by Greg Dinallo
“Yes, I like,” I reply, my mood brightening as I rattle off the information—G Company, 18 April 1968, Champasak Province—and he begins entering it.
“It’s a brand-new program,” he explains while the computer does its work. “We put it together to help veterans, families, and friends keep in touch. That’s what we call it, ‘In Touch.’ ” He glances at the screen and types something, then looks up and says, “Spent some time in Laos, huh?”
“Yeah, creating traffic jams on the Trail. You?”
“Can Tho; that’s way down south in the Delta. I was a gunner on a PBR.”
“Riverine forces.”
“Uh-huh. Haven’t been on a boat since.”
“I know what you mean.”
We continue trading war stories until the printer interrupts us. There are approximately twenty-five to thirty names. Mine is one of them, as are the ones I saw on the wall. I keep my emotions in check, and slip the printout into my attaché. “Any idea where I go next?”
“Well, when we were compiling the names for the wall, we had a master list made up of casualty reports from all the service I branches. It was raw data, loaded with mistakes, misspellings; so we had each entry checked by the NPRC. They’ve got the original personnel files for everybody who’s ever been in the military.”
“The NPRC?”
“National Personnel Records Center. If anybody can figure out who your man is, I’d say it’d be them.”
“Thanks. I still have a little time before my flight. Where are they, the Pentagon?”
“Oh, no, they’re in St. Louis.”
“You mean as in Missouri?”
“Yes, sorry. It’s a big building out by the airport. The guy who was in charge of the verification project was a Mr.—” he pauses, and spins the wheel of a Rolodex—"Collins. Jack Collins.”
I can’t believe it. I’m in the nation’s capital, surrounded by government buildings, and the records of all military personnel are stored in Missouri. I return to the hotel and ask Nancy how she feels about making a stop in St. Louis.
She sighs, overwhelmed. “I still haven’t gotten through those term papers, I’ve got a staff meeting in the morning before classes start. I’ve got to get home and get my act together.”
We decide she’ll return to Los Angeles, and I’ll go to St. Louis alone. I have no trouble getting on a flight but can’t reach Mr. Collins. His secretary explains he’s at a meeting outside the office and isn’t expected back until after lunch. I make an appointment.
The flight to Lambert-St. Louis International is scheduled at two hours, seven minutes. I spend the time working my way through the alphabet in an effort to recall more of the men in my company.
It’s a short taxi ride from the airport to the National Personnel Records Center on Page Boulevard. The five-story building is sheathed in horizontal bands of glass and concrete curtain wall. It isn’t big, it’s gargantuan, easily as long as three football fields, and surrounded by acres of cars.
A receptionist clips a visitor’s tag to my jacket, then directs me to an institutional green office with government furniture and the obligatory portraits of the President and Joint Chiefs. A stocky man with the unflappable demeanor of someone who processes thousands of requests for information each day waves me in.
“Jack Collins,” he says, latching on to my hand. He’s genuinely intrigued when he hears why I’m there, and reveals there are more like fourteen mistakes on the Memorial, three of which have been publicly acknowledged; but he balks when I request information on the men in my company who came back from Vietnam. The rules are hard and fast: access to files other than my own requires permission in writing from Total Army Personnel Command in Virginia. Furthermore, it could take hours to retrieve my file from the archives. He suggests we look up my listing on the master casualty list first.
He fetches a horizontal format computer printout that’s as thick as a dictionary. Labeled A through M, it contains the names of approximately half the men who died in Vietnam. Collins finds the section he wants. Morgans fill half of one page and all of the next. There must be at least a hundred of them.
“That’s you,” he says, pointing to an entry near the top between Abraham Bruce, and Aubrey Donald. Each runs in a single line across the page. Mine reads:
All6301743 MORGAN A CALVERT LAA28961 3SFCE512/05/68 BOSTONY2322/3/48BC621SM10*10/3/6863IVBR19
I’m used to working with statistics condensed in this fashion, but each data log has its own code, and I’m as baffled as any layman. “You have the key handy, or do you know it by heart?”
