57 pages • 1 hour read
David FinkelThank You For Your Service
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Schumann’s typical work day begins with him oversleeping, taking his meds, and begrudgingly heading to his cubicle at a call center. He searches for other jobs online while at work, but really doesn’t want to be anything, except the soldier he can never be again.
A coworker makes Schumann feel worse about himself. This veteran, Calvin, has PTSD, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), and had 40% of his body burned while enlisted. He also has limited range of movement and hearing aids in both ears. He went through a wide range of emotions and ample rehabilitation, and has accepted his present situation. Calvin has to lay out all his clothes and everything else he needs for work. His memory and organization skills are so impaired he must have a precise routine to manage simple daily tasks. He wishes he could still be in the military, but knows he can’t.
Finkel introduces the reader to General Peter Chiarelli, the US Army vice chief of staff. He is in Washington, DC, holding a press conference on the new suicide prevention program he’s spearheaded.
Chiarelli feels a personal responsibility to help ease the stigma and improve the care available to veterans to deal with PTSD and brain injury, and to prevent the rising suicide rate. He has guilt over a memorial erected to his soldiers, as he agreed to omit name of one soldier who took his own life.
His dedication to changing the environment for veterans struggling with such issues involves starting a program to go over, in-depth, each soldier’s story after a suicide, to see what signs were missed and determine what went wrong.
The stories Chiarelli hears are varied, and he reminds those reporting to focus on the behaviors leading up to the suicide, rather than the details of the suicides themselves.
They have not learned a great deal at this point, but some warning signs or common factors emerge in the meetings. Those with repeated deployments are more at risk, while those who are married have less risk. Guns and liquor prove to be an often deadly combination. More time off between deployments has been found to be helpful. And yet there are many more factors, and it often proves hard to separate out the background of the soldiers from their respective wartime experiences, in regard to what caused the person to take their own life.
Chapter 6 Summary
Schumann bought a boat soon after arriving home from serving, but eventually he and his wife couldn’t afford the payments. While they had it, they enjoyed happy family moments and there’d be no fighting. Schumann finds a little abandoned skiff in the woods and tries his best to fix it up, but ultimately it doesn’t work and again he’s disappointed. Finkel writes:
It is such a lonely life, this life afterward. During the war, it wasn’t that way, even in in the loneliest moments, when somewhere in the big night sky was a mortar that was on its way down and there was nothing to do but wait for it. Over time, the war came to mean less and less until it meant nothing at all, and meanwhile the other soldiers meant more and more until they came to mean everything (86).
In Chiarelli’s suicide meetings, they stress the importance of camaraderie, and what a difference it can make for the soldiers affected by PTSD. Schumann longs for that connection again, but feels so alone, even when at home with family. He does reconnect with another soldier from his first deployment, Stephen. Stephen and his wife, Christina, hang out with Schumann and Saskia. Stephen came home with TBI and PTSD. He has a cyst on his brain and will sometimes have fits and collapse.
Christina and Saskia hit it off, commiserating about their difficulties. Christina goes to therapy, and tells Saskia she is supposed to be grieving for the man she once loved and the life they once shared. The women cry together. Saskia is envious, however, when Stephen gets $11,000 from the VA, while Saskia and Schumann struggle financially.
Schumann remembers some dogs that had become part of the unit in Iraq. The soldiers fed and played with them, even letting the mutts sleep by them. One day, an Iraqi policeman got irritated at one of the dogs for barking, and slices the dog’s Achilles tendon. Later, Schumann heard some soldiers held down the Iraqi man and did the same to him.
Emory emails Schumann to say that he’s coming to town. Emory has paralysis on his left side, and took a bullet right through his brain, affecting his emotions and impulse control. He has a nurse that comes to care for him, paid for by VA. Emory also sees a psychologist, who thinks Schumann and Emory will both benefit from the meeting.
The men discuss the day Emory was shot, and Schumann’s guilt. Emory says he appreciates his help and is glad to be alive, even the way his life is.
They go fishing together, and Saskia watches her husband care for Emory, being so much more attentive and tender than he’s been with her. She feels petty for being jealous.
There’s another bad fight and Saskia finds Schumann in the basement with his shotgun under his chin. They struggle with the gun until Jaxon, upstairs, begins crying. This jars Schumann back into his senses.
Zoe, Schumann’s daughter, has been given a puppy. The animal is hurt and needs $1100 worth of treatment. There’s no money to spare. The puppy seems to help Zoe feel better, and Zoe no longer wets her bed. Schumann tells Saskia about the dog in Iraq, and decides to sell his guns to get the money for the puppy.
The guns are out of the house and the fighting subsides. Schumann goes bow hunting, and for a moment, he feels good.
