Friendly Fire (29 page)

Peg became progressively more angry as she related Phelps' story. She said she was “weary of lies” being told her by the Pentagon “every which way [she] turned.” There was no pacifying her. The more furious she became, the more she cursed the Pentagon and the men who worked there until she finally called Colonel Thompson “a goddamn liar” himself.

“I've never told a lie in my life!” Colonel Thompson protested angrily.

“Well,” Peg said, “then you're certainly in the wrong building and job if that's the case! You mean to tell me your office has been telling us the truth all this time about the war? Are you now saying that no American troops were in Cambodia before the President said they were? That we never sent a bomber over Laos? Colonel, we can read. We're not just stupid farmers out here!”

“Mrs. Mullen, I—”

“I have letters from boys in Vietnam,” Peg continued, ignoring the colonel. “I know about Cambodia. I know, too, about the American and Laotian bombing missions being coordinated out of a joint center in Vietnam—”

“Vientiane,” the colonel corrected gently.

“
Vientiane
, then,” Peg said. “The point, Colonel, is that I know what's going on, and I know, too, enough not to believe all the stuff coming out of your office.”

“All right, Mrs. Mullen,” Colonel Thompson said patiently, “I don't think either of us will get anywhere if we argue the merits of the war. I agree with you that there are elements which are worse than the American people are being told about. But I do not feel that it is a question of the people in the Pentagon deliberately lying. There are elements of security involved. I know you understand that.…”

“I suppose so, yes,” Peg said, unconvinced.

“But this is not why you called me, right?”

“Right,” Peg said. “I called to find out what needs to be done to get Sergeant Larry Phelps home from Vietnam.”

“Fine. This is an area in which we can work together. In the first place, I am very concerned that from what you've told me Phelps has not tried to file any reassignment papers since his arrival in Vietnam. Before we can do anyth—”

“Colonel,” Peg interrupted, “two days after Larry arrived in Vietnam he was sent into combat. He was assigned to Charlie Company in the 1st Cav, the one CBS-TV did the documentary on, the infantry company which refused to go out on patrol. I don't think you fully appreciate the position of a draftee in an outfit like that. You tell me how he's going to file any papers from there?”

Thompson explained there was no legal basis to deny Phelps the request and “if the boy does get an opportunity to file those papers,” the colonel said, “I, personally, will expedite their progress through the Pentagon.”

Peg was so disarmed by Colonel Thompson's willingness to cooperate that she apologized for having called him a liar.

“These are difficult times, Mrs. Mullen,” Thompson said. “We are all under a strain.”

“Well, I want to thank you,” Peg said. “I appreciate your kindness, and I'll be back in touch with you again.”

Peg composed a long letter to Larry Phelps. “No one cares whether you live or die except your family,” she wrote. “If you lose your life you'll just be another statistic, so don't think you'll be giving your life for any great cause.” She begged him to file his reassignment papers and promised to help all she could at her end.

Three months passed before Peg heard from or about Larry Phelps again. During that period Father Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest, was captured by the FBI on Block Island. A violent explosion destroyed most of the U.S. Army Mathematics Research Center on the University of Wisconsin campus. The Hatfield-McGovern (609) “Amendment to end the war” was defeated in the Senate 55 to 39. Vice President Spiro Agnew described liberal Congressional Democrats as “Troglodytic leftists,” coined “Radiclibs” for Radical Liberals, accused them of “whimpering isolationism” in foreign policy and “mulish obstructionism” in domestic policy, and “pusillanimous pussy-footing” on law and order. The Soviet Union, the United States and Communist China all exploded nuclear devices on the same day (October 14). The Atomic Energy Commission called it “pure coincidence.” The Portage County (Ohio) Grand Jury indicted twenty-five persons in connection with the Kent State disturbances, and not one of them was a member of the Ohio National Guard. Highly placed sources in Saigon reported that American Special Forces units had been leading secret operations inside Laos, and their casualties had not been made public.

By the time, in early November, Peg Mullen read in the local newspaper that Larry Phelps had received a routine decoration in Vietnam, the 43,962nd U.S. soldier had been killed in combat and the 291,118th had been wounded. When Peg brought the clipping to Kathy Phelps, Kathy said she didn't need to worry about Larry for a while. He was in the hospital with malaria.

