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Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fallen Angels, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War, Trauma, and Dehumanization
Perseverance and Heroism
Race, Identity, and Belonging
Reality and Fiction
Faith and Hope
Summary
Analysis
Captain Stewart reassigns Jamal to the medical unit. Without him and Dongan, the squad has just seven men. Gearhart wants to combine it with the other two squads under his command, but his request to combine them is denied; military leadership needs to keep a certain number of squads in the field, even if it’s just on paper. Brunner gets hemorrhoids so bad that Gearhart wants to send him to the hospital, but Brunner insists on remaining. Gearhart suspects that he’s gunning for a promotion. Johnson says Brunner—like anyone who makes it through a whole year in Vietnam—deserves one.
Impersonal army leadership denies Gearhart’s request to combine his squad, in terms that focus more on the story they want to tell about the war—which includes full troop compliments on the front lines, implying fewer deaths and greater command of the military’s strategic objectives—than its truth. And it goes almost without saying that a squad on paper and a squad in fact are totally different things.
Themes
Things get quiet for a few days and rumors start circulating again about the war ending soon. The soldiers invent a game in which they trade between themselves for different actresses and singers. That only lasts until Peewee refuses to give up Mary Wells to Walowick. Walowick accuses Peewee of “welching” on the bet and Peewee stalks off, threatening to hurt Walowick if “welcher” turns out to have racial undertones.
Mary Wells was a Motown singer. The game that the squad invents shows their yearning for their old lives at home while at the same time it highlights how far away those old lives are. Both Walowick and Peewee become overinvested in a piece of paper that represents a woman neither of them would even know in real life. They do so because they have little else to grasp onto that gives them hope or happiness.
Themes
One Sunday, Perry, Walowick, and Peewee attend the non-denominational service offered by the chaplain. Perry finds it comforting to pray with others. Afterwards, he returns to the hooch where the rest of the guys are cleaning and polishing two new machine guns. The smell of the cleaning solution makes everyone giddy. Monaco repeats gossip about some soldiers making necklaces of ears cut from dead Vietcong bodies. Johnson says a soldier who does that is only trying to lie to himself that he isn’t scared. Peewee adds that anyone who isn’t scared in Vietnam is a fool.
After his earlier interaction with the kind and brutally honest Father Santora, Perry’s perspective on prayer shifts from a way to try to influence God’s perception of him to a source of comfort. Praying with Walowick, Peewee, and others reaffirms their shared humanity—they all fear death, they all want to live, and they all acknowledge their lack of control over the situation. The peace of the services contrasts sharply with the return to the hooch, where the soldiers share gruesome stories about other American soldiers. But, as Johnson and Peewee point out, no one in Vietnam can avoid fear and dread. Some people just find worse coping mechanisms than others to deal with it.
Themes
Brunner strides into the hooch with orders for the squad to patrol a stream near the Song Nha Ngu River. Peewee laughs and snorts the Coke he’s drinking out of his nose; he heard Brunner say the “Sha Na Na River.” To make matters worse, Gearhart and the other two squads are patrolling another sector, leaving Brunner in charge. Stewart, confident that the tiny squad won’t encounter any large units, wants them to try to get some prisoners to bolster his promotion package.
The orders for this mission emphasize the squad’s isolation and also how the army treats its soldiers as expendable commodities rather than people. It doesn’t matter that they’ve lost half their number, as long as some of them are still standing, Stewart leans on them to help him get his promotion. No one even pretends to care about more important strategic or political objectives anymore.
Themes
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As he listens to the approaching choppers, Perry’s stomach becomes queasy, his arms and legs feel heavy, and his palms start sweating. He’s tired of the war. He doesn’t want to go out anymore. And the landing zone spooks him further; although it’s supposed to be close to an ARVN ranger post, he sees no sign of ARVN troops. The squad cautiously approaches the stream as the choppers disappear. Perry realizes, much to his dismay, that Brunner sounds a lot less confident than he did in the hooch. A ridge overlooks the section of stream they’re supposed to patrol, providing good cover for a Vietcong ambush. Brunner assigns Walowick and Lobel the unenviable task of checking out the ridge while the rest of the squad provides cover.
