Going After Cacciato

Stink whines that he had Cacciato, that he was close enough to smell his onion breath, as Doc rips off Stink’s bandage. The rest of the men are packing up. Oscar says it seems like Cacciato had Stink, not the other way around, as Doc examines the teeth marks on Stink’s elbow and cleans and re-bandages the wound. Eddie asks if Stink needs M&Ms as they finish loading the cart and prepare to head out.

That afternoon, they find one of Cacciato’s maps attached to a log. A happy face is drawn on it, and below is a warning: “LOOK OUT, THERE’S A HOLE IN THE ROAD” (73). Lieutenant Corson decides that the best strategy is to leave the road and hike through the jungle on a diagonal to try to cut Cacciato off. Despite Paul’s protests, the lieutenant says they’ll have to leave the women behind. After the rest of the men have gone to sleep, Sarkin tells Paul that he’ll find a way for them to be in Paris together. 

The men slowly pack up the camp and load the cart after breakfast. Paul helps Sarkin to the driver’s seat as she cries a little. “Paul Berlin’s eyes ached. No solutions. A lapse of imagination, so it simply happened” (75). Then an earthquake begins and builds, and the road splits open. There’s hardly time to scream as they all start to fall, “tumbling down a hole in the road to Paris” (76).

“Pederson was a mess” (77). Doc puts Pederson’s broken dog tags in his mouth, tapes it shut, and the dustoff comes and carries him away. The lieutenant takes note of lost equipment and leads the men to a hill above the village of Hoi An where they wait for the lieutenant to study his maps and compass. They do not talk about Pederson.

Mud from the paddies coats the men and their weapons; when Paul spits, it is green with algae. The lieutenant asks over the radio for a marking round, makes adjustments to the coordinates, then asks for numerous rounds of white phosphorous to be dropped on the village. The men watch the village burn; they can feel the heat from the hilltop. “Kill it,” (78; 79), Paul repeats. “Oscar Johnson smiled with each explosion, but otherwise the men seemed blank” (79).

Then they line up and fire into the village, Harold Murphy with the machine gun, until they are worn out. The soldiers camp along the Song Tra Bong river that night, and once it’s dark, they talk about Pederson—“It was always better to talk about it” (79). 

Paul stands on watch at two-fifteen and contemplates courage—how it isn’t the absence of fear, but rather acting in the presence of fear. He believes that “[t]he greater a man’s fear, the greater his potential courage” (80). While the others sleep, Paul does PT (physical training) exercises and smokes one of Doc’s cigarettes. After the war, he’ll stop.

Paul thinks about all the things that scare him: noise and dark. “Tunnels scared him: the time he almost won the Silver Star for valor” (81). Paul would have liked to win the Star if only to show it to his father. But Paul thinks the larger issue is having the necessary strength to overcome fear. This ability lies within every man. “There was a Silver Star twinkling somewhere inside him” (81).