The Yellow Birds

The novel begins with the line, “The war tried to kill us in the spring,” and continues to describe the war in abstract terms, moving into summer and describing the landscape’s change from green to brown. The narrator, whom we will find out later is named John Bartle, often “Bart” for short,speculates on fate, in regard to both the soldiers and the war itself, discussing how they didn’t want to be the thousandth soldier to die in the war and saying, “The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get” (4). The narrative then shifts into a more specific timeline, moving into September. Bart says, “everything that will ever matter in my life began” (4).

Bart and the rest of his platoon have taken up a position on a rooftop just outside of a town in northern Iraq called Al Tafar, and dawn is spreading on (perhaps) a Sunday morning. Here we are introduced to other main characters, most notably Bart’s bunkmate, Daniel Murphy (“Murph”), and Sergeant Sterling. In the near-dawn, they are waiting, smoking or chewing tobacco, until the Lieutenant calls “On your toes, guys!” in answer to which Bart says to Murph, “Here we go again,” and Murph replies, “Same old shit again” (7).

Before the attack begins, however, the narrative shifts back in time, to when the soldiers first arrived at this position in the “first hours of the battle” (7). That first morning, while the fighting was in another part of the town and had not reached them yet, their interpreter, Malik, had been telling Bart and Murph that he had grown up near here, standing and indicating the direction. Bart and Murph both tried to get him to crouch down again behind the walls, but Malik’s “eyes were glazed over with exhaustion,” and it is like he didn’t hear them (10). Gunshots begin, and in the battle, Malik is killed and falls to the ground below. “We did not see Malik get killed,” Bart says, “but Murph and I had his blood on both of our uniforms” (11).

The chapter then shifts again into a more abstract rumination on how the soldiers conceive of and deal with death, returning to the idea of not being the thousandth killed, and the revelation that “War is the great maker of solipsists” and “You’re nothing, that’s the secret: a uniform in a sea of numbers” (12). It’s also revealed that Murph is eventually killed.

The narrative returns to the present moment, four or so days after Malik’s death, with the incipient battle. Mortars begin falling and then cease. Bart contrasts himself to Sergeant Sterling, who “excelled in death and brutality and domination,” and whom Bart needed “to jar [him] into action even when they were trying to kill me” (19). The battle begins in earnest, and it takes a while before Bart pulls his trigger. He is conflicted about killing the men across the field they are firing at, almost thinking to tell the others to stop firing, but then continuing and (he is sure) firing the fatal bullet in one case. Later, a car drives across the field with white flags out the windows, and Bart can see it is an old man and woman, but doesn’t tell Sterling, who riddles it with machine gun fire, killing both occupants. Murph exclaims “Holy Shit, that bitch got murdered” (22). A girl comes out and cradles the old woman’s body. The chapter ends with Bart considering the next mission, and trying to remember, looking back on this time, whether he could see any indication that Murph would soon be dead.