Going After Cacciato

The novel begins with the statement, “It was a bad time” (1) and lists the men who have died: Billy Boy Watkins, Frenchie Tucker, Bernie Lynn, Lieutenant Sidney Martin, Pederson, Rudy Chassler, Buff, and Ready Mix. The rain is constant, filling the foxholes, ruining the ammunition, and causing fungus to grow on the men’s feet. Their new lieutenant, Lieutenant Corson, has dysentery. Vaught scraped diseased skin off his arm with his bayonet, and infection set in; he was pulled out of the war and lost his arm. Ben Nystrom shot himself in the foot. The men joke about all of these things.

In October, Doc Peret tells Lieutenant Corson that Cacciato has gone, after telling Paul Berlin that he was going to Paris. The lieutenant lies in his underwear smoking a joint; he’s old and ill—he should have been a major, but “whiskey and the fourteen dull years between Korea and Vietnam had ended all that” (2). Eventually he sits up and begins to think about what to do.

The lieutenant asks Paul—who he thinks is Vaught—what Cacciato is doing. Paul tells him Cacciato is planning to walk the 8,600 miles to Paris. The lieutenant decides that Cacciato’s squad, the Third Squad (consisting of Paul, Doc, Eddie Lazzutti, Stink Harris, Oscar Johnson, and Harold Murphy) will go after Cacciato.

Stink points out Cacciato around noon the next day, half a mile up the mountain. As they climb, Paul thinks about Cacciato: “Open-faced and naïve and plump, Cacciato lacked the fine detail, the refinements and final touches, that maturity ordinarily marks on a boy of seventeen years…All this, Stink said, added up to a case of gross stupidity” (8). Paul remembers Cacciato studying the atlas and thinks his venture is sad.

They reach the top of the mountain, and Eddie finds Cacciato’s camp littered with candy wrappers, used Sterno, and a partially burned map with a red dotted line. They smoke a joint and rest. Doc suggests they turn back, and Harold Murphy agrees, but the lieutenant says no.

Cacciato waves at them from the top of the second mountain the next day. The lieutenant is sick and passes the binoculars to Paul, who watches Cacciato flap his arms until he starts to fly. Every time Cacciato opens his mouth, it thunders, but Paul reads his lips; Cacciato is saying good-bye.

That night, the lieutenant radios in that he’s pursuing the enemy, but he refuses weaponry. Paul tells Doc that he hopes Cacciato keeps going. He wonders how it will end and is scared by an image of Cacciato’s head exploding—a real possibility in a war. Paul remembers brave things Cacciato did—shooting someone and pulling someone out of a bunker.

They continue to march for days without sight of Cacciato. Occasionally, they come across items he’s left behind. On the sixth day, Stink spots Cacciato standing casually just ahead. Stink fires two rounds in the air and charges forward, tripping a wire. The men hit the ground. Paul is terrified; he tries to count as his bowels release, but it turns out to be only a red smoke bomb.

Later, Oscar is sent with a white flag to talk to Cacciato, to tell him he will be court-martialed, that he will starve, but Cacciato says he’s sorry about the smoke bomb and refuses to go back. Instead of sleeping, Paul stares toward Cacciato and tries to imagine a happy ending in which they go to Paris. Late at night, Paul wakes up and looks at the constellations that his father taught him and wishes that Cacciato had left the trails and run through the night.

The next morning, they wake up and separate to surround Cacciato. Paul wishes for a point when things would be better. Each of the groups fires a flare when the men are in position. Paul fires his flare and shouts, “Go!” (25).