by Gil Hogg
He reacted instantly. He stood up. “I ask for a short adjournment, if the Court pleases. The accused is unwell. He’s feeling the heat.” Amherst handed me a glass of water. “Drink it!” he said through tight lips.
I swallowed the warm, chlorine-tasting water. The President agreed fifteen minutes and the Court filed out of the room. Vale approached looking searchingly at me but exuding a casual air. “You must be feeling confident, Geoffrey,” he said to Amherst.
Amherst mumbled a reply and pushed me away to the privacy of a corner near the bench. “So, you’ve been monkeying with the girl?” His colour remained high red. His voice trembled.
“No, I spoke to her.”
“Spoke to her?” Amherst said, contemptuously.
“I threw her out of my quarters last night. I never told her what to say and what she said in court was true.”
“That doesn’t matter a flying fuck. You told lies on oath, you asshole! Unless the girl tells the same lies, you’re finished. Vaughan’s story is the only one which will count.”
Then Amherst calmed, moved his big head in acceptance. “If you’d told me all about the girl, I’d have made sure the true story got on the record. It can’t hurt your case. It might hurt your dignity in front of your fiancée, but it can’t hurt the case. I might’ve decided we could do without her if I’d known. Vale didn’t want her. I might have got through without her. I only wanted to be a hundred and ten per cent sure.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You’re sorry? It’s your career and reputation, not mine. You’ve thrown the case away. At this moment Vale thinks he’s on a sure loser. In a few minutes he’s going to get a big birthday present, and win an astonishing victory!”
Gail approached us looking worried. “Is there something I can do? I don’t know which of you two boys is the most unwell. You both look ill to me.”
“Excuse me, Sister,” Amherst said, “but I’ve got to go over some evidence with Bob. We can’t talk now,” and brushing past her, he pulled me by the sleeve into the hall. At the far end of the hall, out of earshot, Ann James sat on a hard bench, legs crossed, showing her calves and ankles to perfection.
“Can’t we have a word with her?” I said.
Amherst fluttered his eyelids and looked upward. “Tempting, isn’t it? Perjury we have. Let’s not add interfering with a witness.”
29
The Court resumed sleepily with a friendly comment on my health. Ann James minced to the witnesses’ chair and Vale began to re-examine her.
“Miss James we’ve heard evidence from Mr McDade about your relationship with him.”
“Objection.” Amherst was on his feet.
“Sustained,” the President said. “Phrase your questions more carefully, Mr Vale.”
Amherst whispered to me, “He’s trying to bluff her into thinking you’ve told everything.”
“Miss James, what was your relationship with Mr McDade?”
Ann James’ face was pale and blank. “Nothing. Not even friends.”
“After that casual meeting before the concert, did you speak to him later that night?”
She hesitated. “Yes… he was drunk. After the show.”
“At what time?”
“About two in the morning.”
“Two in the morning? That’s a little after lights out in a war zone.” He looked knowingly at the Court. “What did you speak about?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Nothing at two in the morning? Did you have sex?”
“No. I told you, he was drunk.”
“Did you ever speak to Mr McDade after you left Camp Dakota?”
She reddened. “Yes, I was angry at getting a summons because I’m missing out on engagements and I went to see him.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
Vale’s eyes were glowing beside his trunk-like nose. “And you talked about the case?”
“There was nothing else to talk about.”
The answer seemed to hang in the air. The members of the Court blinked. I felt sick.
“What did you do?” Vale asked, his voice thickened by malicious satisfaction.
Ann James’ lips had retreated to a thin line of ferocity. She looked at me and I dropped my head. Vale’s voice rang out this time.
“What did you do?”
“We had an argument. A violent argument.”
Vale returned to his seat with a triumphant nod toward the Court. Amherst, deflated, approached Ann James with a small smile and a soft voice.
“Miss James, the argument was about whether you would come to court, wasn’t it? Not about what to say?”
“Yes.”
“And Mr McDade told you to tell the truth in court.”
“Yes.”
“And you have told the truth?”
“Yes.”
When Amherst sat down, and the click of Ann James’ heels had died, the Court bent their heads together conferring, and decided to retire for five minutes. “They’re considering the discrepancy between your evidence and the girl’s,” he said.
I looked round for Gail but she had gone. When the Court returned they had grave expressions. None of the members even glanced at me.
“You’re for it,” Amherst whispered.
“Proceed, Mr Amherst.”
