Novel Without a Name

After leaving the unit, Quan returns to the front, where he looks for the little girl who helped him on his way to his village. While he is looking for them, the area he is in is bombed, and he hides with a woman and her six children. Quan attempts to refuse food in order for the family to have more, but the woman insists that he must eat to keep up fighting strength. The woman says that she will one day return to her village, once “those American bastards leave” (200).

Quan hitches a ride on a truck, where he and the driver discuss getting lost in the forest and finding skeletons. Vu, the driver, wonders, “After the war, will they come back and look for all the soldiers’ bones?” (205).

When Quan returns to division headquarters, he learns that “during [his] absence [his] friend Luy had gone mad” (206). He also notes that a recent battle was a triumph for the North Vietnamese.

One of Quan’s unit members, Hung, gets into a fight with another unit member and stabs him. Quan learns that Hung and Teu–the man he stabbed–were upset over a trick played with food.