To Live

by C. G. Cooper

  He was on the ground now, scanning for targets. Nothing. The screams of his companions went on like some sort of twisted opera.

  That’s when it all solidified and appeared like a map in his head. He saw it all. He knew that if he didn’t do something, they’d all die.

  So even as his squad leader was blown away and his platoon commander shouted for support over the radio, Lance Corporal Elmore Thaddeus Nix rose to his feet and took on the enemy.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “By himself?” said Sam.

  Franks was staring at Elmore again. That damned look. Why couldn’t he look somewhere else? He was wrong, dammit. This wasn’t for him.

  “He saved us all,” Franks said. “They,” and now he pointed to the families and old compatriots huddled around the tables, “they want to say thank you.”

  Elmore wiped his forehead. It was too hot in here. Someone was holding his hand. It was Sam. He looked down. She looked up.

  There was a tapping of a microphone and all eyes turned to the podium.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll all have a seat, dinner is about to be served.”

  Franks clapped Elmore on the back. “Come on. You’re with me.”

  Elmore didn’t taste the food. He barely registered the conversations going on around him. Instead, he was cast back once again, back to that night, back to the glory of it all.

  How he’d fallen on the front line of the enemy like silent death. How he noted the explosives wrapped around the body of a boy no older than thirteen.

  Remember that, he’d told himself.

  Tracers and mortars arced all around. The envelopment was coming. If the enemy made it all the way around, the Marines would be dead. Each and every one of them. It was in the lay of the land, the perfect kill zone. Fish in a barrel, as the saying went.

  So, he killed, not because he liked to, not even because he wanted to, but because he had to, and because he was good at it.

  He managed to eat everything, despite his frayed nerves. He knew what was coming. He saw them staring, mothers pointing, children giggling as they wondered about the old man at the head table. Whispers on the wind. Or was that all in his head?

  Franks rose, patted Elmore on the shoulder, and he marched to the podium. There were two generals in attendance - men Elmore had barely known at the time. Everyone knew the original salt, Sgt. Franks, was in charge.

  The Marine took the stage with the relish they’d all admired, not an ounce of hesitation.

  “Some of you may remember me as a younger, more gentile version of the crumbling marine standing in front you.” There was polite laughing, rising to a near raucous when someone in the crowd piped in, “That’s not what the ladies in Bangkok used to say.”

  Franks didn’t color. He never did.

  “Alright, settle down. Do I need to take you old coots out back for some good old-fashioned chewing? And watch your mouths. There are children here.”

  But his face said it all. He loved the grand stage. He relished being surrounded by his Marines.

  “Some of you I’ve kept up with over the years. Others, like you Sachowski, I can’t seem to get rid of.”

  “That’s right,” Sachowski crowed. “You’ll have to kill me first!”

  Sachowski, Elmore thought. He was from… where? San Francisco? No. Sacramento. Funny how you remembered those things after all the years.

  “Okay. Settle down or the general might have to call the commandant.” Franks pulled a folded bill of notes from his pocket and set them on the podium. “Now, for the main event. We’ve been trying to do this for a long time. It’s best we get it right the first time. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to refer to my notes.” He pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. It was strange to see Sgt. Franks wearing glasses. It was like finding out that Superman was really Clark Kent - part mortal.

  The crowd had gone silent, fully focused on the podium now, and on Elmore.

  Franks coughed into the back of his hand. “First, I’d like to take a second to say thanks to all of you for coming. I know it wasn’t easy, but we made it, didn’t we? There were a lot of days when we thought we wouldn’t make it. I’ve never forgotten, as I’m sure you haven’t either. Sure, it’s easy to say ‘move on’, but it’s not easy. So, let’s take a few moments to think of our friends who didn’t make it, our friends who lost the battle with Father Time.” Franks bowed his head and everyone followed suit. Elmore stared at his hands, wringing the napkin in his lap, trying to fight the rush of anxiety.

  When the requisite time had passed, Franks looked up again. “Now, I promised you I wouldn’t hog the stage.”

  “Go on and hog it, Sarge,” Sachowski yelled.

  Chuckles and a Cheshire grin from Franks.

  “Alright, pipe down now, Marine. I’ve got a story to tell.” Franks fussed with his notes, turning from one page to another. “Forget it.” He crumpled the papers and tossed them to the ground. “Never good at writing anyway.”

  It took him a moment to gather his thoughts and then he settled into what Elmore thought of as the Franks stance, the same one he’d used before stepping off on patrol.

  “I don’t remember meeting then-Private Nix. All I recall is a truck full of fresh-cut Marines shows up and you try to block out how the new kids look like carbon copies of the Marines who just got carted off. I do remember how he used to shoot. You all remember. Nix could shoot the eyes off a pair of dice. A real natural.” The MC gazed out over the crowd, fully immersed in the memory now. “It was some time during the rainy season that I realized he was made of different stuff. Yeah, I hear you groaning. I’ll never forget the damned rainy season either. Anyway, I remember Nix on one of our endless patrols, never complaining. The lieutenant, God rest his soul, had put Nix on the radio. He was a sturdy young buck back then. Never complained. You remember that? Damnedest thing. All Marines complain, at least to their buddy in the foxhole. But not Nix. Nope. He lugged that radio up and down hills, kept it up and running, even though I’m pretty sure he only got a five-minute tutorial on how the thing worked.

