In this chapter, Lee and his unit fall under the command of Lt. Colonel Derek Bozoner. Bozoner tells them he can kill them if they don’t follow his orders. He then takes them-along with some other men working under him-to small Vietnamese villages where they hand out supplies to the starving people. Lee meets a cute little Vietnamese boy named Dung, who follows him everywhere. During their last visit, Dung asks Lee to be his father. Before Lee can answer, there is a stirring in the camp-and we witness the scene Lee described in Chapter 1 when Bozoner held a gun to his head, threatening to kill him if he did not fire on the villagers. But this time, we see the actual outcome.
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I never went to Vietnam and I was never in the Army, but the main character Lee needed that experience to make it believable that he would be tough enough to do the other things he does later in his life in the story. I did a ton of research, and what kept coming up from the guys that did go was how impoverished so many of the people were. I felt it was important to try and paint that picture for Lee to experience. Bozoner is not based on a real soldier, but I did read about a lot of atrocities by our guys as well as by the enemy, and some articles talked about how the government wanted to make it look more like we were winning the war, because every night on the news, the number of American dead being reported was really alarming. And there was a huge backlash in the country, especially among young people, against our being there in the first place. SO with all that going on, I felt Bozoner could be a believable character. - JN