Opening
Bureaucracy traps John "Chick" Donohue in Saigon just as the city readies for Tet. While he hustles for an exit visa, finds unexpected camaraderie on a merchant ship, and shares a piercing conversation with a Vietnamese woman, the night sky goes moonless—and the Tet Offensive explodes. His beer run turns into a fight to survive.
What Happens
Chapter 16: American Money Is Good for Bribes
Stuck in Saigon, Chick holes up in a cheap, Korean-run hotel in Cholon to stretch his 900.
The consulate fronts him a “loan,” counted out from a lockbox. An American official escorts him to the South Vietnamese State Department, where the lines feel straight out of Casablanca. The official slides an envelope of cash to a clerk. The clerk counts it brazenly, in full view, then says they’ll be in touch. Chick storms out furious—at the delay, the petty corruption, and that American taxpayer money pays for bribes—while his ship sails away. The episode lays bare The Realities and Absurdities of War: a war run on paperwork, graft, and waiting.
Chapter 17: The Caravelle Rooftop Bar
With nothing to do but wait, Chick tries to pick up bartending work, only to be laughed out of Saigon’s bars. He thinks about the men he still hopes to find—Richard Reynolds, Bobby Pappas—but his daily consulate check-ins tether him to the city. He wanders past French colonial facades, out of place in tropical heat and wartime chaos, and after a cold welcome at the Continental Palace, he lands at the Caravelle Hotel’s rooftop bar.
There, reporters and allied personnel from across the English-speaking world drink and swap intel. Chick hears that Tet will bring a truce and a halt to U.S. bombing in the North. Then, finally, the call: his visa is approved. But his ship has already sailed from Manila. The consulate books him on a new vessel and sets a flight out of Tan Son Nhut for the next morning—January 31, 1968. The clerk warns him not to “party too hardy.” Holiday traffic will be brutal.
Chapter 18: Finding a Seafaring Friend
Riding the high of his imminent departure, Chick celebrates on Tu Do Street—and luck drops an old friend into his lap: Johnny Jackson, from the merchant marines. Johnny serves on the SS Limon, a giant reefer ship hauling frozen steaks, ice cream, and more to the American military. He invites Chick aboard.
On the Limon, union brothers treat Chick like family. They feed him lobster and beer, hand over fresh clothes, and pass the hat for a $100 stake—a warm flash of Friendship, Loyalty, and Camaraderie in a cold, transactional city. Johnny explains Tet’s timing: it begins on the new moon, when the night is darkest. He invites Chick to a party at his Vietnamese girlfriend’s dance hall. Despite his early flight, Chick says yes—one last night in Vietnam.
Chapter 19: Happy New Year, Baby
Chick and Johnny head down the Saigon River to a dance hall on stilts. Johnny disappears into his reunion; Chick watches young women in silk ao dai dance together, their movements delicate and tentative. A young woman named Dao, who walks with a limp, asks him to dance. She shows him a long scar on her thigh, covered by a peach-blossom tattoo—a flower central to Tet.
Their talk drifts from New Year customs to politics. Dao asks why Americans celebrate their own revolution but won’t allow the Vietnamese to have theirs. Chick considers parroting the “domino theory” but swallows it, sensing how meaningless slogans sound against her lived experience. The exchange shakes his simple convictions about Patriotism and Support for Soldiers. After their goodbye, he steps outside and notices the sky: the new moon has vanished entirely.
Chapter 20: Beaucoup VC
Back at his Cholon hotel, Chick tries to sleep through what he assumes are Tet fireworks. He confirms his morning embassy ride with the manager—but the concussions keep coming. Glass explodes inward; something slams through his window. He bolts downstairs to find the manager crouched behind the desk, screaming in French, “Beaucoup VC!”—a lot of Vietcong.
They lurch through pitch-black alleys, skirting concertina wire until South Vietnam’s “White Mice” police hem them in. Chick pays the manager and continues on foot toward the U.S. embassy, still in denial. Outside the Hotel Majestic, armed Americans snap him awake: “Charlie has the embassy, man!” He pushes on to the Brinks Hotel, where an MP confirms the full scale: the embassy, Tan Son Nhut airfield, the Presidential Palace—all hit. The Tet Offensive is underway. When Chick asks for shelter, the MP orders him to move along. The beer-run patriot finds himself an unprotected civilian in a city at war.
Character Development
Chick arrives in Saigon as a hustler who believes resourcefulness, union loyalty, and an American passport can solve anything. By dawn of Tet, that confidence fractures. Bribes, a moonless sky, and an MP’s refusal strip him of his illusion of protection and force him into a survivor’s mindset.
- Bureaucratic shakedowns sour his trust in official channels.
- The Limon’s crew reaffirms a code of brotherhood that feels more reliable than government aid.
- Dao’s question punctures his black-and-white patriotism, introducing moral ambiguity.
- The MP’s “move along” severs his belief that being American guarantees safety, recasting him from emissary to vulnerable civilian.
Themes & Symbols
War’s machinery runs on contradictions. The same system that stamps passports also counts bribes in daylight—proof of the Realities and Absurdities of war. Rooftop bars trade rumors of “truce” even as the city readies for its bloodiest night. Chick learns that paperwork and protocol can matter more than people, right up to the moment an MP refuses him sanctuary.
Against that institutional coldness, bonds among seafarers glow. The Limon’s crew offers food, clothes, and cash without hesitation—camaraderie as an antidote to official indifference. And Dao’s challenge widens Chick’s lens: support for soldiers can coexist with skepticism about policy, but it requires seeing Vietnamese lives, not just American missions.
Symbols sharpen the turn:
- The new moon marks darkness literal and figurative, ushering in the Tet Offensive and the end of Chick’s naïveté.
- “Fireworks” mask gunfire; celebration blurs into violence until the illusion shatters.
- The Caravelle rooftop bar stands as a bubble of distance—Western comfort perched above a city ready to erupt.
Key Quotes
“Beaucoup VC!”
- The hotel manager’s panicked cry snaps Chick out of denial. It marks the precise moment the Tet Offensive pierces the civilian sphere and turns the city into a battlefield.
“Charlie has the embassy, man!”
- This line from armed Americans outside the Majestic collapses any faith in safe zones. If the embassy falls under attack, nowhere in Saigon can be assumed secure.
“Move along.”
- The MP’s refusal at the Brinks Hotel is the book’s harshest bureaucratic beat. Orders and liability trump compassion, leaving an American civilian exposed in a war zone.
“Don’t party too hardy.”
- Meant as casual advice, the consulate clerk’s warning ironically foreshadows catastrophe. Holiday traffic isn’t the problem—coordinated urban warfare is.
“Why are Americans proud of their revolution but won’t allow the Vietnamese to have theirs?”
- Dao reframes the war from ideology to lived experience. Her question destabilizes Chick’s Cold War talking points and plants the seed for moral complexity.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence is the book’s hinge. What starts as a shaggy, quixotic mission runs headfirst into the Tet Offensive, transforming a beer run into a survival story and puncturing the illusion of American control. Chick’s faith in institutions erodes as personal loyalties endure; his patriotism stretches to include perspectives he’s never considered. These chapters link the intimate—one man’s night out, a scar beneath a tattoo—to the epochal, situating Chick at the center of a historical shock that reshapes both his journey and America’s war narrative.