Sunrise Over Fallujah

Jonesy is a blues-loving soldier who talks in riddles all tied around God or the blues. Though many people often can’t understand him, he fills in the role of both comic relief and the wise sage throughout the novel. He compares war to the blues with startling clarity. He befriends Birdy while the unit is stationed in Kuwait before entering Iraq and tells Birdy that they have to watch each other’s backs. Jonesy wants nothing more than to open a blues joint when he returns home. During the unit’s last mission in retrieving detonators for IED weapons, Jonesy attempts to protect a blind Iraqi child from gunfire and is fatally wounded. His death marks a turning point in Birdy and is a cause of overwhelming grief for the entire unit.

Major Sessions is one of the commanders who has been assigned to the Civil Affairs unit. Captain Coles answers to her as well. Sessions is shown throughout the novel as both tough as nails and tender. Birdy and Jonesy note how attractive she is. As an officer climbing up the ranks, Sessions is passed over for a promotion, which causes the soldiers in her unit to question how smug and safe she is at base while they risk their lives in hot zones. Though she is constantly portrayed as tough and even rude, there are moments when Birdy sees her humanity, such as when she gets sick while accompanying them on a mission to a morgue or when her voice wavers while calling out Jonesy’s name during memorial service. 

Captain Coles is from Allenstown, Pennsylvania and is the responsible officer for the First, Second and Third Squads in the Civil Affairs unit that is attached to the Third Infantry. Coles is a part of the First Squad, Birdy’s Squad, though he doesn’t always ride with First Squad. Though he jokes that he wants to get back home safely to watch his kids flunk out of school, Coles has been in the army since he was twenty-two. Birdy thinks of Coles as kind and sincere. He tries to stick up for his squads whenever possible, even when this means facing rebuke from higher officers.