Cpl. James Chaffin

Chaffin is a driver in the invasion column, wound tight where the men around him have gone loose and profane with fatigue. He wants order — clean chains of command, sensible rules, a war that makes sense — and he says so loudly, again and again, to a convoy that has largely stopped expecting any of that.

He's the show's exposed nerve: everyone else adapts to absurdity by joking or shutting down, and Chaffin just keeps objecting, which makes him funny and slightly pitiable at once. Eric Ladin plays the fraying without ever tipping into caricature, so his rants land as the sound of a decent man's expectations getting ground down in real time.