldier boy in the poem doesn’t find the battleground to be a great place to die at all. It seems silly to him that he is dying here without any good reason. So the word ‘HERE’ is ironically used to emphasize the gruesome reality that no soldier wishes to die in war, and after all, that is not a good place or cause for death.

‘HERE’ has been written in capital to specify the battlefield where the Vietnam War had taken place. It has been written in capital to indicate that many young lives had died there including the soldier boy. The young soldier slowly died from his small pain in his chest.