Brad comes up to nab Espera for a meeting with Nate and tells him to quit with the white man's oppression for five seconds. "I was just elucidating on the white man's burden, Dog." It's helpful, isn't it, to have an actual mouthpiece character in the source material. All these speeches, I can't vouch for all of them, but a lot of them are verbatim. Poke is so awesome. He waves Evan out from under the truck and catches a look from Brad. "What? Just wanted to get one last cigarette before we all die."

The Platoon's team leaders are standing around talking about the latest from that Army hit. Pappy's talking about how they had eleven soldiers captured: "Showed them on Arab TV. Abusing them on TV." Christopher (I think) is pretty upset. "Shit, they raped the one woman soldier. They broke her bones and then raped her." Brad, approaching, reminds them that in "this neck of desert," it's not just the women that get raped. "In your dreams, Brad," says Espera, and Nate starts the meeting. "As we learned today from the eight hours we spent getting our asses shot at by the Euphrates, the enemy's got some fight in him. I have no word on our mission, but I assume we're going into Nasiriyah. Those are all casevac birds. Word is that Taskforce Tarawa's taken 200 casualties in that city." Pappy asks when they go in, and Nate tells him about Godfather's meeting with the Company commanders above. Wynn tells the team leaders to get their teams some sleep while they can.