“Not enough of it.” Collins retrieves a binder that contains the data keys. The first divides the line of letters and numbers into columns—more than thirty in this case—and identifies them. The others are used to decipher the entries under each. “The first column’s the service branch,” he begins. “As you might imagine, A stands for Army; the column right after your name is the country of casualty. LA stands for Laos, not Los Angeles.”
I force a smile.
“A2 means died from hostile wounds.”
“Fits,” I remark, referring to the soldier who died with my dog tags.
“Then there’s case number, rank, pay grade, date of casualty: 12 May ’68. Hometown, Boston; that Y means you enlisted; next is—”
“Hold it. You say 12 May?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s weird. I was wounded on 18 April. The way I figure it, the guy had to be killed on the same day in the same province.
“Yes, I’d think so,” Collins muses, as he runs a finger along the line of data, then scans the key. “Province code’s sixty-three. Sixty-three is Bolikhamsai Province.”
“Bolikhamsai? That’s really weird. You sure?”
“Uh-huh. Why?”
“I was wounded in Champasak.” I can see the worn map of Laos I carried with me in the field as if it were yesterday. “Bolikhamsai’s at least four, maybe five hundred miles north.”
I’m baffled. How could somebody all the way up there have ended up with my dog tags, let alone three weeks after I was wounded? My theory didn’t last a day. My time/place parameters and the list of KIAs in my attaché are useless.
“There’s always a chance they’re data encoding errors. You know, somebody checks a wrong box, hits a wrong key, and nobody catches it.”
“That would mean there’s no mistaken identity, and no other soldier,” I say, torn between being spared the torment of reliving the past, and being cheated out of the satisfaction it’s giving me.
“Could be. On the other hand, if it’s all correct—your date, province, cause of casualty, wound—then I’d say somebody else died with your tags.”
“Any way we can find out?”
“Sure, check your file. You’ll have to fill out a one-eighty first.” He takes a form from a drawer, makes a red X in the lower left corner, and slides it across the desk with a pen. “Make sure you sign it.”
Form 180-106—REQUEST PERTAINING TO MILITARY RECORDS—has more blanks than the SATs. Collins makes phone calls while I work on it. “Is it really going to take hours to get this stuff?”
Collins nods then tilts his head, reconsidering, and copies some data from the computer screen onto a routing slip. “Let’s go,” he says, reading aloud as we leave the office. “Third floor, sector N–W, aisle twenty-six, rack eighty-four, shelf five, box two. I’ll probably catch hell for doing this myself but—” he pushes the elevator button, then looks at me with sad eyes “—I lost a close friend over there.”
We ride in silence. When the doors open, we exit into a narrow canyon of identical cardboard file boxes stacked on shelving units that tower over us. My head fills with the musty smell of paper and ink.
“In case you’re wondering, this place holds over a hundred million individual military jackets in over two million cubic feet of storage space.” He makes his way through the maze guided by signs that act as street names and house numbers. Finally he rolls a
ladder in to position, then climbs up, removes one of the boxes, and carries it to a table beneath the windows.
My pulse quickens as he opens it and culls through the jackets. He quickly finds—MORGAN A. CALVERT 116301743—and starts thumbing through the documents, which are several inches thick.
“What’re you looking for?”
“The report filed by the medic who treated you in the field.”
He finally slips a yellowing page from the jacket. The pertinent data blanks read: WIA 18/04/68 CP LA—wounded in action, 18 April 1968, Champasak Province, Laos. It’s all correct.
We set the medic’s report aside and examine all the other documents to see if one of them contains the incorrect data that’s on the master casualty list.
“Pretty much settles it,” Collins says, after we determine that isn’t the case.
How I wish it did. “The date someone was killed in action came from a casualty report, right?”
