How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I was scared. My mouth was going dry and I could see that Peewee was scared, too. Jenkins was crying. It made me feel a little better to see him crying like that. (2.134)
For being in this serious of freakout mode, the guys must be out for their first battle, right? Not even. They're just on the flight to their first assignment in Chu Lai, and the war's already starting to feel real. Considering what they'll be up against, no wonder Perry, Peewee, and Jenkins are scared.
Quote #2
The neat pile of body bags was waiting for the rest of us. There were enough there—the supply clerk had reached for the top one without even looking—to know that they expected that many of us would be going home in them. (4.14)
Just in case you were starting to calm down, here's a great reason to stay terrified. Sure, Perry knew that, in theory, he could die in combat, but seeing all those body bags waiting to be filled definitely doesn't exactly feel like a good sign. It's a reminder of how casual war has become for some people: the clerk isn't even thinking about the actual people who could fill those bags. Not exactly good for morale.
Quote #3
We looked for the wounded. They were all over the place. The medics were so busy they were just tagging guys. The ones they thought they could save they worked on, the others they marked their wounds down. One kid, the angry stain of blood on his T-shirt growing with every breath, watched calmly as the medic wrote up the tag. (8.74)
This is a sad scene for a lot of reasons. First, this is when the platoon accidentally shot at other Americans. Maybe the saddest thing is the detail of medics tagging men who they know will die, while the not-quite-dead-yet men just watch them helplessly. There's no way to make a positive out of that.