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 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Chapter 15 begins back in Washington DC, where General Chiarelli is planning another event with senators and other important figures in order to try to raise the profile of the issue of preventing veteran suicides.
There is much fuss over minutiae—menus and guest lists. One senator backs out due to scheduling conflicts, then another, and the event quickly unravels and is postponed. General Chiarelli retires a few months later.
Around this same time, Saskia is in California, watching her husband and several other wounded veterans graduate from the program. She is moved to tears many times. Schumann speaks at the ceremony. He has lived up to his promise when he had turned back to the center to complete Trauma Group. He says: “It feels like in the last couple of weeks, a million pounds have been lifted off my back. I can breathe again. I can wake up in the morning and smile. For the first time, I’m not thinking about killing myself every day” (246).
Schumann and Saskia begin their drive back home. Both are quiet. Schumann keeps asking if she’s nervous, and they are more considerate of one another than they have been in a long time. As they make their way home, they stop at Schumann’s grandmother’s house and see relatives. They stop near Denver and Schumann meets with Golembe, the soldier who said James Doster would not have died if Schumann had been on patrol that day. They talk about what happened, their history together, and how Golembe had hated Schumann for a while. Schumann urges Golembe to get help, and asks if he may have Traumatic Brain Injury himself. Golembe says that they should get drunk together. Finkel writes that “they don’t. Instead, they try to get unfucked up as they stand together under a sky so clear that when they look up they must be looking at five hundred thousand stars” (251). Saskia and Schumann continue their long drive home, fighting a couple of times and then making up. She is now in counseling and on antidepressants.
Chapter 16 Summary
The last chapter is the shortest in the book; in it, Finkel offers how the book’ central figures are faring.
Shawnee and Aurora still live in the house where Holmes hung himself. Shawnee can’t afford to move. She had a new boyfriend, but ended it when he hit her. She is exhausted and has gone from sleeping pills and anxiety meds to antidepressants.
Emory is embracing life, as hard as it may be, realizing he’s lucky to be alive and able to walk and talk. He still speaks to his daughter regularly, and is waiting for his nurse to arrive and help him dress.
Kristy Robinson is having a birthday party for Summer, who is turning 3. The house still bears the scars of Jessie’s rage. She is still seeing Kent, the math teacher. At times, she misses Jessie so much she will break down and cry.
DeNinno has spent two years in WTB, gone to treatment in Pueblo twice, and has tried suicide twice as well. He wants to get off the pills the VA pumps into him, and his case manager says they will make a plan. His guilt still haunts him.
Aieti is still in school and still in the WTB, where he is told he will remain for some time. He is feeling better, and even had a good dream about his son, as opposed to the recurring nightmares he usually has.
Amanda Doster is three days from the anniversary of James Doster’s death. She has made her usual plans, but this time she is much more frantic than usual, and asks Sally to finish the quilts she has been working on for her daughters, if Amanda can’t finish them. She has a lump in her neck the doctor wants biopsied.
Finkel writes:
Everywhere on this day, the after-war continues, as eternally as war itself, and now it comes to a house that Adam and Saskia arrive at after a daylong drive through the crimson-gashed grass fields of Kansas. It’s late afternoon when they pull up, almost four years after Adam came home the first time in shame. This time, no one is rushing toward him asking him what happened. Instead, he pauses in front of the house and squeezes the outstretched hand of his son.
For a thousand days, he had been the great Sergeant Schumann.
Then he was injured.
Then he was dead.
Then he was done.
Now, another thousand days later, he points toward the front steps of a home that in this one moment seems like the most peaceful place in the world (256).
Chapters 15-16 Analysis
These concluding chapters chronicle the ongoing difficulties soldiers and their families face each day. Schumann, Aieti, and DeNinno have completed or are in treatment. Saskia is in counseling and taking antidepressants. Kristy is doing her best to move on, but is still actively grieving. Amanda continues to try to stay in control, but is fearful she may now have cancer. Holmes kills himself. Shawnee, Holmes’s former fiancée, is struggling and on meds. Nothing is the same as before these soldiers went to war. It seems fair to conclude, as well, that nothing ever will be the same again. We are made witness to the hard work the soldiers must do to reintegrate into society following the horrors they’ve seen, and may have participated in, while enlisted. The price they pay is too high, and the people who try to help them heal know the soldiers and veterans deserve better than what they are afforded once stateside.