“Right. If somebody in the field recovered a body, or even part of one, with your dog tags there’s got to be a record of it.”
“But you don’t have them here,” I say, knowingly.
“No. They’re retained by Mortuary Affairs.”
My shoulders sag in defeat.
Collins notices and studies me for a moment. “Better get used to it.”
“That bad, huh?”
He nods gravely. “You have no idea what you’re getting into, believe me.”
“But getting copies of the mortuary records shouldn’t be a problem. I mean, I’ll be asking for information under my name and serial number.”
“True. Of course on the other hand—” he shakes his head, dismayed by a thought that occurs to him “—there’s no guarantee now that he was even Army.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” I say, feeling a little shell-shocked.
“That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. I’d give serious consideration to forgetting about this, if I were you.”
I shove my hands into my pockets and nod numbly.
“Anything else you want?”
I mull it over for a moment. “A copy of that medic’s report, I guess.”
“No problem.”
As Collins heads for a nearby copying station, I stand amid the records of the countless millions who served in the military through four wars in this century alone, thinking that every new piece of information seems to be complicating the mystery instead of solving it. I still have no idea who the soldier is, just the slim chance that the answer lies somewhere in the files of the casualties that were processed by the military mortuaries in Vietnam—mine, or one of the other 58,176.
5
I’m twenty-eight thousand feet above the Grand Canyon, spread out over two seats in the first-class cabin of a 767 working on my laptop. Undaunted by Collins’ warning, I got the address and phone number for Army Mortuary Affairs at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, from him before leaving the NPRC; and as soon as my flight was in the air, I began writing a letter requesting copies of all data filed under my name and serial number.
Due to the three-hour difference in time, it’s only 3:35 P.M. when I arrive in Los Angeles. Nancy picks me up from business trips whenever she can. It gives us a chance to talk before the clients, computers, and phones close in. Her Range Rover came with all the options, but she made sure a cellular phone wasn’t one of them. Today, her flight from Washington arrived just a few hours before mine, so I’ve arranged for one of the company drivers to meet me instead.
Minutes after touchdown, I’m tucked in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car heading north on the 405. At the first interchange, we take the Santa Monica west to the tunnel that channels all traffic onto Pacific Coast Highway. I drive through it every day on the way home from work. It’s right out of Star Trek—a fleeting fifteen-second time warp that teleports me from a world of stress and urban sprawl to one of peace and natural beauty. The Lincoln is soon climbing Malibu Canyon Road into the mountains, where, I bathed in golden light as our architect planned, a cluster of angular white structures hugs the rugged terrain. Nancy said I needed to get home and she’s right.
I intend to go right to my den and print out the letter to Mortuary Affairs, but I don’t. Instead, I take a refreshing swim in the pool, then spend some time in the spa with Nancy, watching the sunset. But as the last amber rays streak skyward from beneath the horizon, I start feeling restless again.
“Better go do it now,” she says, knowingly.
“Do what, Nance?” I ask, as if I haven’t the slightest idea what she’s talking about.
“Whatever it is that’s making you fidget. You’ll be distracted all through dinner. Go.”
I get into some comfortable clothes and head downstairs to the den. It’s an electronics-packed sanctuary with a view guaranteed to make the most insecure executive feel invincible. I transfer the Mortuary Affairs letter from the laptop to my PC, which is tied in to the mainframe at the office, then print it out on the laser jet. I’m proofreading it when my mind wanders to the time/place discrepancy. I’m lost in thought when Nancy pokes her head in the doorway.
“You going to be much longer? Cal?”
“Oh, sorry, I was somewhere else.”
“I don’t need to ask where, do I?”
I smile and shake no. “I was thinking about helicopters.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about food. How does Geoffery’s sound?” she asks, referring to a trendy restaurant perched on a bluff above the Pacific.
