Yellow Birds

Yellow birds(Review 3)

By:  Kevin Powers

Despite being throw in the desert dust and being constantly fired at Private John Bartle now has to look after an 18 year old baby faced rookie, Murph. As Bartle reunites with is mom during an army dinner Murph, who has become Bartle’s best friend introduced him to his mother made him promise to bring Murph back alive.  Which he agrees to do.

They continue through the desert. Holding camps in buildings forgotten about by life. Left in the eternal dust caused by the bullets ripping into the hot desert ground, the bullets that they fired into the mass of enemies. The dust from there building being slowly worn down by the bullets embedding into it. The odds seem to be against them.

Bartle and Murph experience death first hand. Enough to make it a just another part of life. Bartle and Murph have even gone as far as to make a list of every death counting each off, with a number. There Sargent even “accidently” kills a car full of civilians. They lose entire battalions of men and their closest friends.

Bartle as some accounts of being in trouble after the war. He is addicted to beer and cigarettes and lives in a rundown apartment building. He sits on his roof shooting a cheap rifle.  He had done two things that could land him in jail. One writing a note to a dead man’s mother and promising to bring him back alive.