Friendly Fire (49 page)

The colonel paused, and I could hear a page turn. “Okay, another thing,” he said. “This comment of Gene Mullen's about the minefield. Well, you know me well enough, I think, to realize that a comment such as ‘You lost thirty-two men from your stupidity of marching them through a minefield' is a little bit of bravado on his part. I wouldn't have tolerated that for one minute from anyone no matter how conciliatory I was trying to be toward them. The subject was brought up, and we discussed it, but he certainly didn't approach it in that fashion. They also said that an ‘officer suckered [me] down' into that area. In the first place, nobody called me in. Nobody on the ground ever calls his battalion commander and says, ‘You must come down here and land.' A battalion commander does what he wants to do. It's his battalion! And secondly, no officer could have suckered me down because when I landed, there were
no officers there
. That was one of the big reasons why I went into that area to take care of Bravo Company. The one officer who was with them—a real fine young man—had been wounded and had to be evac'd out. The first sergeant had also been wounded, which upset me very much because he, too, was a fine man. So without, with this lack of real leaders I had confidence in, I felt I had to get in there and get things squared away.

“And here where he says, ‘The company first sergeant was out there that night, and it was the first time he was out in the field in I don't know how long.' And she says, ‘They have to go out.' ‘By the book,' he says. And she says, ‘Every three months or so.'

“Well, this thing about the first sergeant was ridiculous,” Schwarzkopf said. “You're aware of the administrative duties that a first sergeant has in a company, the paperwork that goes with the job. But Colonel Joe Clemons decided that because first sergeants had had so much valuable experience and because we were so short of experienced NCOs, their place was in the field. He put out a directive stating that the first sergeant of every rifle company spend a minimum of fifty percent of their time in the field with their unit. It was just that simple. I concurred wholeheartedly and enforced it in my battalion. Frankly, in Charlie Company's case, there was a personality clash between the first sergeant and the executive officer. So, any time the XO was back in the rear, the first sergeant intentionally went out to the field—and one of the reasons was to get away from Charlie Company's executive officer.…”

The colonel paused, and I could hear him turning more pages of the transcript. “Okay,” he said, “where Mrs. Mullen makes the comment ‘All the boys said it was the only time they remember all the officers being there. And even Schwarzkopf—it was the first time he was in action with them on the ground.' Again, that's incorrect.

“I made it a point to be with every single one of my units every single day. I was constantly in and out. One of the reasons, as I explained to you before, why I didn't stay with one company all the time was that I didn't want to harass that one company commander. But secondly, I had a responsibility for four rifle companies on the ground, a mortar company, a reconnaissance platoon, and my rear, any one of which was or might have been in a dangerous area. Therefore, I went everywhere. And, all right, as I also explained, I wasn't even with Charlie Company on the ground that night. I was back on Hill Four Ten with the artillery because I had two rifle companies out there … but why am I going into such detail on this?

“For a very simple reason,” Schwarzkopf said. “The Mullens just don't have the facts! Or if they do have the facts, they choose to ignore them. What really bothers me is that they are so convinced that they are so right. And they're so loaded with wrong information.

“I'm not sure any of this has any bearing on your book—I don't know whether it does or not. It's just that I'm sure every time the Mullens get up and issue public statements, nobody can get up and rebut them.…”

There was quite a long pause on the tape; then the colonel said, “God, I don't know. Maybe it just helps me to say these things to somebody who will
listen
. Look, sure Vietnam's a terrible, horrible war, and we've lost a helluva lot of good men over there, but … but everything is not black about Vietnam and everybody who participated is not a … a double-headed ogre! It's misconceptions, distortions, blanket condemnations of anyone and everyone involved with Vietnam that I disagree with so vehemently. These statements Mrs. Mullen has made about me are completely and totally untrue, and I resent them!

“I felt a—I still feel a great deal of compassion for the Mullens. I do. It's a terrible tragedy that they lost their son—it's a terrible tragedy that so many women have lost sons—but although I feel sorry for the Mullens, I think the biggest tragedy is their mental state at this time.

