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Lieutenant Carroll
Monaco is an Italian-American soldier in the same squad as Peewee, Johnson, Brunner, Brewster, Lobel, Walowick, and Sergeant Simpson. He has a girlfriend back home who proposes to him by letter while he’s in Vietnam, and he plans to invite the whole squad to the wedding. Under Simpson and Dongan, Monaco frequently takes point on patrols. When one night patrol goes disastrously, he misses the evacuation helicopter and becomes a Vietcong prisoner, but Perry and Peewee rescue him. He spends a short time in Chu Lai recuperating from his concussion but is sent back to the unit before Perry and Peewee get their medical discharges.
Monaco Quotes in Fallen Angels
The Fallen Angels quotes below are all either spoken by Monaco or refer to Monaco. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4 Quotes
“You call that a sport?” Monaco asked. “I mean, there you are, you gotta weigh two hundred pounds, and you got a rifle, and you’re against a squirrel that weighs maybe two or three pounds, and he ain’t got nothing.”
“Man, it’s a damn sport!” Simpson protested […]
“The way I figure it,” Monaco went on, “if you hunt a squirrel with a rifle, what do you hunt a bear with? Artillery?”
“Call in some white phosphorous on him,” Brew said. “That’ll get his attention until the jets zero in.”
[…]
“You don’t know nothing about no hunting!” Simpson was getting pissed. “You don’t know what hunting is!”
“What he’s trying to say […] is that the white phosphorous is enough. After it burns the bear’s ass off, then the good sergeant will finish him off with a couple of frag grenades,” [said Lobel].
[…] Sergeant Simpson got up and left the hooch.
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Chapter 11 Quotes
“The guy’s got to be a spook,” Gearhart said. “You know, CIA.”
“What do they do over here?” Monaco asked.
“Below the DMZ they do pacification stuff, look around to see who is infiltrating, that kind of thing. Then they do a lot of stuff above the ’Z. The navy guys slip them in on the west and the Green Berets slip them around the ’Z through Laos. Down here she’s probably his cover.”
“Is the kid a spook, too?” Monaco asked.
“Who knows?” Gearhart answered. “This is a funny war.”
I didn’t like the idea of having people who were civilians around. It just didn’t seem right somehow.
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Chapter 18 Quotes
Peewee skipped his meals the rest of the day. Monaco tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t answer. It was Johnson who finally got him to talk.
“Hey, Peewee?”
“What?”
“You care anything about these damn kids over here, man?”
“They got kids over here?” Peewee asked.
“Naw, man, all they got is Congs,” Johnson said. “Congs and mosquitos.”
“And rats,” Walowick added.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Peewee,” I said. “It’s okay to feel bad about what’s going on over here, man. It’s really okay.”
“Me? Feel bad?” Peewee turned over in his bunk and pulled his sheet up around his shoulders. “Never happen.”
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Chapter 22 Quotes
It was Monaco. He was sitting against a tree. He had his head in his hands. His piece was about ten meters in front of him. I wanted to go to him, but Peewee stopped me.
“He ain’t sitting there for nothing,” he said.
I looked around. Nothing. What the hell was wrong with this damn war? You never saw anything. There was never anything until it was on top of your ass, and you were screaming and shooting and too scared to figure out anything.
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Chapter 23 Quotes
I got to sit up in a wheelchair, and the leg felt all right in spite of the cast. It felt good. I hoped it wasn’t. I could make it with a limp. I just didn’t want to go back to the boonies anymore.
We got a call from Lieutenant Gearhart on the ham radio network. He told us the other guys in the squad were all right. It was nice of him to call us, but it wasn’t true. Monaco wasn’t all right. Monaco was like me and Peewee. We had tasted what it was like being dead. We had rolled it around in our mouths and swallowed it and now the stink from it was coming from us. We weren’t all right. We would have to learn to be alive again.
He also told us that Captain Stewart had been promoted.
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Monaco Character Timeline in Fallen Angels
The timeline below shows where the character Monaco appears in Fallen Angels. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4
...zip Jenkins’ body into it. Another soldier in the squad, a little Italian kid named Monaco, tries to comfort Perry, but doesn’t know what to say. Perry feels numb. After a...
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The next morning, the soldiers listen to heavy artillery up north while Monaco and Simpson argue about whether squirrel hunting is a sport. Monaco points out the unfair...
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Chapter 5
Monaco, with a last-minute prayer, leaps out of the door, followed by Carroll and Johnson. Perry...
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Chapter 6
...noon, they load into two giant Huey helicopters and fly into the jungle. Simpson puts Monaco on point (in the front) and Johnson in rear, with the news crew in the...
