Friendly Fire (50 page)

“Picked our corn,” Gene explained.

“And he was always so fair in his prices. I always felt he did it a little cheaper for us. Maybe instead of six dollars an acre, he'd charge us five.”

“He was the kind of person everybody liked,” Gene said. “I don't care where it is there's somebody like—”

“Everybody liked him,” Peg agreed, nodding sadly.

“—Cec wherever you go. He's not going to set the world on fire by any spectacular thing, but every day it's little things that just keep blossoming out.”

“I think I kind of worshiped Cec for all the kind things he did for us when we were struggling without a dime and Gene was working nights. That's why the funeral got to us and all the townspeople, too. Everybody was a mess because they loved him so.”

“Let me tell you about that funeral,” Gene said. “We were talking about the change this past year. Well, at Cecil's funeral there were people who know how we stand who came up to talk to me—I never opened the conversation myself, but these people walked up to me with smiles on their faces and they said hello. And I returned the cordiality, and when I spoke to them and they spoke to me, it sort of broke the ice. People who beforehand would see me on the street and turn their heads, a number of those people at that funeral even wanted to stand and talk to me.…” Gene thought for a moment, then added, “I shouldn't say I enjoyed the funeral. I didn't ‘enjoy' the funeral. But it did two good things for me. It helped me pay respect to a man I had great respect for, who was a very, very good friend of mine. Mikey spent part of his last day with Cecil, you know. And okay, I paid my respects to him along with all the rest of his friends. But I had a number of people who even wanted to talk to me! The change is unbelievable.”

“Let me tell you something else,” Peg said. “People were thinking about us because it's been almost two years since we buried Michael. And a lot of the concern at that funeral was for us. There's a couple who publish an advertising sheet here, and they walked over to me in the dining room and said, ‘We've thought about you constantly today. We've thought about you for two years continually. We think about you all the time.' But they'd never approached me on this subject before.… Another thing is that Cec wasn't able to come here when Michael died. He was beginning to have some heart trouble then and—'

“He couldn't even call and talk to us,” Gene said.

“Anyway,” Peg continued, “after he died, John wrote a letter to Cecil's mother, who was all alone. And I was over there the other day, and she showed me the letter. It was beautiful. I really couldn't believe John had written it! He said something about how his love for Cec had begun when Mary took him over to play there the first time when he, John, was three. And he went on about all the basketball games Cec had taken him to, the football games, the state fairs—Michael, too—and John said, ‘Somehow I knew the war was getting to Michael those last days—'”

“We all knew it,” Gene said. “Before that, see, Mikey could.…” Gene took a sudden gulp of air and swallowed. “Before that the house could be burning down and Mikey would never.…” Gene could not finish. He covered his eyes with his hands, Peg started to move toward him and paused, not certain whether he needed comforting or not. She looked at Gene and then at me, trying to remember what she had been saying.

“You were telling me about John's letter to Cecil Joens' mother,” I said.

“Yes, well, John wrote that.…” She glanced over at Gene again, and then, with her own voice quavering slightly, she continued, “John wrote that Cecil couldn't—ohh!” Peg leaned back against the kitchen counter and gripped the edge tightly. “
I'm not going to cry today!
I'm not!” she said. “You do that to me,” she said accusingly, “and I don't cry very often anymore.” She turned back to pour herself a glass of tap water.

Gene was sitting quietly at the table. He had taken his hands away from his face, but his eyes remained averted, his head lowered.

Peg took a sip of water and turned to face us again. “In his letter John said that Cecil had to die because of the pain. That he couldn't live with the pain any longer and that Michael, too, couldn't have lived six more months with the pain of the war. And it reminded me of how, when I had read Michael's letters, I knew the war was getting to him. Those letters and postcards that last month were disturbed.”

“And Mikey wasn't that way.” Gene pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. “Mikey wasn't the kind to get disturbed about things, and yet in those last letters he was!”

