Chapter 5, Part III Colleagues Summary and Analysis

Upon returning to the States, Herr keeps in touch with his correspondent friends and feels incomplete, but he does not want to desire war all the time. Strange dreams haunt him during the first month back. Longing and emptiness mark his visits with old friends.

The news breaks that a large piece of shrapnel has hit Page at the base of his brain. Not expected to live, Page pulls through. Expected to be paralyzed on one side of his body, Page regains significant but not total use of his limbs. Not only surviving but expanding his odd personality, Page throws a party for his twenty-fifth birthday. He tells of a British publisher who wants him to write a book about Vietnam that would take the glamor out of war. Page turns the offer down flat...