Spare Parts

In Kuwait City, hungry children swarm Williams’s LAV, looking for food and water. While they are eating and drinking, a car comes out of the city and tries to run them over. Captain Cruz explains the children were Palestinian, second-rate citizens in Kuwait, and the men were Kuwaiti. He says there’s nothing they can do.

That night, the LAV begins to take fire. Williams want to return fire, but Moss can’t find the muzzle flashes, nor can he get Sgt. Krause on the radio. When he makes the decision to drive to Krause’s position, fearing they need help, he finds Krause and his crew asleep. Moss doesn’t report the incident, but he gains honor in the eyes of his fellow Marines.

On guard in Kuwait City, near a water plant, a Kuwaiti named Jabul tells them of the atrocities the Iraqis committed when they captured the city. Williams doesn’t really understand, the same way he didn’t understand what the war would mean when he was in LAV school. After going through houses where women were raped, a room where men were tortured, and a room where executions took place, Williams thinks about the atrocities of war, and how no one in the United States can understand them.