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...regular, not one of the guerrillas they usually encounter. He leaves to take a nap. Monaco rounds up the guys for volleyball. Their archrival team lost its star player when Charlie...
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Chapter 8
...camp. He shakes his head over the tragedy. In the hooch, Perry tells Peewee and Monaco what happened. Monaco expresses horror that Perry “hit our guys,” and Perry protests that he...
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Chapter 9
Brunner tries to gather the squad for a pacification mission. Monaco refuses to move, and when Brunner threatens him, Monaco grabs a grenade from under his...
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Chapter 10
Monaco and Peewee pump rounds into the village to keep the villagers—and any Vietcong among them—at...
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...to building A-3, where a doctor explains that Carroll was fatally shot under his arm. Monaco leads the squad in Carroll’s prayer for fallen angel warriors.
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Chapter 13
...22 days left when they make their first patrol under Gearhart. Simpson tells Perry and Monaco to watch the lieutenant and keep him from doing anything stupid. They’re assigned to an...
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Simpson puts Monaco up front and Peewee and Perry at the rear, facing toward the rice paddies to...
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...someone in the squad sends up a flare, pointing to their positions. In its light, Monaco spots enemy fighters in the field; Simpson realizes that one of them has just turned...
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When the chopper finally arrives, Peewee climbs in first, followed by Monaco and Perry. Perry twists to give the next guy—Walowick—a hand, but Walowick’s rifle fires just...
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Chapter 14
Monaco gets a letter from his girlfriend, who wants him to consider getting married when he...
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...into oblivion with his rifle. He sees a similar look of pain and confusion on Monaco’s face but turns away—there’s no time to try to comfort each other here. He hears...
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Chapter 17
...Ky and Highway 1 with a bunch of ARVN soldiers. Everything feels off. Peewee and Monaco both gladly embrace Perry but feel bad that he had to come back to the...
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...looks, talks, and seems to think “southern;” he looks down on Peewee, Perry, Johnson and Monaco, the “niggers of the outfit,” in Johnson’s words. When Dongan pulls Peewee, Perry, and Lobel...
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Chapter 18
...the shooting stops and silence reigns, then the gunfire resumes all around them. Peewee and Monaco have acquired another machine gun, which they shoot into the trees.
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Chapter 19
...Stewart orders them to stay down. But when Johnson shouts “Get up! Keep moving!” Perry, Monaco, and the rest obey. So does Stewart. Perry watches himself and the rest on the...
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Monaco, in front on point, holds up his hands and the troops drop to the ground....
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Chapter 20
...the front lines. Soon after Perry drifts to sleep, he wakes to the sound of Monaco screaming “There they are!” and shooting his weapon at the door. Walowick yells “Cease fire!”...
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By the next day, Monaco warily begins to joke about his vision. Jamal, typing up a report about Brew’s death,...
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Peewee’s grand theories about humanity and animality devolve into a petty argument with Monaco about whether Monaco is manly enough to get jock itch. Perry starts a letter to...
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...squad racked up a body count of 433 “Congs” in the last fight. Walowick and Monaco joke about the body count until Captain Stewart comes in and tells the squad to...
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Chapter 21
...and polishing two new machine guns. The smell of the cleaning solution makes everyone giddy. Monaco repeats gossip about some soldiers making necklaces of ears cut from dead Vietcong bodies. Johnson...
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...and presses onward. They haven’t quite made it to the end of the patrol when Monaco, in front, signals a halt. He indicates the ridge, then suddenly spins around, opening fire...
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Chapter 22
At the landing zone, they find Monaco sitting beneath a tree with his head in his hands. Peewee suspects a trap that...
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Perry, Peewee, and Monaco all sit silently under the shadow of death. Perry wonders what Monaco is thinking about....
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Chapter 23
In the hospital at Chu Lai, Monaco explains how the rest of the squad escaped. He was knocked unconscious and missed the...
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Monaco holds Perry’s hand as the doctor wheels him into surgery, and Perry wonders if what...
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...to get a medical discharge. The nurse sneaks some beer in for Peewee, Perry, and Monaco the night before Monaco flies back to rejoin the squad. Peewee drinks so much he...
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...of the squad is “all right,” but Perry knows that neither he, nor Peewee, nor Monaco—nor anyone who has tasted death in this war—is “all right.” Gearhart also says that Captain...
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...he feels almost guilty for being on the plane. He imagines being on patrol with Monaco on point, Peewee, Walowick, Lobel and Brunner following behind, Johnson carrying the big machine gun...
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