The Iowa summer was over. Black funnel clouds had been sighted twice over Black Hawk County, but no tornado touched down. Gene Mullen received 20 cents more per 100 pounds for his hogs than he had the year before; the increase, however, did not cover his rising cost of feed, and he lost $1,000 on his hogs in all. The price for corn and soybeans had risen, too, however, and the yield had been good. His profits from his fields offset his losses with his hogs. But the Mullen farm was beginning to show further effects of Michael's absence.

There is an Iowa saying: “You can tell a farmer by his fences.” Gene's fences were sagging, and those around the hogpen were patched with baling wire. Another Iowa saying is: “If you take care of the land, the land takes care of the barn. Take care of the barn, and the barn takes care of the house.” Gene's barn and outbuildings lacked paint, although they were sound otherwise. He and John had plowed down the fields to aerate the soil. Some of the machinery was in need of repair. The lawn still showed scars from the hogs' rampage. The farm's slow deterioration reflected not only a lack of interest but a failure of the spirit. When Michael died, Gene's devotion to the land died with his son. He still went through the motions: he ordered seed, tended the chickens, patched up what needed work most, but Gene's heart wasn't in it. Michael was to have inherited the farm; John didn't want it. Whom was Gene supposed to be preserving the farm for? Not Mary. She was off in Kansas City. And certainly not Patricia. Patricia, unwilling to wait any longer, had married Alan Hulting that summer.

Patricia and Alan had wanted to marry that previous spring before the school year was out. She was finishing her senior year at the University of Iowa, and Alan, who had dropped out for one semester, had found a temporary job as a guard at the Iowa Medical Security Facility, the maximum-security prison hospital for the violent, the hopelessly retarded and the criminally insane.

Patricia had written Michael in Vietnam over Christmas about her wedding plans and asked if he could serve as best man. With characteristic common sense, he had urged her to get her degree first without the disruptions and responsibilities of marriage. Besides, Michael had added, if she would wait until June, he would surely be home to attend. And so that winter Patricia and Alan agreed to delay their wedding until June. But as the June date approached, the Mullen family's emotions were still in such turmoil that the wedding was put off again.

Normally that summer, Patricia would have left Iowa City to spend weekends at her family's farm, but like John, she had come to dread being home. It wasn't that she didn't want to have to think about the war and Michael's death—besides her marriage, she had thought of little else. What hurt and confused her so deeply was the anguish her proposed marriage caused her father. Gene would simply refuse to discuss her wedding plans with Patricia.

Gene Mullen loved his daughter very much; Patricia had always been a unique child to him, in a sense his favorite of them all. A special bond existed between them, and now it was threatened. Gene felt betrayed by Patricia's marriage, perhaps even jealous of Alan Hulting. He utterly rejected any well-meaning suggestion that he wouldn't be “losing a daughter, but gaining a son.” He had convinced himself that once Patricia married, he would never see her again. His daughter's wedding promised only the same aching loss he had suffered with Michael's death. That is why up to the very day of their marriage Gene would call her fiancé Alan Hu
tl
ing, as if to deny the seriousness of Patricia's intentions by deliberately mispronouncing Alan Hulting's name.

Alan appreciated the agony Gene Mullen was going through and was careful not to impose himself in any way upon his future father-in-law. But when, near the end of July, it became clear that Gene's attitude was not going to change and that Peg showed no signs whatsoever of moderating her battle against the war, Alan and Patricia decided to get married as quietly and quickly as possible just to get it over with. They also decided it would be easier if they were married in Iowa City instead of at Father Shimon's Sacred Heart Church in La Porte. Patricia shared her family's estrangement from their local priest. She was aware, too, of the feelings in their community of La Porte. Remarks passed by local people had worked their way back to the family, comments like: “Why does Peg Mullen think she's so different? Michael's not the only boy who died.” And, “If Michael Mullen was so damned smart, what was he doing in the Army?” Patricia knew, also, that La Porte considered Peg's antiwar activities attempts for special recognition and treatment and her protests nothing more than “whining about the war.” By holding the ceremony in Iowa City, Patricia and her mother would have a convenient excuse for limiting the guest list. The young couple chose August 28 as the date to be married. When Patricia attempted to telephone her mother of their decision, the line, of course, was busy. Peg was on the telephone with the local draft board director's secretary.