  “So there was the lieutenant, jabbering away, me nearby, and Nix looking into the bush. Out of nowhere, the VC attacked. They’d seen us coming. The lieutenant knew it, even though he’d been in country less than a month. God bless that baby-faced boy. He was the first to go. So what does Nix do? With the radio still on his back, he engages the enemy with focused, disciplined fire, just like in the manual. But that wasn’t the beauty of it.” Franks shook his head, as if the memory couldn’t be right. “Pfc. Nix took a beat from firing, picked the lieutenant up onto his shoulder and moved toward the EVAC point. But you know what, he kept firing. Radio on his back. Officer on his shoulders, and still Nix fired. Damnedest thing…”

  Elmore saw it. He felt it. He tasted the rain. He smelled the cordite, the blood of the young lieutenant running down his back. He hadn’t thought. He’d just acted.

  “Well, it wasn’t the last time Nix would surprise me. No sir. That’s why we’re here, but now that I think about it, by the time he saved our tails it wasn’t a surprise anymore. We knew Nix. He knew us. And we knew that we’d be okay as long as this special Marine stayed in our ranks. And that’s where the story gets really interesting...”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  They really were everywhere. VC for miles, for days.

  He’d gotten lucky. They were focused forward, away from his approach. He’d somehow penetrated their hasty line and taken them on the flank. Luck, pure luck, he thought.

  LCpl. Nix had the insight to know that he should keep the element of surprise. From position to position, he hopped, plunging his Ka-Bar into chest cavities, slicing necks and faces. Methodical. No trembling hands.

  But the thirst was coming. Dull at first but coming for sure.

  At some point, the enemy caught wind of what he was doing, and some of their forces turned. He didn’t care. He was in no-man’s land now, in the land of the
enemy. Best to take it for what it was – an opportunity.

  So he plodded on, doing his business. At least until the first artillery shells hit.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “I’ll never forget the sounds of those artillery rounds coming,” Franks was saying. “Like freight trains. Sachowski, you remember, don’t you? You were with me.”

  “Sure was, Sarge. Pissed my pants.”

  The Marines in the room laughed. The wives just smiled. They’d heard the stories over and over again.

  “Artillery. Great when we’re shooting at them, but never good coming in. So, there we were, in a real pickle. I call for Nix – I want his gun. But nobody can find him. He’s gone, like so many others.” Franks shifted his gaze to Elmore now. Elmore felt it, the tide turning straight at him. “So, that comes to you, my friend. I know you don’t want to talk about it. I didn’t for a long, long time. But my wife, Jenny, got me to a group and then to a professional.” Franks took a deep breath in, let it out like it was the only thing keeping him alive. “There, I said it. I talked to a professional head-shrinker. Who wants to call me a mush brain for doing it? Folks, we’ve lost too many friends to the demons. Now we’ve got these wonderfully brave kids fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and they come home to a country that doesn’t know what to do with them. At least they don’t get the protests that we got. But still…” Franks shook his head. “Hell, I guess that’s a story for another day. And I’ve said enough. I’ll let these men talk for a bit.”

  That was when Elmore looked up and saw the line that had, at some point formed on the far side of the stage. It wrapped halfway around the room. What was happening?

  Franks read his mind. He looked right at him when he said, “Nix, sit back. They’re going to tell your story.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Corporal Nix carried me a hundred yards after tying my legs off,” one old Marine in a wheelchair said, his smile as wide as the sunrise. His name was Lloyd and he spoke with a slight stutter. “I was fat then too, so I don’t know how. The heat should’ve taken the weight from me, but there it is. Fat and bleeding to death, and here comes Nix, covered in blood and mud. I don’t know why, but when he said I was gonna be okay, I believed him. Even months later, when the doctors said I had a ten percent chance of living. I told them that Nix said I’d be okay. They asked me who Nix was and I told them, and then I got back to healing.”

  Another Marine took the mic, a handsome, put-together, retired doctor type. “I’d run out of ammo and the VC were everywhere. I was about to fall back to find some ammo when all of a sudden, Nix hops into my foxhole with a fresh set of rounds. ‘Take the shots you know you’ll make,’ he told me. And so I did. I took my time. Something about the way he told me – so calm, even over all the noise of the battle. I listened and I lived to fight another day.”

  Then there was the family, a woman and her son.

  “There wasn’t a day that went by that my husband didn’t talk about Corporal Nix. Corporal Nix this and Corporal Nix that. I started to get sick of hearing the name.”

  Chuckles from the crowd.

  Her son spoke. “When we were kids, Pops always came home in time to say our prayers with us. The first person we’d thank God for was Corporal Nix. We didn’t know who he was. We thought he was an angel. I guess to Pops, he was.”