Perry still feels fear at the beginning of each mission, and although he’s becoming battle weary, he still pushes himself through his nerves to show up for the other soldiers in his squad. The absence of their alleged allies increases the squad’s sense of isolation and abandonment. This makes it hard for the soldiers to avoid feeling like their own side has betrayed and abandoned them. This feeling increases when they arrive at their patrol area and realize that, despite Stewart’s vote of confidence, he sent them into a trap, asking them to risk their lives to get him some prisoners.
Themes
Perry watches Walowick and Lobel crossing the stream and prays to God that, just this once, the ridge might be clear. When Walowick signals that it is, Perry worries he might have wasted a good prayer for nothing. After Walowick and Lobel rejoin the rest, they begin a cautious sweep down the banks of the stream. A few hundred meters downstream, the ridge drops into a saddle, which Perry realizes with a sinking stomach would be the perfect place for the Vietcong to lay an ambush. He wonders how many prayers he has left, and if Buddha answers the enemy’s prayers.
Prayer has been a fraught subject for Perry since he arrived; he wants to feel comforted by it, but he can’t escape the feeling that each prayer is some sort of bargain with God. If he makes himself seem too peaceful, he’s worried God might let him die; he worries that someone else’s more fervent prayer might move God more than his, thus exposing Perry to danger. In this way, Perry approaches God like God is just another capricious, distant, and uncaring officer.
Themes
Nothing happens while they sweep the first kilometer of river. Then Johnson wants to go back, but Brunner insists their patrol covers two kilometers. Everyone waits to see what Johnson—the true leader of the squad, even though Brunner outranks him—decides to do. To Brunner’s visible relief, Johnson hefts the machine gun and presses onward. They haven’t quite made it to the end of the patrol when Monaco, in front, signals a halt. He indicates the ridge, then suddenly spins around, opening fire into the stream itself. For a second, Perry thinks Monaco is shooting at nothing, but then a figure bursts from the water. Vietcong soldiers are hiding under its surface, using reeds as snorkels.
Tensions have risen between Brunner and Johnson over racial issues in the past. But these seem petty and unimportant in light of the danger they all face on this patrol. When Johnson follows Brunner’s order, he’s tacitly admitting that no matter how offensive Brunner’s behavior can be, in this moment, they need each other and cannot afford to focus on their differences. This doesn’t excuse Brunner’s racism. But it does suggest how petty and small the distinctions people draw among themselves can be.
Themes
The squad scrambles to the stream banks, taking and returning fire from both sides. They’re all certain that more Vietcong fighters hide along the ridge, but no one shoots from that vantage. As they move out, Lobel shoots a VC soldier at close range. Brunner asks for immediate evacuation but learns that the squad must retreat to the landing zone. This will require them to re-cross an exposed rice paddy in the gathering dark, presenting the perfect opportunity for a VC attack.
The patrol asked the impossible of the squad; they barely survive the firefight with the Vietcong fighters hidden in the river and they all know that more adversaries lurk along the ridge, even if they’ve not come under fire yet. The knowledge that they’ve been abandoned increases the terror of having to walk through the rice paddies.
Themes
When the squad reaches the saddle on the return trip, Brunner sends Perry and Peewee to check it out. Halfway across the river, Perry remembers that he can’t swim; neither can Peewee. Just before they reach the top of the ridge, Perry hears shots sinking into rock next to his head, and a machine gun begins to burp bullets. Perry and Peewee scramble to the crest and start firing over the other side of the ridge, but they don’t see any enemies there. When he turns, Perry can see the squad exchanging fire with Vietcong below him on the ridge. Then, abruptly, the shooting stops.
The Vietcong always seem to have the advantage, whether it’s knowledge of the terrain, possession of the high ground, or, increasingly, numbers. Nothing the soldiers do can level the playing field: their careful attempts at scouting fail to turn up their enemies, who do, finally, ambush them, while their call for evacuation goes unheeded. Their abandonment adds to the terror and trauma they feel. And for Perry and Peewee, separated from the rest, the sudden quiet is the most terrifying of all, since they don’t know if Brunner, Walowick, Monaco, and Johnson are even still alive.
Themes
