Richie Perry: A Short Story Of A Soldier

Richie Perry is a seventeen year old kid who couldn’t afford college so he went into the army. He is sent to Vietnam to fight. “All the other guys in the neighborhood thought I was going to college. I wasn’t, and the army was the place I was going to get away from all the questions” (Myers page 15).Since Richie couldn’t afford college, the only place to go was the army. Everyone in the neighborhood thought he was going to college and kept asking him. So, the place he went to get away from all the questions was the army. On arrival he thinks that war is ending and he will mostly likely not fight, but the opposite happens. His first patrol a squad member steps on a mine and is killed, this scares Perry and makes him have horror of the war. Missions and patrols go by as Perry stays scared of war. Then one mission his squad and him are walking through woods when the Vietcong …show more content…
”Either moms didn’t have the money or she had the money, and we had to get some other stupid thing, like food. When everybody got a bike I dint get one ‘cause there was no way we could get the money for a bike. But anything anybody got in the army, I got” (Myers page 15). Peewee grew up poor so anything other kids got he didn’t because of money problems. So, he joined the army because anything someone else got he got. Peewee meets with Richie Perry on the plane ride to Vietnam. He is later put into Richie Perry’s squad. When Richie first meets Peewee, Peewee is seen as an arrogant, cocky, and sometimes strange person. Since Richie is scared of war, Peewee deals with the fear of war through humor and jokes. This helps Richie also with the fear. As him and Richie become great friends, Richie now knows that Peewee is actually a kind, and loyal man to his squad and him. Helping Richie with the fear of war through humor, made it easier for Richie to fight in missions is seen through the