  The general stepped up next and looked out over the crowd, this probably his thousandth performance. His eyes locked like an eagle’s, completely focused and still looking like he could do pull-ups with a pack on even though he had to be well into his seventies. “For those of you who don’t know, I had the privilege of being the company commander for this rag tag bunch of Marines. We were told to distance ourselves emotionally, for we were sure to lose a lot of men. That was Vietnam. I saw the body bags loading the day I arrived. Helluva way for a twenty-something kid to be initiated. But these Marines, these wonderful bastards, well, they showed me what life was really like. They showed me that you could have the foulest mouth in the China Sea, but that compassion was at the heart of every man.” He turned to Elmore, his gaze piercing. Elmore wanted to turn from it. “And then there was Nix. Elmore Thaddeus Nix. A man as uncommon as his name. Like Sergeant Franks, I don’t remember the day he arrived. There were too many other things to think about. I was a good Marine and I distanced myself. But things changed, not just on that fateful night, but every day after Nix came to Vietnam. Now, I’m not gonna sit up here and preach to you, but I do believe, I truly do, that even in the midst of a godforsaken war, God is still watching. He’s watching, waiting, and every once in a while, he sends us a blessing in the form of another man or woman. I’ve had the privilege of serving with too many good Marines to count, but when I think of the pinnacle of God’s gift, my mind always goes to Corporal Nix. You were God’s gift to every man, woman, and child in this room, and I thank you.”

  It went on like that for the better part of two hours. Elmore squirmed through it all. These memories came to him at the oddest times over the years. Blessed memories of war and blood and the men he’d served with.

  And then there was the memory.

  The one that never went away.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The day after the battle, everyone back at headquarters seemed to be talking. They were in the process of debriefing the Marines, top down. There was talk of a new offensive, something to capitalize on the route of a VC regiment spearheaded by a single Marine company. That’s what it had turned into.

  But LCpl. Nix wasn’t thinking on that now. He’d found a place on a hill overlooking the landscape of green. A stack of cigarette packs sat next to him. He puffed away, not quite knowing what to think, but he knew what he felt: pride. Sinful, yes, but pride nonetheless. The pride of a man who never really knew his purpose on earth and suddenly did. The pride of a man who’d been trained for a single task and had come through it clean.

  And so he sat, and he smoked, and he thought. He’d finally come to the place in his life when he knew he’d made it. He’d become the thing he most admired, and it made him smile.

  LCpl. Elmore Thaddeus Nix had done his best, and his best had been enough.

  His mind went down the dove trail of future plans and he saw himself as a gunny, maybe even a first sergeant one day. Yes, that would be worthwhile. He’d volunteer to stay past his time. The jungles of Vietnam had shown him his worth, and he meant to spend that worth until the day he could no longer raise a weapon to defend his friends – his brothers.

  But fate had another plan, and it would be weeks until LCpl. Nix found out that his own plans had been discarded like so much obsolete refuse.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sam had taken Elmore’s hand again and clutched it fiercely. So strange, that feeling.

  Sgt. Franks was at the podium again. “Nix, I hope you have a better understanding of why we’ve spent the last twenty years inviting you to this thing. We just wanted to say thanks. Truly. Deeply. Thank you.” The notes came out again but went away just as fast. “Who was there when they pinned the medal on Nix?”

  A scattering of raised hands.

  “I wish I could’ve been there,” Franks said, wistful now. “General, is it true that Nix tried to give it back?”

  The general nodded reverently.

  Franks smiled. “It was probably the one and only time Nix disobeyed a direct order.”

  And it was. He’d stepped right up to the commanding general and offered to give the medal back. He didn’t want it. Everything they’d said in the citation, about fighting nonstop for two days and saving all those Marines, was all true. But it was the burden that came along with it that Elmore didn’t want.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Now-Corporal Nix entered the battalion hooch, wiping the sweat from his brow, just off another of a long line of patrols. It wasn’t just the colonel there. A chaplain was there too, along with three generals. One looked like he’d been in the country. The other two had the loo
k of someone fresh off the plane, though by the look in their eyes and the way they didn’t flinch at the sound of artillery, he knew they’d seen combat in their prime.

  He reported in like he’d learned at Parris Island. “Corporal Nix reporting as ordered, gentlemen.”

  He’d said ‘gentlemen’ at the last moment. Was that what he was supposed to say in the company of all those stars?

  “At ease, Nix,” the regimental commander said. Nix had limited contact with the man. For all he knew, the colonel was a fair but tough man - a man who knew the business of war. “The general’s here to deliver your orders.”

  There were smiles all around.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Your orders, Nix. You’re going home.”

  “That can’t be right. I’ve got two months left, sir.”

  The colonel walked over and clapped Nix on the back. “Not anymore you don’t. It’s come straight from the president. He wants to see you and put the medal around your neck himself.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t want to go home, do you, Nix?” He looked at the other generals. “The crazy sonofabitch wants to stay.”

  The generals laughed. The chaplain stared at his feet, a smile playing around his lips.

  Now the colonel’s face went hard. “Look, son, you’ve done good. But you’re no good to me here. I can’t have the burden of a Medal of Honor recipient under my command. Hell, what would happen if you got killed?”

  Nix couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Then I don’t want it, sir. I don’t want the medal.”

  This time the colonel’s tone said it all. “It’s done, son,” was all he said.