“I now feel the Mullens have been told over and over again exactly what happened to Michael, but unfortunately, they're not willing to believe it. They're not willing to accept it. They still apparently think everyone is wrong except them. Somehow they have adopted the very role they are condemning in the rest of us.

“I said I'd try to be dispassionate about this whole thing, but I haven't been able to. I find this entire business very distressing—not because I have anything to hide, not because I've done anything wrong, not because my battalion did anything wrong or, for that matter, because there were any irregularities throughout this entire affair. It's just that … it's just that.…”

The tape ran silent for about ten seconds. When the colonel spoke again, his voice was discouraged, tired, a little sad.

“I find the distortions, the twisting, the accusations to be a
dirty
business. It's highly upsetting to me and so I haven't been able to remain unemotional.…

“I'll just finish off by saying it's a terrible thing that happened to Michael Mullen … a terrible,
terrible
tragedy. He was a very fine noncommissioned officer. Very well thought of by the men in his company. He was intelligent. He had brains and common sense. Michael was a leader. And that's why his death had such an impact on Charlie Company. Michael was one of those individuals who stand out. He was a very fine young man, and his death was a tremendous loss. It's terrible that any young man should lose his life in such a violent way. And I guess that is what your book is about.

“But it's an even more terrible thing that has happened to the Mullens themselves.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Almost exactly a year after I had first met Gene and Peg Mullen at their Black Hawk County, Iowa, farm I drove back through La Porte City to talk to them again. I had not seen the Mullens for nine months, not since the day we spent discussing their meeting with Lieutenant Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

Through Schwarzkopf I was able to locate Michael Mullen's former company commander, Tom Cameron. Captain Cameron, though still in the Army, was then attending the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa working toward a master's degree in business administration. We spent three days together in mid-January, 1972.

Cameron was able to help me find Abe Aikins, the former senior medic with Charlie Company's headquarters section. Aikins was newly married and living in a Long Island suburb of New York City, where he worked as an assistant manager in a Household Finance office while attending night courses to complete his college degree. I met with Aikins in mid-February.

During the first week in March I spoke with Martin Culpepper, the young former assistant machine gunner in Charlie Company's 3rd Platoon. Culpepper had been the first of Michael's friends to correspond with the Mullens. He, too, had married soon after his return from Vietnam and was back now at his old job with the Rath Packing Company in Waterloo.

The following week I received permission to visit Willard Polk at the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Polk had between three and nine months of his prison sentence left to serve. The incidents for which Polk had been court-martialed had not, as the Mullens had thought, occurred the night Michael had been killed but eight days later, when Charlie Company had returned from that operation and were resting and reassembling at Hill 76, the mortar base camp. Polk had been found guilty of striking his superior officer and a noncommissioned officer and two counts of “wrongfully and willfully discharging” an M-16 rifle and M-79 grenade launcher “under circumstances such as to endanger human life.” Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth A. Howard, the presiding judge at Polk's court-martial, would, a year later, preside over the trial of Captain Ernest L. Medina of My Lai. Polk's trial lasted a day and a half.

On April 12, I was finally able to locate and speak with the “Prince,” the young rifleman who had lost his left leg below the knee when the same shell that killed Michael hit. Everyone I had spoken with in Charlie Company liked the Prince and praised his courage that night. His real name is Gary Samuels, and when I met him, he was living with his mother and stepfather in Caldwell, New Jersey.

Samuels, Polk, Culpepper, Aikins, Cameron. Each separately confirmed the details of the incident which had brought about Michael's death. Each of them had been on that hill that night; each of them furthered my conviction that Schwarzkopf had told the Mullens the truth.