He called me to the witness stand. “Please explain yourself, Mr McDade,” he said, casting me adrift.
“In my evidence I denied the connection with Ann James to protect her; and at no time did I attempt to persuade her to tell other than the truth,” I said.
I sounded frail. I felt frail. I realised I should have been telling a much better story. I could have honestly said I was ashamed of my drunkenness on the night before the events.
The Court heard me coldly, almost inattentively, and asked no questions. And Vale disdainfully refused the opportunity to cross-examine. I could feel the downward momentum.
“The evidence is closed,” the President said. “Do you want to make a closing statement, Mr Amherst?”
Much subdued, Amherst said, “Whatever is said, this case focuses on a physical contact of a trivial nature which ought not to be the subject of a conviction of a brave and loyal officer.”
The words fell awkwardly in the air, perhaps judged irrelevant as they were uttered. The President called on Vale.
Now sure of his supremacy, Vale said, “McDade’s counsel has endeavoured to show him as a man of integrity willing to help an innocent soldier, but he lied. McDade perjured himself about his connection with the very witness who was supposed to confirm the purity of his motives! Colonel Vaughan’s evidence of assault must stand unaffected.”
The Court adjourned with the President’s promise to give judgment the following morning. I remained seated, head in hands while the courtroom emptied.
Vale sidled over to Amherst. “My, how the wind has changed, Geoffrey,” he said with a laugh.
Amherst nodded philosophically.
“It looks bad, but they might… ” I began to Amherst when Vale had gone.
“No way,” he interjected, lighting a cigarette and pumping out a volume of smoke which engulfed us. “They will not accept that you could lie on oath. Finish. End of case. The reason doesn’t matter. Do you get that, Bob?”
I reached for one of Amherst’s cigarettes.
“Yesterday,” Amherst said, “I’d have bet any money that the worst that would happen to you would be a reprimand. Today I wouldn’t put a cent on it.”
30
That night about 9pm Amherst visited me with a tight smile and a bottle of brandy.
His rage and disgust with me after the hearing had gone. When I said I felt I’d let him down, he said, “It’s about being confronted by the totally unexpected. Lawyers don’t like that. It’s their job to know the facts. They can work with facts they know. They get upset when they find something unexpected. I wanted to win, Bob. I thought we had, as near as hell, won. So I was piss
ed off with you momentarily. But I like you. And I’m well used to all sorts of human weaknesses. We’re not perfect.” He held out his hands, palms up, in a rueful gesture tinged with humour.
When we had settled ourselves with full glasses he said, “Now I’m giving you two options, and you have to choose. One, is to take your punishment.”
I was surprised to be offered any options. Since Vale had destroyed my credibility that afternoon, I had been virtually semi-conscious. I could see and hear what was immediately around me but I was otherwise numb. “You better tell me what the punishment will be.”
“I obviously can’t give you a definitive answer, but my guess is reduction to the ranks and possibly a period of detention. Maybe a dishonourable discharge. It’s quite difficult for the Court. It’s about military discipline and perjury. They know the word will get back to the Regiment.”
“Jesus!”
“It was trivia; now it’s a serious assault. And you’re a perjurer, so your explanations will get little credit. Could they possibly take a liberal line about the assault and empathise with a fellow man’s sexual delinquencies? Yes, they could, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I don’t want to split hairs, but there weren’t any sexual delinquencies.”
“Bob, I told you, it’s all how it looks on the day. With a hard-skinned forces entertainer at 2am in the morning? You could be a virgin. Sure. But try explaining that to the Court.”
Amherst seemed to be foreseeing a dangerous voyage to the sentence, with a chance in a million that it might end in calm shallows. “What’s the other option?”
“A medical discharge.”
I was surprised, despite Gail’s comments that suggested I might be ill, and Jim Blake’s opinion that I was ill. “How do I qualify for that?”
“By making the most of your headaches and memory failures. The Army psychos will hospitalise you for a while and then discharge you.”
“Sounds easy. Why should they do that?”
“Because you’ll be talking to them about the massacre at Kam Sung and your friend Blake. Mental illness will weaken or discredit any testimony you might have about that. And you’re a perjurer. The Army file will show that. On balance, as far as the Army’s concerned, it’s better if you’re a nut, because you might appeal if you were sane, and confront an appellant Court with Trask’s document.”
“Could you make anything of that – an appeal I mean?”
“I could make a lot of smoke, implying that you’re being silenced, like Trask. But I don’t advise it. I doubt that you would win.”
