Going After Cacciato

Doc, Oscar and Buff had given Stink an English-Vietnamese dictionary as a birthday present. Stink would scream at the villagers in broken Vietnamese, trying to get them to move and lie down, but the villagers wouldn’t understand. So he would enforce his message with his gun, feeling triumphant when the villagers did what he wanted.

Since the soldiers don’t understand the language, they don’t understand the Vietnamese people’s emotions or know who to trust. Stink, for one, doesn’t care, but Paul wants to know what they’re thinking and, most of all, whether they like him. He believes in his innocence and wants them to know “how he hate[s] to see the villages burned” (263).

He imagines going back after the war with an interpreter to talk to a small girl Doc treated to find out what she hopes for and to tell her why he went to war. He doesn’t know which of the politicians to believe, but he trusts his country.

In September, Paul is called before the promotions board, a three-officer panel, to be interviewed for promotion to Spec Four. A major with sunglasses asks Paul about his last name—whether he’s American, where he got the name, where Berlin is. He asks Paul if he has brains and if he’s a “swingin’ dick” (267). He also asks if Paul is “’fraid of getting’ zapped” (268), and when Paul says no, he calls him a dummy.

He then asks a few standard questions about the flag, weaponry, and the Secretary of the Army. He asks Paul why they’re fighting, and another officer, who has been silent up to this point, provides the answer: “To win it” (268). Paul agrees. The final question is, “What effect would the death of Ho Chi Minh have on the population of North Vietnam?” (269). Paul answers correctly, that it would reduce it by one.

The soldiers never discuss politics, which infuriated Frenchie. They don’t know why they’re fighting or what role their actions play in the larger war. They don’t have “a sense of victory, or satisfaction, or necessary sacrifice” (270). They don’t know what to do with prisoners; they don’t know how to feel about their actions. They don’t “know good from evil” (271).

Paul thinks that logically, according to the odds, it wouldn’t have ended at the port in Athens. He compares this dream to the dream all the other soldiers have when they think about the end of the war. So they aren’t arrested; they walk easily past the cops and custom agents. They spend several days in Athens, but Stink does not return. The lieutenant decides they have to move on.

They take a bus to Zagreb and then hitch a ride in a VW van with a girl from California. She praises their decision to walk away in the face of evil, but Oscar, Eddie, and Doc claim not to have seen evil and not to feel guilt. Oscar makes her leave the van at gunpoint; she believes that he’s going to rape her and offers to have sex with him willingly. Instead, they drive away.

They make it to Fulda, in Germany, before the car breaks down, and they get on a train. Paul is excited to return to civilization and contemplates that it—schools, cleanliness, art, industry—is the reason for war, and he feels that’s a just cause even if “something had gone wrong” (277-78). They move towards Luxembourg, and Paul feels happy that it’s so easy. 

The battle is “a running battle,” moving down the ditch through two villages. Paul, Cacciato, and Eddie patrol the ditch after the battle is over, and Cacciato finds Buff’s body. They cover the body with a poncho, and Eddie calls for the dustoff. When Doc walks by, he removes the weapons and goes through the pockets, putting everything in a bag that he ties to Buff’s wrist. Eddie tells him he forgot what’s in the helmet.

Paul pretends he’s in a pool and tries not to think about Buff. Cacciato eats peaches. Eddie says they found Buff on his knees, “[h]unched up like the way Arabs pray” (281). Doc tells him to shut up. Paul thinks about raking leaves. They can hear the explosions from the other platoons blowing bunkers.

Oscar comes over, and he, Eddie, and Doc smoke and talk about Buff, about how no Vietnamese died in the battle, and about how Harold Murphy will get Buff’s machine gun now. Cacciato eats chicken. Paul feels relieved that he wasn’t the one who died.

The dustoff comes, and Paul thinks how pleasant it is to see and smell things. Doc says they can’t leave Buff’s helmet in the ditch, so Cacciato takes care of it, “heav[ing] Buff’s face into the tall crisp grass,” then cleaning the helmet and tying it to his rucksack (285). Oscar says that the simple lesson is not to get shot.