I felt, therefore, that I had come to the end of the story. Inasmuch as any man can know another's death, I now knew Michael's. That is why, as I approached the last gentle, rolling hill on Route 218 south of the Mullens' hometown, I felt a sense of relief. It was a relief born out of the naïve anticipation that at last I could offer the Mullens some comfort. I could relieve their anguish, bestow on them a kind of peace. I still believed that the truth, inevitably, would set them free.

On either side of me were the rich black farmlands, the cedar fence posts with the tacked-up tin Felco Feed and Vinton Hybrid placards. I passed the sign on the edge of town,
LA PORTE CITY: PROGRESSING WITH AMERICA,
and saw it still needed paint.

Mom's Café had moved across Main Street closer to Big Creek. The Tastee Freeze was abandoned and boarded up. Otherwise the town looked the same. I checked into La Porte's one motel and called the Mullens. Peg said come out right away.

Peg hugged me the moment I climbed their back stairs. Gene warmly, tightly gripped my hand. We stood by their kitchen table, smiling, happy to see each other again. Peg wanted to feed me lunch, complained I was looking thin, asked about my family, while Gene stood with his fists pushed deep inside his overall pockets, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Suddenly, almost shyly, he blurted, “We've got a real treat for you tonight!”

“Oh?” I asked, surprised. “What's that?”

“A pork tenderloin,” he said. “Just about the best cut you can get from a hog. It's from one of our own.”

“For heaven's sake, sit down! Sit down!” Peg said, pushing me over to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. “Tell me now, how was your trip?”

“Did you see many trucks?” Gene asked.

“Come to think of it, I didn't,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, at this truck stop down here on the road to Waterloo, I always ask how are the truckers,” Gene explained. “And I talk to the truckers when they come in. They tell me they're deadheading too much. No full loads. No return loads. These are guys coming from all over the U.S.”

“It's an indicator of the economy,” Peg added.

The Mullens spoke about what was happening around them. Collins Radio, an aerospace communications and electronics company in Cedar Rapids, which used to have 11,000 employees, was down to 5,000. General Mills in Cedar Rapids had laid off half their work force. Rath Packing was working a twenty-nine-to thirty-two-hour week; normally the men had a fortyhour week. Gene himself was on a two-month layoff from John Deere.

“For the last six years,” Gene said, “I've known exactly how many tractors John Deere sells because I was the final release inspector. I used to take down the serial numbers of every tractor. We used to hit between fifty-two and fifty-three thousand tractors a year. Last year we didn't do thirty thousand!”

The cost of running their farm had risen sharply, too. Fertilizer prices had gone up 8 percent; corn seed which used to cost $6 an acre now was $10. The cost of gas for farm operations had increased accordingly.

“Do you know what our Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, told them at the Des Moines Farm Institute a couple of weeks ago?” Peg asked acidly. “He said there wasn't much they could do for the farmer, but we ‘should just keep in mind how patriotic it is to feed the rest of the world.' Isn't that something!”

“You know,” Gene said, “when that Another Mother for Peace film was shown over the television here—the one in which we took part?—well, the next morning, when I went to work people came up to me and said, ‘I saw you on television, Oscar!' They wouldn't say anything more. But a year ago, last year they would've said, ‘You sonuvabitchin' Communist! You traitor!' and they don't say that anymore.”

“The change in a year is unbelievable,” Peg said.

“We went to this funeral of Cecil Joens',” Gene said.

“I told you about him,” Peg said to me. “He was here when we moved here. Lived in that gray house across on the corner there. The one with the big stone in the field; they used to light fires on top of it to guide settlers home.”

“He was our neighbor and friend,” Gene said.

“Well, when we came back here after the war and”—Peg laughed—“of course we were the jokes of the community. We knew nothing about farming and Cec, well, he was a saint, he was so good to us.” Peg was standing at the kitchen window looking out at the fields. “This was all mud around here, and every time I'd get stuck Cec would pull me out. I bet I got stuck a million times. And if I got into a situation here alone when Gene was working, well, it was Cec who came over day or night. He was that way with the kids, too. Cec adored them. He was so good to them! He did our custom work for us—”