Word comes down that some of the senior battalion commanders will soon be visiting Matterhorn. This means that the enlisted men and soldiers need to clean up so they look professional and soldierly in front of the senior officers. This command doesn’t go over well with some of the soldiers. One of the squad leaders, Jancowitz, doesn’t want to shave his mustache. More problematically, Parker, one of the African American soldiers, refuses to cut his Afro. Parker says that his hair isn’t nearly as long as that of some of the white soldiers who use grease to slick down their hair. Because his hair is kinky, it sits higher on his head. Parker approaches Mellas with his problem and asks to see the higher commander. Mellas takes Parker up the hill to see Fitch, the company commander. But Fitch says that orders are orders and commands Parker to cut his hair. That night a few of the white soldiers come and find Parker. They shout racial epithets at him and hold him down while they completely shave his head.

Broyer, another African American in Mellas’s platoon, goes off to find China, the unofficial leader of the black men in Bravo Company. Broyer apprises China of the situation with Parker’s hair, and China tells Broyer to send Parker his way. When Parker meets up with China, China scolds Parker and tells him that he shouldn’t pick fights with the leadership over unimportant issues, such as haircuts. China tells him that they are “biding their time” until the “real showdown.”

Out on a routine patrol, Mellas and the first squad come upon evidence of North Vietnamese Army (or NVA) troops in the near-vicinity. Mellas sends a trio of riflemen, a fire team led by a soldier named Rider, to the front while the rest of the squad holds back. Suddenly they hear a blaze of firing. Mellas has his radio signalman order mortar attacks to the location of the NVA. After a while, the firing dies down, and then Rider and his men return unharmed. Rider reports that they saw three enemy soldiers and that he believes he killed one of them. Mellas radios in the report, and they go looking for evidence of the NVA. Even though they don’t find hard evidence that they have killed any enemy soldiers, the report goes back to headquarters and up the chain of command, becoming more and more exaggerated with every pass, until the official line is ten NVA men dead.