Summary

Rodriguez is smeared with blood. He wants to talk to the chaplain. The priest had been a light-heavyweight boxer. He knows how the joy of fighting turns to rage. He sees rage on Rodriquez’s bloody face. They are standing outside Charlie Medical where Denton Fujita had just been pronounced dead – the battalion’s twelfth in just four months. Another Marine is having a leg amputation. The priest leaves to check on the amputee. When he returns, Rodriguez is gone.

Later, Rodriguez comes to see the priest. Fujita, the newest member of the squad, had been made to strip and do naked jumping jacks on top of a roof – something Charlie Company did routinely to draw fire. He was shot by a sniper. Rodriguez asks if a person goes to hell for not stopping a murder – murders out there among the...