A Rumor of War: Chapter Six Summary & Analysis

For the next several weeks, the rifle companies maintain a schedule very similar to that of office or factory workers. Most of the time, nothing happens when they go to combat. When something does occur, it is instantaneous and “without warning.” Usually, it is rifle or machine-gun fire or mortars that seem to come out of nowhere. The marines see no heavy fighting. However, they see enough to know what fear looks like, what death smells like, what it feels like to kill, what wounds look like, how to endure pain and inflict it, and they experience the loss of friends. They slowly lose the “boyish awkwardness” they brought with them and become leaner, tougher, and more professional.

Caputo sees Lemmon’s platoon “through the dust, marching heavy-legged beneath a sky that is as bright as a piece of stainless steel.” Fire breaks out. Lemmon’s men charge into the hills and splash across the rice paddies. They throw grenades into bunkers and tunnels, but the enemy is not there, so the marines march on in the heat and the dust. They are manning an outpost on a hill at the tip of a ridgeline a thousand yards ahead of C Company’s lines. On the afternoon of the third day, Caputo talks to Sergeant Gordon about bravery. Gordon describes it, uninspiringly, as the conquest of fear. Caputo is only half-listening; he is thinking about a girl he met in San Francisco five months ago, though it feels as though it has been a hundred years since then.

After nightfall, PFC Buchanan’s boredom gives way to terror. He fires several shots at something he has heard moving in front of his position. Caputo yells at him for not throwing a grenade instead. Buchanan stands “in a tense crouch” and refuses to look at the lieutenant or take his finger off of the trigger of his rifle. Then, something does indeed move in the bushes. Caputo takes it for a rock ape. Before Buchanan can fire again, Caputo pulls a pin from a grenade and lobs it into the bush. Buchanan feels better and removes the rifle from his shoulder.

Caputo returns to the command post and goes to sleep. Later, he is startled awake by rifle fire near Lance Corporal Marshall’s position. Caputo climbs out of the foxhole and walks down a trail that leads “through the dark avenue of trees.” He sees a shadow of what he thinks is a man, but the figure is not moving, and Caputo thinks that his mind is playing tricks on him. Suddenly, he realizes that it is a man, who is trying to figure out if Caputo has seen him, too. A marine yells out something that sounds like, “He’s over there.” Caputo draws his pistol and fires, but the man flees. Marshall reports that he saw a VC running toward the command post. Caputo is still unsure if the figure in the bushes was a man or a VC, but his fear is real enough.

Corporal Parker and Caputo go to visit PFC Esposito in the field hospital. Esposito has mixed feelings about going home, particularly about leaving Parker, who has been his friend since boot camp. Esposito is ill and has been heavily drugged. Caputo sees several other wounded men in the tent, including three marines and half a dozen South Vietnamese. Parker and Esposito reminisce, and Caputo is slightly embarrassed to overhear their conversation, which reminds him of that between two lovers. Caputo distracts himself by talking to a corpsman about the injuries suffered by a South Vietnamese soldier, whose injuries will lead to his death in a day or two, as well as that of a marine. The marine is less fortunate, for he will go through the rest of his life as a vegetable.

Later, Caputo is lying in a ditch with his platoon while a VC fires an AK-47 at them. After two hours, they see the convoy that will take them back to the base camp. Suddenly, Powell begins to stumble around as though he is drunk and falls facedown into the dirt. He has passed out from heatstroke and is “hot, dry, and fish-belly white.” Two marines carry him toward the trucks, but Powell wakes up in a rage and tries to strangle the driver. The convoy moves slowly, while Powell shifts “between unconsciousness and frenzy.” The navy doctor refuses to treat Powell, which infuriates Caputo. He instead has him evacuated to the United States because his body temperature has risen to a hundred and nine degrees, causing his blood to boil “like water in a kettle.” If he survives, he will “probably suffer permanent brain damage.”

Alpha Company plans to make a helicopter assault near Hoi-Vuc, a VC-controlled village. As the convoy enters, Caputo witnesses filth and poverty that seems “medieval.” Most huts are made of thatch, but some are built of flattened beer cans left behind by Americans. Children and teenage boys with distended bellies and ulcerous skin run alongside the convoy and beg for cigarettes. The older people stare at the convoy indifferently. The prostitutes are the only adults who pay attention to the marines, though they are so heavily made-up that “they look like caricatures of what they are.” The VC open fire from a trench across the Song Tuy Loan. Peterson orders Caputo and Lemmon’s platoons to form a perimeter around the paddies on their side of the Tuy Loan. There is only one casualty in this firefight—Lance Corporal Stone, who is grazed in the hand.

Lieutenant Bruce Tester’s men destroy the hamlet near Hoi-Vuc, marked as Giao-Tri on the marine’s maps. Caputo recalls that the men seem to go crazy, rushing through the hamlet and throwing phosphorus grenades. Women are screaming, children are crying, and the livestock goes wild. The marines are “letting out high-pitched yells, like the old rebel yell” and continue to throw grenades and fire their rifles. When Caputo hears a woman wailing, he is unsympathetic. He figures that the villagers get what they deserve for aiding the VC. The marines have taught them a lesson, he thinks.