John "Chick" Donohue

Quick Facts

• Role: Protagonist and narrator; an ex–Marine turned merchant seaman from Inwood, Manhattan
• First appearance: Chapter 1 (1967), age 26, deciding on a wild mission over beers
• Occupation at start: Merchant seaman; veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps
• Home base: A tight-knit Irish-American neighborhood where bar talk becomes marching orders
• Key relationships: Neighborhood friends (Tommy Collins, Rick Duggan, Kevin McLoone, Bobby Pappas); his bartender who dares him to go; shipmate Johnny Jackson; the U.S. Embassy official “Heller”

Who They Are

Bold, loyal, and brimming with barroom bravado, John “Chick” Donohue is the ordinary New Yorker who does an extraordinary thing: he decides to carry a taste of home—American beer—into a war zone to find his friends. What begins as a half-joke becomes a test of nerve, wit, and conscience. Chick’s swagger never fully disappears, but the deeper he ventures, the more it gives way to a complicated moral clarity. He becomes the reader’s stand-in, stumbling from street-corner patriotism into the human tangle of a war that defies easy slogans.

Personality & Traits

Chick’s persona is a cocktail of gregarious daring and stubborn loyalty, shaken by experience into sober insight. His instinct is to act first and figure out the plan later, yet his improvisational intelligence keeps him alive. The very qualities that propel him into Vietnam—impulse, charm, and a neighborhood-code sense of duty—are the ones that help him navigate it.

• Loyal and brave: His mission is a pure expression of Friendship, Loyalty, and Camaraderie—risking his life simply to say, “You’re not forgotten,” one beer at a time.
• Impulsive and audacious: He admits the whole idea began as “a flippant thing to say” before he decides, with startling speed, to go through with it (Chapter 1).
• Resourceful and quick-witted: From sweet-talking his way onto military transports to gaming red tape, he leverages the “CIA Effect”—officers assume this inexplicable civilian must be important—and rides that misunderstanding to access and safety (Chapter 6; Chapter 9).
• Anti-authoritarian: Despite being a Marine vet, he distrusts authority—“captains especially” (Chapter 5)—and thrives by bending rules rather than saluting them.
• Patriotic but evolving: He starts from uncomplicated Patriotism and Support for Soldiers, skeptical of protesters; firsthand exposure to chaos, loss, and leadership failures complicates those instincts.
• Visually out of place—on purpose: Red hair, white jeans, a madras shirt—his “golf outing” getup makes him an unmistakable civilian in a military world, a running joke that underscores his outsider status (Chapter 1; Chapter 6). By Saigon, he’s “filthy-dirty,” the look of a tourist turned witness (Chapter 14).

Character Journey

Chick’s arc runs from a neighborhood dare to a moral reckoning. He starts with a simple creed—my friends are over there; I should be, too—and the practical confidence that his seaman’s papers can get him into Vietnam (Chapter 1). Close calls with frontline units, a terrifying firefight with Rick Duggan’s outfit (Chapter 12), and finally being trapped in Saigon during the Tet Offensive force his transformation from spectator to participant. The shock of embassy gunfire, street battles near the Presidential Palace, and mounting civilian and military casualties push him beyond tidy narratives into The Realities and Absurdities of War. By the end, he retains love for the soldiers but no longer trusts the institutions sending them into harm’s way, embracing ambiguity over certainty.

Key Relationships

• The Neighborhood Friends (Tommy Collins, Rick Duggan, Kevin McLoone, Bobby Pappas): They are Chick’s compass and cause. Each reunion—whether joyous, grimy, or cut short—reaffirms that his mission isn’t about beer at all, but about bringing home to the men who can’t go there themselves.

• George “The Colonel” Lynch: The neighborhood’s bartender-ideologue whose “challenge” converts bar talk into a mission. The Colonel embodies the patriotic impulse that launches Chick; as the story unfolds, Chick honors that loyalty while arriving at a more complex view of the war the Colonel cheered.

• Johnny Jackson: A fellow merchant mariner who becomes Chick’s lifeline during Tet—offering food, cash, and a pocket of sanity when the city erupts. Johnny’s aid reframes the beer run as mutual care among civilians caught between fronts.

• “Heller”: Initially the face of infuriating bureaucracy at the U.S. Embassy, Heller shifts into a pragmatic ally during crisis. The evolution from stonewalling to life-saving assistance mirrors Chick’s broader lesson: individuals can rise to the moment even when institutions falter.

Defining Moments

Chick’s story pivots on decisions and shocks that reshape his motives and worldview.

• The Barroom Pledge (Chapter 1): A “preposterous” idea is accepted on the spot, turning bluster into action. Why it matters: It reveals Chick’s habit of leaping first—and establishes loyalty as his operating principle.
• The Outfit Joke in Qui Nhon (Chapter 6): “White jeans and a madras shirt?” Tommy laughs; the gag becomes a motif. Why it matters: His clothes mark him as a civilian emissary, not a soldier, sharpening the book’s civilian/soldier contrast.
• The Firefight with Rick Duggan (Chapter 12): Terror at an ambush post strips away any romantic sheen war might have held. Why it matters: Chick’s self-image shifts from plucky visitor to vulnerable participant.
• Trapped by Tet (Chapters 20–23): He witnesses the embassy attack and battles around the Presidential Palace. Why it matters: The war’s scale and incoherence eclipse his personal errand, forcing a reckoning with policy, leadership, and loss.
• The Phone Call Home (Chapter 32): “Do you know what you’re doing to your mother?!” his father says. Why it matters: The adventure’s consequences ripple back to Inwood, grounding heroics in family fear.
• Kissing the Ground in Seattle (Chapter 36): Relief spills into a physical gesture of gratitude. Why it matters: Survival itself becomes the prize, marking an end to innocence.

Essential Quotes

I felt the same way as he did, but actually going there seemed a little extreme. I couldn’t give the Colonel my seaman’s card. And I had been “on the beach”—slang for not working on a ship—for a while now. I was doing nothing, simply hanging out and drinking beer with my buddies, while our friends were over there dying or wounded or in harm’s way.
I thought, I have the right ID papers to slip into Vietnam as a civilian. I have the time. Maybe I can do this. No: I have to do this. (Chapter 1)

This is Chick’s mission-statement moment. The shift from “maybe” to “I have to” crystallizes how idle guilt becomes action—and how his seaman’s papers, not a grand plan, become the lever that moves him into the war.

“This is from the Colonel and me and all the guys in Doc Fiddler’s,” I told him. “We all talked about it, and we decided that somebody ought to come over here and buy you guys a drink in appreciation for what you are doing. Well, here I am!” (Chapter 6)

He frames each beer as a message from home, not a stunt. The line translates neighborhood loyalty into a ritual of recognition, showing that the “run” is really a courier service for belonging.

It was then that I thought . . . I actually might have died.
I thought I might have been shot in front of the embassy like the others there; that I had died instantly behind that tree, because I didn’t remember being wounded. I thought I might be dead, and I wondered how my family would take it. I fell deep in thought, and I went back to my Catholicism, my religious training, and I believed then that I must be in purgatory. (Chapter 24)

In the disorientation of Tet, Chick’s mind reaches for religious language—purgatory—to explain trauma. The image captures his movement from beer-bearing visitor to someone spiritually and physically suspended between life and death.

If there is one thing that I learned as a result of my Vietnam experience is that government—all governments for that matter—are not to be trusted. Many politicians lie when it serves their interests. (Afterword)

The afterword codifies his transformation. Loyalty remains—for friends and fellow servicemen—but the institution-level trust he began with is gone, replaced by a wary realism born of witnessing war’s costs up close.