Charlie Company radios in a report that only comes through about halfway; they're taking arms fire at something something east. Alpha Company is also in the mix. And what's Bravo doing? Rolling slowly toward the city. They finally get to the wreckage of the Army supply company that got destroyed, and the devastation is pretty intense: lots of blood and exploded American-looking things. Encino Man radios Godfather to ask if he wants Bravo to come help Alpha, but Godfather tells them to stay back from the river and "take an overwatch position." Bravo Company will basically be standing around, unless there are casevacs, and then they'll provide cover, I think, is the plan.

Brad watches Patterson through binoculars as Alpha engages the enemy, then watches the city explosions and artillery fire. It's like a storm moving toward you: getting closer, and closer, and then boom: it becomes real. There's a very subtle theme throughout this episode having to do with eyesight, with scopes and looking at the same things in the same way in the same light or through the same technology, how your circumstances can completely change what you see and how you see it. Like, we at home have the luxury of watching this show, or not, and have completely lost control over the images of the war itself because the fourth estate has been so compromised by the culture of fear that serves this war, so we don't really have the option of choosing what we see and what we don't -- to the degree that these guys do -- because there's nothing for us to see. At least in Viet Nam they showed the bodies on TV. Anyway. Ray whines about Alpha getting some, but Brad's still being Iceman: "They have their mission, we have ours."

Fucking Sixta walks through the A-O with a giant shit-eating grin on his face, as bombs and mortars and artillery and all kinds of other words for things that go bang are going off all around him. It's like a music video about the world ending, and he's giving some kind of bullshitty yee-haw napalm in the AM thing about how he "loves this shit" and "we're in the middle of it now boys" and he yells at Garza to get down off the truck, blah blah, dick-swinging as usual, and off-screen somebody says between explosions, "Fuck this shit, for sure."

Brad asks Nate, hunkered down by a truck, how long they have to sit in the middle of the open air, "with our nuts out, getting shot at," before RCT-1 actually goes into the town. Nate gives his usual deadpan: "Brad, we sit here with our nuts exposed. But when RCT-1 assaults over the bridge and we go in behind to get their casualties, we get our nuts blown completely off." Nearby, Evan's pretty jumpy because everything is exploding all over the fucking place. Brad suggests they dig in, and Nate tosses his junk into a vehicle and heads to Espera just as some RCT-1 grunts take friendly fire. Doc Bryan comes running up, summoned by the casualties, and doesn't get two words out before Nate okays him to go help. He goes about fixing everything in his usual calm, angry, kind way.