Chapter 7 Summary
Near the third anniversary of Doster’s death, Amanda’s frantic that the baby maple tree at the nursery will not be planted at the new house in time for the big day. It’s the tree that was planted after James’s death, at the old house. Amanda has made elaborate plans of how to spend the day, including special cupcakes ordered from Washington DC, new necklaces for the girls, and time spent with only those closest to her, and who were in some way connected to James. She is overly protective of the girls, and lets, or even brings, the younger daughter to sleep with her each night.
Amanda had been very close to Saskia in the beginning, having Saskia at her side during all the new widow’s chores, including picking out urns and signing papers. When she got her money, Saskia asked Amanda for a loan to fix up their house, for Schumann’s homecoming. Amanda loaned her several thousand, but three years have passed and Amanda realizes neither the money nor their friendship will return.
Amanda’s house was built by a man named Larry, who lives nearby, and whom Amanda calls on any time anything happens with the house. She got close to the lieutenant in charge of Doster’s platoon, to the point where the girls called him Uncle Alex, but he got transferred out of state, and she then became attached to the young medic from Doster’s platoon, the one who tried desperately to save Doster. Amanda and the medic, Matt, have a complicated relationship. There is no hint of romance; rather, it’s guilt and regret that bind them together.
Amanda’s friend, Sally, will spend the anniversary with her, and even spend the night. Sally and her husband are devout Christians and believe Amanda came into their lives for a reason; thus, Sally is eternally patient with all Amanda needs. Larry calls Amanda and tells her the tree will be planted in time. Amanda cries hard.
Eventually, Amanda takes the girls to the cemetery, where headstones are erected for soldiers who didn’t come home whole, were cremated, or were never retrieved. She feels so tense that she snaps a bit at the girls, and then feels guilty. James’s ashes are still in a box in the gun safe.
Amanda asks her older daughter to read a Bible verse to her while they drive, and Kathryn finds a note Amanda had written listing what kind of man it would take to marry again. It had 37 items listed, all traits James possessed.
Amanda and the girls find a perfect tiny acorn near James’s headstone, and she takes it home and puts it in the sawdust taken from Doster’s things in the garage. She hopes to plant it later. Finkel includes an excerpt from her journal: “‘It hit me that this loneliness, this overwhelming feeling that a part of me is missing, will never really go away. Sometimes it’s a dull ache that I can push aside and just keep going. Today my heart actually hurts from missing him’” (111).
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
In these chapters, another year or so has passed, and we see further disintegration in Schumann, in his marriage, and even with his daughter, Zoe, who seems to absorb all the stress and displays it through the act of regularly wetting the bed.
Schumann can’t fix the memory of the dog in Iraq, and the violence that stains that memory, but he can fix the puppy for Zoe, and decides to sell his guns. He gets the guns out of the house, gets the puppy treated, and helps his daughter. While his psyche may remain ragged, we see Schumann attempting to do the right things, and, for this, he is rewarded, in that the fights between him and Saskia lessen.
Schumann’s decision to sell his guns comes soon after he nearly takes his life in front of Saskia:
He says something now, something about wishing he had died in Iraq. More things come out. About guilt. About being a bad husband, a bad father, a disappointment; about being twenty-nine and feeling ninety; about being a disgrace. His mind is roaring, and meanwhile his thumb is still on the trigger, the safety is off, the gun remains loaded, and Saskia stands next to him begging and waiting for the sound of the gun and for him to explode (104).
In being able to focus on helping others, Schumann in turn helps himself. Schumann and Saskia have struggled in every way: financially, in their marriage, and with their friendships. At the end of Chapter 7, the reader is made privy to a glimmer of hope.
We also see that Saskia is, at times, as much on edge as her husband, whether it’s cursing at other drivers on the road, snapping at Schumann, or envying others who seem to have it better. She has envy for Amanda and her financial situation, as well as other Army vets who get better benefits, unexpected back-pay, and the like.
Meanwhile, Amanda Doster remains fixated on James’s death, and is, in many ways, unable to move forward. She’s trying desperately to arrange her life, control situations and do what she thinks James would have done. She believes he brought order to her life, and by lining everything up just so in the pantry, and planning her days perfectly, somehow she is keeping him close.
Amanda’s need to retain every bit of her memories of James, along with every item of her dead husband’s belongings, extends to those who knew him in the war. She has become dependent on different soldiers from the platoon, until they have to move on. She soaks up Sally’s goodness, and leans hard on those who will allow it. She seems to be driven to perfectionism, but we see her as barely holding together.
When Schumann and Emory reunite, it begins to open Schumann up a bit more. However, Saskia is envious again, this time of the attention Schumann shows his fellow veteran. Little by little, Schumann begins telling Saskia more about the war.
Emory gives Schumann warnings about not letting his marriage dissolve, and that Emory wishes he were still married. He also gives Schumann a bit of the forgiveness he needs, and it restores some of the camaraderie they both miss.
