The Yellow Birds

Chapter 4 returns to Al Tafar, Iraq, picking up from where Chapter 1 left off: “we took turns on watch, sleeping for two hours and nodding off behind our rifles for one” (75). During a mail delivery, Murph gets a letter from his girlfriend back home, in which she breaks up with him. This causes Bart to reflect on his own home and the night he enlisted and told his mother, before being drawn back into the present moment and looking at Murph, who was “sad that his girl had left him, but without anger or resentment, despite being only a few hours removed from all the killing of the night before” (80). We also learn more about how Murph will soon die, “perhaps one beat of his heart remaining as they threw his tortured body from the window of the minaret” (80). Bart also sees a photo of Murph and his now ex-girlfriend, Marie, whom Bart had never seen before that day. Sterling, overhearing them, interjects that he would “kill a bitch” if she dumped him like that (81). Bart then reflects that this is probably the moment where he should’ve noticed that Murph had given up.

The scene continues with Murph folding the photo up with his “casualty feeder card,” which has identifying information and places to mark what has happened to a soldier, with boxes for “Killed in Action,” and “Captured,” among others (82). Bart finally opens a package he received and finds a bottle of “Gold Label” (83), which he and Murph take drinks from: “For a moment we forgot our predicament and were just two friends drinking under a tree” (83).

Later that night, they see fires in the town. Murph says, "It must be the whole city out there" (84). The lieutenant informs them the colonel wants to see them, and they put on a show of being "falsely strong" (85). The colonel arrives with a camera crew and gives them a speech (as Bart mentions) reminiscent of opening of the movie Patton, then leaves. Bart reflects that he "was moved then, but what I recall most vividly about that speech was the colonel's pride, his satisfaction with his own directness, his disregard for us as individuals" (87). 

The lieutenant then gives them the operation's details: they will be moving under cover of darkness through the orchard nearby around the edge of the city to a point where they will push into the city itself to retake it. Bart and Murph find out from Sterling that the army has taken this town twice before, and Bart imagines it to be a perpetual, seasonal undertaking, every autumn. Bart and Murph are clearly nervous; Sterling, in one of his most paternal moments, reassures them. Bart begins to get the feeling he always does before a battle, and he remembers Murph explaining it best to an embedded journalist, comparing it to the moment before a car accident: "Feels pretty helpless actually, like you've been riding along same as always, then it's there staring you in the face and you don't have the power to do shit about it" (93). The chapter ends with the pair observing Sterling as they move into position and the battle is imminent, with Murph saying, "I think he's losing his shit, Bart," after they catch Sterling salting the ground wherever he goes (as Sterling says, "It's from Judges" in the Bible) (94). The final moment of the chapter shows Murph looking through his scope to see what Sterling is doing. Murph tells Bart, "He's got a fucking body [...] And he's not smiling anymore" (95).

Chapter 5 opens on the heels of where Chapter 3 left off: Bart is on a plane from Germany heading back to the States, reflecting on loss and forgiveness. He describes the atmosphere on the plane: "we began to yell and smile, slowly, as if our bodies were underwater" (101). Bart drifts off to sleep then jerks awake, once again reaching for his phantom rifle. He notes the empty seats, representing those who didn't make it on the plane—people like Murph, who have been killed. Bart remains meditative, looking out the window at the ocean below, and watching a group of fellow soldiers repeatedly call over the clerks for a moment of human contact.

Finally, they reach North America, and Bart describes the contrast to the Iraqi desert: "It was impossibly green [...] so green that I would have jumped from the plane if I could have, to float over that green briefly, to let it be real and whole and as large as I imagined" (102). He drifts off again and is wakened by the LT. As he and the rest of his platoon file off the plane, he thinks, "The usual had become remarkable, the remarkable boring, and toward whatever came in between I felt only a listless confusion" (103). After a quick safety briefing from the LT (including a bit about "hugging" rather than "slugging" one's wife [104]), the soldiers are let loose, though they are somewhat at a loss as to what to do, some asking, "Well, what now?" (104). Bart feels similarly, but then thinks of all the casualties of war, and resists the lost feeling. Instead, he finds a bar and has a few beers. He offers to clean a smudge he left on the clean floor to a passing janitor, but is refused. The bartender asks about his time in Iraq, saying they should nuke the region instead of sending soldiers. Bart deflects and tries to pay as boarding time nears for the next leg of his journey. The bartender refuses the money and tries to shake Bart’s hand, but Bart "pick[s] up the money and hand[s] it back to him and turn[s] and le[aves]" (107).

Once he is on the plane to Richmond, the pilot calls him an "American hero" over the announcements, and Bart thinks, "Fuck it," and accepts free Jack and Cokes and an upgrade, thinking of the aloofness and loneliness he and his fellow soldiers are all flying toward by now. After the plane lands, Bart's mother arrives to pick him up. She embraces him, touching him "as if to prove I was not a fleeting apparition" (108). Then she slaps him and continues to embrace him, saying "Oh John," over and over (109). Bart thinks, "I felt as if I'd somehow returned to the singular safety of the womb [...] Yet when she said, 'Oh, John, you're home,' I did not believe her" (109). They drive to his childhood home, and he catches himself looking for places to take cover in a passing field he used to play in, the past and the present overlapping. When they arrive, his mother says she is making him breakfast and asks what he wants to do first. He tells her he wants to sleep and goes to his room, stripping and cutting off all light, feeling as if he were "disappearing" as he takes off his uniform (111). Finally, he falls asleep: "I don't remember what I dreamed, but Murph was there, Murph and me and the same ghosts every night" (112).