Summary: Chapter 4
“My father used to call all soldiers
angel warriors,” he said. “Because usually they get boys to fight
wars. Most of you aren’t old enough to vote yet.”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Lieutenant Carroll, the kind and competent leader of
the platoon, leads a moving prayer for Jenkins, calling him an “angel
warrior.” Carroll explains that his own father, also a military
man, used to call all soldiers “angel warriors” because so many
soldiers are young and as innocent as angels. Richie tries to write
a letter home about Jenkins’s death, but he finds the subject too
difficult to broach, and decides to write about Peewee instead.
The next few days are slow, giving the members of the
squad time for conversations about their lives and their hopes for
the future. An Italian soldier named Monaco tells the others about
his days as a star high school athlete, an African-American soldier
named Brew discusses his intention to become a priest, and a Jewish
boy from California named Lobel talks about his love of movies.
Soon, the squad is sent on a public-relations mission, bringing
food and medical supplies to a Vietnamese village. Lobel and Richie
befriend a young Vietnamese girl named An Linh. Peewee buys a bottle
of wine, telling the others that one of his three life goals is
to drink wine from a bottle with a cork; the other two are to smoke
a cigar and to make love to a foreign woman. Back at the base, Sergeant
Simpson complains to Peewee and Richie that the leader of their
company, Captain Stewart, wants to embroil them in more dangerous
missions for a selfish reason—he can be promoted to major only if
he increases the enemy body count.
Summary: Chapter 5
Peewee receives a letter from his girlfriend, Earlene,
informing him that she has married another man in his absence. After
a few quiet days spent watching and rewatching a Julie Andrews movie
and listening to the rumors of peace talks on the radio, the squad
is sent on a mission that proves uneventful. Afterward, Lieutenant
Carroll approaches Richie about his still unprocessed profile. He
gives Richie a chance to remove himself from combat permanently
by asking him to assess how bad his injury is. Out of a growing
sense of loyalty to the members of his squad, Richie refuses to
take advantage of this easy way out of danger.
Summary: Chapter 6
Richie and Lobel are put on guard duty. Lobel, whose uncle
is a film director, tries to convince Richie that movies are the
only real thing in life. He confesses that whenever he goes on patrol,
he imagines that he is playing the part of a soldier in a movie.
He dissects the various war movie clichés for Richie. Lobel laments,
for instance, that he is still a virgin, since the baby-faced virgin
always dies in war movies. He suggests that Richie avoid playing
the part of the good black guy who everyone thinks is a coward until
the end, when he dies while saving everyone else. Richie confesses
to Lobel that he wishes he had a girlfriend so he could have another
person with whom to exchange letters. Lobel offers to give him the
address of a movie starlet, but Richie is not interested in a pretend
girlfriend.
A news crew comes to interview Richie’s squad. They ask
each soldier to explain why he is fighting in Vietnam. Each soldier
gives a different stock response, citing lofty and slightly abstract
goals such as the desire to stem the spread of Communism. When Richie’s
turn comes, he tells the reporters that he is fighting in Vietnam
to prevent fighting in the streets of America. The news crew later
accompanies Richie’s squad on patrol. Monaco, who always acts as
point man for the squad, leads the others and kills an enemy soldier,
while Richie tries to fire a gun that he forgot to load. Back at
camp Richie finds the news crew photographing the dead soldier and
is astonished that the enemy is no bigger than his brother, Kenny.
Analysis: Chapters 4–6
Lobel’s commentary on war movies highlights the contrast
between the myth and reality of warfare. War movies exhibit the
clichés common in American popular culture—the tragic death of the
baby-faced virgin soldier and the inevitably positive portrait of
the black soldier. Such movies tend to infuse senseless deaths with
false meaning, giving us beautiful, romantic representations of
our favorite myths about good, evil, and heroism. These romanticized
myths can help society deal with wartime loss by providing a justification
for soldiers’ sacrifices, but these same myths also gloss over the
ugliness and horror that are everywhere in war. In this sense, these
myths do not give justice to the sacrifices expected of the soldiers
fighting in reality.