“He couldn't take any more,” Peg said.

Gene walked over to the window looking out on the barns, and then he turned, facing me, and said, “You know, I could say something violent—I will! I will say it! GOD DAMN what's causing this!” He walked back to the table and stood gripping the back of his chair. “We have boys all around here who are basket cases in this area—”

“That story in the Des Moines
Register
,” Peg said, “how many legless boys did it say are in Iowa?”

“I don't know,” Gene said. “Twenty-six, I think.”

“Twenty-six!”
Peg said.

“There are two right over here about ten miles in Hudson, Iowa. One has both legs off, the other just one.… Well, God damn it! I—we—I can tell you, people, well-to-do people up here? They get on the telephone and call us, ‘How do we get our boy out of the service? Please help us get our boy out!' And now their boy is out and they—if—I—this war!” Speechless with frustration, Gene abruptly sat down.

Peg suddenly asked, “Was Michael, or was he not, the platoon sergeant? Now this you've learned.”

“He was not,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because a new sergeant came into Charlie Company who had a higher rank. He was with the company one or two days the night Michael was killed, and he was wounded, too.”

“Who was he?” Peg asked.

“His name was Wetsel. He was a staff sergeant. Michael was an acting platoon sergeant, but it was only temporary.”

“We know that,” Gene said curtly.

“Because Michael didn't want to be platoon sergeant,” Peg said. “Why was Michael made a platoon sergeant to begin with?”

I explained that Michael's previous platoon sergeant had rotated home. While Charlie Company was awaiting the replacement, Michael, as ranking sergeant in the 1st Platoon, was appointed acting platoon sergeant. Michael was a sergeant (E-5) with three stripes. When Wetsel, a staff sergeant (E-6) with three stripes and one rocker, arrived in the company, he became the 1st Platoon's platoon sergeant. “Look, I don't know whether this is the proper time for this or not,” I said. “It's up to you. But if you'd like, I can cover with you all the information I've been able to learn and—”

“Oh, I don't know whether that's necessary or not,” Peg said, looking distressed.

“It's up to you,” I said.

“Michael was hit between the shoulder blades, wasn't he?” she asked.

“Yes, a piece of shrapnel entered his back and pierced his heart. He died right away. In his sleep. There's no question about that.”

“Yes,” Peg said. “They all told us that.”

“But what I meant, Peg,” I said, “is that I can give you the background of the operation he was involved in, what their mission was if you want to know any of this, what it was like.…”

“There's something I want to know,” Gene said. “Something that has always bugged me:
why was it covered up?
”

“That was the thing,” Peg said. “Why wasn't it ever in the news?”

“In our telegram from that general,” Gene said, turning to Peg, “you have that telegram, don't you? The general told us that the incident had been investigated and the investigation was on record at the Logistics Center at … at.…”

“Long Binh,” Peg said.

“Long Binh, that's right,” Gene continued. “And he said it would be released to us immediately. But it never was!”

“First of all, Gene,” I said, “I don't believe the incident was deliberately covered up. I don't believe that there was ever a conspiracy to prevent you from learning what had happened to Michael. The details given you in that first letter from the battalion commander dated March second which you received the day after Michael's funeral were, in fact, correct. The reason why you were never sent the results of the investigation was that the report was classified ‘For Official Use Only,' a very minor security classification, but one which would nevertheless prevent it from being released to civilians without a ‘Need-to-Know.' It doesn't matter that you are Michael's parents. Secondly, the investigation would obviously contain hypotheses on what might have happened, and these hypotheses might be open to misinterpretation, depending on the point of view of the reader. If, for example, the report mentioned that a lieutenant back at Hill Four Ten with the guns was asleep at the time of the incident but that his being asleep had nothing to do with the incident, you might still believe that if he had been awake, Michael would have been spared. I don't know if I've made myself clear, but the reason why the report was not sent was to spare you more anguish.”