“Sounds okay,” I reply halfheartedly. I turn off the computer, then come around the desk. “You know, according to the master casualty list, whoever died with my tags was killed three weeks after and four hundred miles north of where I was wounded.”
“That’s strange.”
“Yes, it’s been bugging me. I was just thinking the medevac chopper might account for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they linked the fire bases to the hospitals and mortuaries. There’s a chance my ID got lost in the chopper that took me to the field hospital.”
“And you think it might’ve been reassigned to another area after that.”
“Uh-huh,” I reply as we start upstairs. “Weeks later the same chopper’s working this other province; goes into a hot LZ and hauls out a load of grunts: live, wounded, dead—happened all the time. My ID turns up, and some terrified kid figures it belongs to the pile of carnage next to him without tags.”
“That makes sense.”
“So what? No matter how I look at it, it still doesn’t give me a thing.”
“That’s because you haven’t eaten. You know how your brain refuses to function without fuel.”
“Without protein. Forget the angel hair and shitake mushrooms. Let’s go get some steaks.”
The next morning, Nancy is out of the house by 7:15. I spend a half hour on my rowing machine, working off a sixteen-ounce T-bone and sorting through the events in Washington and St. Louis. I have a feeling that something basic is wrong but can’t put my finger on it. I shower, dress, and head for the office—an effortless drive in a Mercedes 560 sedan that seems to know the route by heart.
Morgan Management Consulting is located in one of the aluminum-clad towers in Century City. It’s within striking distance of the corporate and financial center downtown, and the electronics and defense industry corridor on the west side.
I park in the underground garage, using one of those card keys to activate the gate arm, and take the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor, half of which my company occupies. In keeping with the management philosophy we preach, the decor and furnishings are minimalist in design, the artwork contemporary. I drop the letter to Mortuary Affairs in the mail chute and head for my office. I’m settling at my desk when my secretary informs me that Washington is on the line.
My words didn’t fall on deaf ears. One of the senators’s aides, faced with revising the legislation to reflect my data, needs help. It’s too c
omplex to cover over the phone, but could be handled in person by a subordinate. I assign it to a bright young woman who worked on my prepared testimony, then meet with one of our actuarial teams to review a troubled pension plan study.
It’s obvious a poll used to gather raw data was poorly designed. “Garbage in garbage out,” I lecture. “We ask the wrong questions, we don’t stand a chance in hell of getting the right answers. Now—” I pause. Something just clicked. I know what was bothering me at home this morning. I’ve been too driven by emotion and impulse. I haven’t really defined the problem and developed an approach to solving it. I clear my office and call the National Personnel Records Center.
“You have it figured out already?” Collins prompts when he comes on the line.
“Not the way I was going at it.”
“I’m not sure I follow you, Mr. Morgan.”
“I’ve been asking the wrong question,” I say, feeling a little guilty for chastising my staff. “I mean, the question I’m trying to answer is: Whose body was recovered with my dog tags? But when you really think about it, the one I should be asking is: How has the military accounted for this guy? John Doe’s body or part of it was identified as mine, right? When Mr. Doe didn’t turn up—dead or alive—what did they think happened to him? I may be wrong, but the way I see it, there are only two possibilities: They listed him as either missing in action or AWOL.”
“You might be on to something there.”
“Can you help me narrow the parameters?”
“Well, for openers, I’d say the chances that he’s listed as AWOL are pretty slim.”
“Why?”
“The circumstances. Bolikhamsai Province in Laos, or any battle zone for that matter, isn’t where GIs go AWOL. In most of the records I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them in my day, guys who went AWOL in Vietnam were usually last seen somewhere in one of the big cities, Saigon, Bangkok, Chiang Mai.”
“Heavily into women and drugs,” I hear myself adding, which makes me acutely aware of just how selective my memory has become. I knew guys who went AWOL: for days, for weeks, forever. “It’s been a long time, Mr. Collins, but that makes a lot of sense now that you mention it.”