Peg had abided by John's request that she not interfere with his draft board for as long as she could. But she worried that John might be inducted before his 1-A draft classification could be proved an error. Peg's experiences with the Pentagon had convinced her that nothing could prevent the military from sending a young man to Vietnam if that was the Army's wish. And so when Patricia called, the draft board secretary was telling Peg, “Mullen, John, Rural Route Number Three, La Porte City, yes, we have your son registered. His classification is One-A. Now, what is your question?”

“My question,” Peg said coldly, “is what does the Four-A draft category include?”

“Four-A?… That would be anybody who has had some service.”

“Is that
all
it is? I'm certain it has more meaning than that.”

“Oh, sure. It's also the category for sole surviving son, but,” she quickly added, “we never have any of those in Black Hawk County.”

“You happen to be talking to the mother of one,” Peg said angrily. “My oldest son, Michael, was killed in Vietnam on February eighteenth of this year, and that same week, madam, you registered his younger brother, my son, John. If I had worked for the twenty years I understand you have in your position, and a young boy came in to register the same week his older brother died, I think I would have tied those two names together. But you later sent John a classification of One-A.”

“Well,” the secretary said crisply, “we're entitled to make one mistake in twenty-five thousand!”

“Lady, a draft board isn't entitled to make any mistakes!”

The secretary paused for a moment and then, in prissy, clerical tones, said, “If you want to certify that your son is a sole surviving son, we will have him listed in that category.”

“I don't have to certify any such thing! All the ‘certification' you need is lying right now in the Eagle Center cemetery,” Peg said and hung up.

Moments later Patricia telephoned and had to hear all about the draft board, of course, but when her mother started in about the war, Patricia interrupted. “Mother! Alan and I have decided to get married August twenty-eighth in Iowa City.”

“This August twenty-eighth?” Peg asked, startled. “That's not quite a month from now.”

Patricia explained why they wanted to hold the wedding in Iowa City rather than La Porte, and to Patricia's relief, her mother was in complete agreement that it would be “easier all around.” They talked about the wedding dress and bridesmaids' dresses, which Peg volunteered to help make. During their conversation Patricia suddenly realized that it was the first time in a long while she and her mother had laughed together. The only thing she was worried about, Patricia told her mother, was her father, and Peg said, “Don't worry. I'll talk to your father and everything will be all right.” Afterward, when Patricia repeated the conversation to Alan, she was smiling.

For the next month, Peg lost herself in preparations for Patricia's wedding. She spent hours over her sewing machine making her daughter's wedding dress, three bridesmaids' dresses, new curtains for the living room. In addition, Peg wallpapered the kitchen, cleaned the house from top to bottom and, the night before the wedding, prepared a buffet supper for the anticipated 100 guests.

Patricia Mullen and Alan Hulting were married at the St. Thomas More Church in Iowa City on August 28, 1970, a hot, breezeless, humid Friday afternoon. Patricia wore the heavy white silk wedding dress her mother had helped her make. Alan Hulting was in a black double-breasted Edwardian jacket and tuxedo pants. Dr. Jon Hulting had driven from Davenport to serve as his brother's best man, and Mary Mullen was the maid of honor.

At the opening chords of the Wedding March Patricia rested her hand on her father's extended forearm and squeezed it gently. Gene Mullen turned to her, attempting to smile, but the expression on his face—half pride, half agony—was the same as when he and Michael had stood together at the Waterloo Airport just before Michael left for Vietnam. Patricia had to nudge her father to start him on the slow march down the aisle to where Alan Hulting waited. The closer they came to the altar, the lighter Patricia's hand seemed to rest on Gene's arm, and when it was time to surrender her, Gene pressed her fingers against his chest. Their eyes met, a smile flickered at the corners of Patricia's lips, and then her glance slid from her father to the dark-haired young man waiting at her other side.