- Perry gets assigned on overnight guard duty with a guy named Lobel. Perry's really jumpy, but Lobel's chill.
- He says that he stays calm by pretending he's in a movie. "The part where the star of the movie is sitting in a foxhole explaining how he feels about life and stuff like that. You never get killed in movies when you're doing that." (6.24) Yup, his uncle's a director.
- Other things we (and Perry) learn about Lobel: he's worried that he's almost twenty and still a virgin, and there's a story about how he enlisted that he doesn't want to tell. That's some Hollywood caliber "how he feels about life and stuff like that."
- A TV crew comes in and interviews the men on why they're in Vietnam. Most say some variation of: to stand for something or protect their country.
- Then the TV crew films them going on patrol. Monaco, who is at the front of the group, says he sees a Vietcong and shoots. Perry tries to join in the fire, but his gun doesn't go off.
- They kill one man and drag out his body. The news crew takes a lot of pictures of the body.
- Simpson says he wasn't Vietcong—that he was an official North Vietnamese soldier. Oops.
- The chapter ends with Monaco wanting them to beat another squad at a volleyball game. He thinks the other squad will lose because their best player was just killed.
- And the lighthearted fun just gets better from here.