Born on the Fourth of July

Chapter 3 covers Kovic’s upbringing and the path that led him to Vietnam. He opens the chapter by stating that “for me it began in 1946 when I was born on the Fourth of July,” which “was a proud day to be born on” (61). He introduces his childhood life of watching war movies and cartoons and playing baseball and war games with his friends Bobby Zimmer, Tommy Law, and Richie Castiglia. As a child, Kovic’s heroes were Mickey Mantle and John Wayne (especially as he appeared in The Sands of Iwo Jima), and while playing war games Kovic and his friends would “walk out of the woods like the heroes we knew we would become when we were men” (70). Kovic also says he “loved God more than anything else in the world back then” and would pray that he could be a “good American” (65). The worship of war movies, desire to be a good American, his Catholic faith, and the military recruitment pamphlets they see lead him and Richie to vow to each other that the day they turn 17, they will go to the local recruitment office and sign up for the Marine Corps.