How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I'm Army through and through," I told him. "I mean it, if they'd let me go to Vietnam tomorrow, I'd go. I could be an ambulance driver or something like that." (1.34)
Jamie desperately wants to sign up for war. It doesn't matter that she's only twelve… or that she's still in school. She feels a sense of duty to the army since it practically raised her. So it comes as no surprise that she's ready to officially join the ranks. Too bad she can't do anything about her deep-seeded obligation.
Quote #2
"It's about duty, it's about honor, it's about sacrifice." If you weren't an Army brat, that kind of talk would probably have you rolling your eyes. But we believed it. I believed it. It made me proud to hear the Colonel say it. (2.7)
When Jamie and TJ would get sad about moving over and over again, this is what the Colonel would say to them. He paints a nice picture of the army, right? People sacrificing for one another and the country out of the duty they feel is certainly admirable. Yet subtly, Jamie realizes not everyone buys into this. Hence the eye-rolling.
Quote #3
When he'd saved that soldier's life out in the field, in the middle of combat exercises with artillery and tanks, he'd risked his own life, came a hair's width away from getting killed. Sometimes at night in bed I'd get cold and still all over thinking about that, how the Colonel might be dead right now. But in the daylight I wore his bravery like a badge of honor. (2.26)
To the Colonel, that's just how it is. He knew his duty to his fellow soldiers when he signed up, and he kept his end of the deal. It's one thing to pay lip service to duty and sacrifice, but it's quite another to live it out in the heat of the battle. Jamie feels simultaneously intimated and inspired by her dad's heroism.