“I don't buy that,” Gene said flatly. “No, I don't buy that. The simple reason why the report was not sent was because this was the second artillery incident to have happened in twenty-one days.”

“Did Schwarzkopf mention that to you?” Peg asked me.

“Yes, we talked about it.”

“Schwarzkopf did tell you about that?” Gene asked, clearly surprised. “It was actually the third incident that had happened in a little over a month with this same unit. That's why they tried to hush it up.”

“There wasn't a third incident,” I said. “The previous incident, the one in which some men from Bravo Company were wounded—none, incidentally, were killed—the cause of that accident was a faulty artillery piece. There were teeth missing on the elevating gear, and when the tube was raised, the mechanism indicated a higher elevation than was actually on the guns because of the slippage caused by the missing teeth. As a result, when the artillery piece was fired, the round fell short. In Michael's case, however, the guns were fine. The round fell short because a lieutenant back at the fire direction center had failed to take into account the height of the trees on top of the hill where Charlie Company had set up.”

“What happened to that lieutenant?” Peg asked.

“He was given an official reprimand.”

“Yeah, see, Schwarzkopf said he would have had him court-martialed,” Gene said.

“What about the boys who were drinking?” Peg asked.

I explained how the drinking had not made any difference because the error was not on the guns. The men at the guns had done exactly what they were told to do. The investigation confirmed that the target information shown on the guns was exactly what had been forwarded to them from the fire direction center.

“Okay now,” Gene said. “Who called in the DTs?”

For the next couple of hours I answered the Mullens' questions as best I could: Who asked for the DTs at that time of night? Who adjusted the artillery? How could someone correct the artillery if he couldn't see where the shell hit? Why were the DTs postponed? If the artillery wasn't firing for Charlie Company, then why did the boys write they heard artillery firing all night long? I explained how Charlie Company was not the only infantry company operating in that area that night, that Delta Company was to their northwest and had requested DTs as well. I told them about the artillery's priorities which would cause fire to be shifted if a unit made contact. And Peg asked me why the boys who wrote were threatened with court-martials.

I tried to explain that if the boys had written, they would have directly disobeyed the order from Americal Division Headquarters stating that all communication with next of kin was to emanate from Division to ensure that parents were not given conflicting facts and accusations.

“We didn't get any facts!” Peg protested.

“In other words,” Gene said, “they only give out the facts they want the parents to know. To fit the story.”

“But there wasn't any story,” I said.

“So that's why the platoon wasn't allowed to write us,” Peg said. “I see now. It has to be covered up.”

“It wasn't covered up, Peg,” I said. “What you were told was true.” I went back through my notes until I found a copy of that first letter sent over Schwarzkopf's signature. I read the second paragraph to them. “Michael's unit was in their night defensive position where the letter says they were. The unit was ‘adjusting artillery to provide a predetermined range of fire in the event of enemy contact.' Michael did receive ‘a fatal missile wound when an artillery round fell short of its intended target and detonated near his position.' Admittedly you were told the barest minimum, but what you were told was the truth.”

“Well,” Gene said, “Schwarzkopf has destined his life for the Regular Army. But he's all through because of—”

“Because of his back,” Peg said.

“His back has healed,” I said. “He's out of the cast now, and he's all right.”

“Listen, this so-called event they went out on,” Gene said, and he began rapping the kitchen table top for emphasis, “was Schwarzkopf's [bam!] own [bam!] planned (bam!) adventure! He thought there were some Vietcong out there and this was the first [bam!] time [bam!] that Schwarzkopf had ever been out on a search and destroy mission. The first time the chaplain had been out. That the company clerk had been out. The first sergeant. Did Schwarzkopf tell you that?”

“Gene, it wasn't the first time Schwarzkopf had been out. Or the chaplain. I don't think the company clerk was with them that night, but I'm not sure. I do know that the first sergeant went out any time the executive officer came in. There was a conflict betw—”