Gallagher is a major character, one of the men of the recon platoon, and an example of the emotional wounds that can result from war as well as life. Gallagher is introduced as having a sour, pessimistic nature; he always feels that “everything turned out lousy for him sooner or later” (6). He is described as “a short man with a bunched wiry body that gave the impression of being gnarled and sour,” and his face “was small and ugly, pocked with the scars of a severe acne” (7). Gallagher is also one of the more seasoned men who has survived other battles. He grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Boston and felt that he was always being held back from the advantages that other men enjoyed. When he married Mary, he occasionally was rude or hurtful to her, yet Gallagher feels a bit of awe at the idea that he is going to be a father.

Gallagher’s shock when he sees Croft kill the Japanese prisoner speaks to the violence and cruelty men can commit upon one another. This is also a moment where Gallagher confronts the incomprehensible nature of death. He has a similar struggle when he learns that Mary died in childbirth and has difficulty reconciling himself to the idea that she is gone, especially when he continues to receive her letters. While Gallagher tries to project a tough demeanor, his guilty feeling that he somehow contributed to Roth’s death by demanding he jump shows that he is still vulnerable to fear and pain. He offers one of the novel’s many perspectives on the human character and the impact of war.

Staff Sergeant Croft is “a lean man of medium height” with a “narrow triangular face” and a “hard small jaw, gaunt firm cheeks and straight short nose” (10). He is one of the major characters in the book and a figure of authority. The narrator notes that, “Leading the men was a responsibility he craved; he felt powerful and certain at such moments” (28). Croft’s need for control parallels that of General Cummings, though he uses threats and coercion to push and control the men. Croft is naturally suspicious, as demonstrated in the scene where he discovers the Japanese soldier sneaking up on the recon unit on the beach. His upbringing in West Texas taught him how to read land, but he is also uncompromisingly hard in his dealings with others.

Croft “always saw order in death. Whenever a man in the platoon or company had been killed he would feel a grim and quiet satisfaction as though the death was inevitably just” (444). However, Croft is also the only man of the platoon who relishes violence. He enjoys the swift bursts of combat. In toying with the Japanese soldier he takes prisoner—giving the man food, drink, and cigarettes before he shoots him—Croft shows that he puts no value on other people’s lives. Unlike the other men, Croft feels no remorse or shock over taking a life.

Croft’s need for power manifests in what becomes his compulsion to climb Mount Anaka. The mountain becomes a personal symbol to him that he is determined to conquer and overcome. That he fails keeps tune with the pessimistic view the novel takes overall. Croft’s lack of remorse when he sets up Hearn to walk into the Japanese camp, which results in Hearn’s death and Croft’s resumption of control over the platoon, shows that he is calculating and without conscience. The Time Machine section showing his history reveals that Croft has always been callous about taking life and has always craved control.

Lieutenant Robert Hearn occupies a tenuous middle ground between being an officer and sympathizing with the enlisted men. Hearn is “a big man with a shock of black hair, a heavy immobile face. His brown eyes, imperturbable, stared out coldly above the short blunted and slightly hooked arc of his nose” (69). He is generally unliked by other men, even though he not overtly aggressive or contemptuous in his manner. He is impatient with the self-satisfied talk among the officers and grows first uneasy, then furious with General Cummings, who confides in Hearn and seeks his approval. It infuriates Hearn that Cummings insists that Hearn is like him, a reactionary who wants power, when Hearn is convinced he has leftist leanings and identifies more with the working class. He broke away from his father’s hopes that he would become a businessman and instead studied literature.

Hearn’s effort to get the men of recon to support his leadership is one way the novel examines authority, superiority, and the power men wield over one another. He wants to be an effective leader, one who does his job well but gets the best out of his men. Hearn’s honest efforts are rendered pointless when he is killed after Croft keeps from him the information that the Japanese set up camp at the end of the mountain pass. For all his good intentions, Hearn’s quick and unlamented death for Croft’s ambitions fits the novel’s overall bleak philosophy: Human virtue matters little and a single death means little inside the grander casualty that is war.

General Edward Cummings is one of the prime representatives of authority, power, and control in the novel. He is in command of the campaign to take the island of Anopopei, and as such, he is responsible for the lives, and deaths, of the men under his command. He is “a little over medium height, well fleshed, with a rather handsome sun-tanned face and graying hair” (81). Behind his mild appearance, Hearns thinks, “he was a tyrant, a tyrant with a velvet voice” (78).

In contrast to the small connections the men make within the platoon, the General prides himself, much like Red, in being self-isolating: “Always, he had had to be alone, he had chosen it that way […] The best things, the things worth doing in the last analysis, had to be done alone” (563). The General spends much of his time, in his conversations with Hearn, trying to demonstrate intellectual and moral superiority in his philosophies. The Time Machine section on his background shows him overcoming and denying self-doubt. The flashbacks reflect the confusion from his father’s attempts to quell his artistic leanings and emotional dependence on his mother, as well as his failed relationship with his wife, Margaret.

The General prides himself on thinking like a strategist, thinking of the big picture of the campaign in terms of success and failure. However, his larger concern is making his campaign a success so he can be admired and promoted. His pettiness shows in how he becomes uncomfortable with his own interest in and attachment to Hearn. After insisting on demonstrating his superiority by forcing Hearn to pick up the cigarette butt, Cummings is later ashamed of his own behavior and justifies sending Hearn away in charge of the recon patrol to cross the island.

At the end of the book, the General’s dissatisfaction that Dalleson, and not he, won the war over an opponent that was nearly defeated already shows the lack of valor or a grand, epic narrative around war. Likewise, Cummings’s refusal to acknowledge guilt, or even properly grieve over Hearn’s death, supports the cynical view voiced by Red and others that Army leaders see them as resources to be expended in pursuit of an aim.