Opening
Amid the Tet Offensive’s chaos, John "Chick" Donohue drifts from swagger to sobriety. He helps a stranded mariner, calls home for the first time in months, dodges sniper fire on a mercy run to the Saigon Zoo, and watches the war tilt in real time as Walter Cronkite’s broadcast turns America’s mood. When the chance finally comes to leave, Chick grabs it—not triumphantly, but gratefully.
What Happens
Chapter 31: Helping a Descendant of the Mayans
Still stuck in Saigon, Chick haunts the Caravelle Hotel with foreign correspondents who talk strategy and bloodshed in the same breath. Word filters in: General Westmoreland wants 206,000 more troops to carry the war into Laos and Cambodia, while new Defense Secretary Clark Clifford counsels President Johnson to pull back. The brass debate abstractions; the streets deliver bodies.
Chick turns to a human-scale problem. A fellow seaman from Guatemala, a Mayan nicknamed “Mensch,” has been abandoned by his captain after helping organize a strike. Destitute, Mensch begs for a way into the U.S. Army and, someday, citizenship. Chick agrees to help, a quiet act of Friendship, Loyalty, and Camaraderie in a city at war.
At Tan Son Nhut airfield, their search for a recruiter goes sideways. A dozen South Vietnamese National Police surround them, spooked by Mensch’s appearance and bristling with rifles. The standoff ends only when an American GI driver pulls up with a shrug and a “hop in,” ferrying them back to Saigon. Chick leaves Mensch with a wary Heller at the U.S. consulate, hoping red tape doesn’t swallow him whole.
Chapter 32: C.D., Phone Home
The USO reopens, and with it, a narrow doorway to normal life. Chick queues for the shortwave and reaches a ham operator in San Francisco, who patches a collect call to his parents in Inwood at four in the morning. His father answers, groggy turning to fury and fear.
“Do you know what you’re doing to your mother?!” hits like shrapnel. When his mother takes the line, she asks only if he’s safe, if he’s eating, when he’s coming home. The voice of home punctures the bravado of the beer run. For the first time, Chick reckons with what his adventure costs the people who love him.
Chapter 33: Please Do Feed the Animals
Chick keeps close to Mr. Minh, a Buddhist shipping agent who believes the souls of the dead can inhabit animals. Minh tells him the Saigon Zoo has become a battlefield—zookeepers murdered during Tet, animals starving in their cages. Chick resolves to help. He hustles two duffels of frozen food from his friend John on the SS Limon, planning to feed both his press pals at the Caravelle and the zoo’s survivors.
The city answers with gunfire. A sniper rakes the motorcycle carrying Chick; the driver crumples, bleeding, and Chick takes a hit. One of the food bags disappears in the street chaos. Swiss EMTs patch him up, and he staggers to Minh’s unexpectedly lavish home. As Minh dresses his wounds, he confesses his dread: the Americans will leave Vietnam as the French did. Chick offers comfort he doesn’t quite believe, privately sharing Minh’s doubt about the war’s end or America’s staying power.
Chapter 34: “We Cannot Win”
Recovered, Chick finally delivers food to the zoo and to friends. The narrative widens to February 1968: Eddie Adams’s photo captures a Saigon general executing a Vietcong prisoner in the street; the image sears American conscience.
Then comes Walter Cronkite. After witnessing Tet up close, the CBS anchor returns to declare the war a “stalemate” and call for negotiated peace. President Johnson reportedly says, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” In one brutal week, U.S. casualties spike to the war’s deadliest; in living rooms stateside, the center of support falters. Chick, marooned in Saigon, feels the city harden as March looms.
Chapter 35: “We’re Outta Here!”
Escape finally finds him. Vietcong rockets slam ships on the Saigon River, striking the SS Limon. Crewmen are hurt, but Johnny—Chick’s buddy aboard—is alive. The captain, done tempting fate, vows to quit the port. He breaks a longshoremen’s strike by threatening to sail with a full cargo to Manila; the hold empties overnight.
Morning brings an opening: an oiler’s berth stands vacant—one of the wounded won’t return. As a qualified union man, Chick cites the rules and claims the job over the captain’s reluctance. He chooses not to risk a last trip into the city for goodbyes. Instead, he stays aboard, whispering a prayer for the soldiers he’s met—Tommy Collins, Rick Duggan, Kevin McLoone, and Bobby Pappas. At 0800, the Limon noses downriver. Saigon fades; home lies ahead.
Character Development
Chick’s bravado softens into responsibility. The war strips away the lark and leaves a man who acts, thinks, and finally counts the cost.
- Compassion: He fights for Mensch and hauls food to abandoned animals, extending his mission beyond a party trick for hometown friends.
- Self-awareness: The phone call home collapses the distance between his dare and his family’s fear, forcing him to see the hurt he’s caused.
- Pragmatism: When a union loophole opens a path out, he takes it—no theatrics, no risky farewells—choosing survival over sentiment.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters crystallize The Realities and Absurdities of War. Trying to enlist amid airfield gunpoints; feeding caged tigers while mortars fall; debating troop levels in Washington as bodies hit Saigon streets—every scene exposes how policy and daily terror grind against each other. Acts of kindness feel both necessary and faintly ridiculous, which is precisely why they matter.
The arc also tracks the collapse of certainty back home. Cronkite’s editorial punctures a public story of steady progress and confronts the limits of Patriotism and Support for Soldiers. Chick’s private doubts mirror the nation’s, shifting the narrative from swagger to sober reassessment.
Symbols sharpen the themes:
- The Saigon Zoo: Innocents trapped by a conflict they can’t comprehend, kept alive by scraps of compassion—a mirror for civilians, and even conscripts, caught in the gears.
- The Shortwave Radio: A fragile lifeline that briefly collapses distance, carrying love and panic across static to force moral clarity.
Key Quotes
“Do you know what you’re doing to your mother?!”
Chick’s father compresses months of fear into one line. The rebuke cuts through bravado, reframing the “beer run” as a choice with consequences far beyond the war zone.
“We are mired in stalemate.”
Cronkite’s televised verdict names what commanders won’t. The phrase legitimizes doubt for millions and signals that mainstream faith in victory has cracked.
“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
Johnson’s reported reaction acknowledges media power and the evaporation of political cover. The war’s strategic problem becomes a domestic one, reshaping what victory can mean.
“We’re outta here!”
The captain’s declaration turns frustration into action. It catalyzes Chick’s escape and captures the survival instinct overtaking any pretense of control or order.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence closes the Vietnam leg of the story by fusing intimate acts—helping a friend, calling home, feeding caged animals—with public turning points that rewire the war’s trajectory. Chick’s exit arrives not as a cinematic payoff but as a lucky opening seized with clear eyes, underscoring that in war, chance often rules.
As the beer run ends, Chick is not the folk hero he imagined but a witness changed by what he’s seen: a country devouring itself, a public losing faith, and small mercies flickering amid ruin. The stage is set for his return to an America as altered as he is.