“Can you explain why?”
“Why? Because the truth is you’re not being silenced, and you’d still have to overcome the perjury taint. Sleep on the options I’ve given you and let me know in the morning.”
I was relieved by Amherst’s manner with me and we slouched in our chairs and hypothesised our way through the remainder of the bottle, taking in the lack of progress of the war, and the parts of America that we loved best. We agreed that every day that had passed over recent months failed to clear away the fog which prevented us from sighting the day of victory. While we talked, the options Amherst had given me were lodged in my head like two bricks. When I awoke on the top of my bed at four in the morning, Amherst had gone.
*
The next morning the members of the Court formed themselves into a sombre line on the bench. I stood facing them.
“We find the accused guilty as charged,” the President said. “We consider much of his evidence unworthy of belief, and where there is any conflict with his commanding officer, we prefer Colonel Vaughan’s evidence.”
Amherst was on his feet immediately. “I have a special application to make. I ask that the accused be remanded for a medical examination and a psychiatrist’s report.”
The President looked at Vale, who indicated that he was aware of this. “Well, Mr Amherst? A surprise application at this stage.”
“My client received a very brief medical before the trial, sir. He did not reveal his serious headaches and amnesia. He has handled matters relating to his defence erratically during the trial, and I believe his judgment is clouded by the trauma of the massacre he witnessed.”
“We don’t know whether there was a massacre,” the President said.
“The defendant believes there was, as did his man, Trask, whose report you have seen.”
I could imagine the Court considering Trask’s complaint. The document contained enough names to credibly justify an investigation, which would be like a poison spring, swelling and seeping to saturate more ground, to suck in more soldiers and pollute their Army.
“At one level,” Amherst continued, “this trial has been about a minor and, Mr McDade says, provoked assault by a battle-weary lieutenant on a commanding officer. At another, it has been about the reaction of the same soldier to what he considers is a major war crime.”
“Really, gentlemen,” Vale said, mild but not too magnanimous in victory. “Could we have a little less rhetoric and a few more facts.”
Amherst took his seat and the President invited Vale to respond.
Vale rose and stepped forward with a slight grin as though this wasn’t a matter of much consequence. “The defendant presented himself to us as a high-minded officer in a moral dilemma, and he emerged as a venal liar at pains to cover his amatory indiscretions. He displayed a perfectly healthy cunning in presenting his case, and a remand for a medical report should not be considered.”
I had the feeling that Vale had not pressed his objection very hard.
The Court adjourned.
I waited in a coma of anxiety with counsel and the military police in the otherwise empty courtroom. Through the open shutters I could see the wilting trees against a searing sky, and the buzzards circling slowly. Vale read a brief for another case and made notes. Amherst smoked and occasionally walked about impatiently in the limited space.
I asked him about my chances. At first, he held his hands up in a denial of certainty, and then became more personal. “They have to be troubled by what might have happened at Kam Sung. It’s explosive. I’d give us a ninety per cent chance. Vale agrees. A remand for a psychiatric report tidies up all loose ends.”
We waited a long hour. I was remanded for the report.
*
Amherst and I left the building with my minder, a young corporal from the military police.
I saw the tough grass of the lawn, the worn flagstones on the path, and the sunlight falling vertically through a mist of pollen. Squads of helmeted soldiers marched, light glancing on the white skin of their jaws. A tiny bird flew past the flagpole at the front of the building at speed. The bushes shrugged sensuously in the heat. The sky was green.
“Thanks,” I said to Amherst.
“You’ll survive. And if, as I believe, you’re remanded for treatment following the report, we won’t meet again.”
We shook hands amicably.
“I’m sorry I’ve deprived you of a notch in your belt.”
Amherst made a throwaway gesture. “I’ve put you on a plane home with any luck.” He half-turned away, and stopped. “By the way, Bob, you might be interested to know that Vale told me this morning that he didn’t have any idea of links between you and Ann James. He was flying blind in his questions. He figured he had nothing to lose… These things can turn on a dime.”
31
At my billet I dropped my few possessions into a kitbag. I was to return to Camp Dakota in the custody of the MP, collect any necessary kit, and report to the Army Medical Centre at Hoi An. I had ‘chosen’ the sickness road – assuming the Army doctors believed I was sick – because in common sense there was no other course. And from the moment I’d told Amherst of my decision that morning, I started to wonder and worry if I was sane. I pushed the thought away and re-envisaged myself as I really believed I was: a man determined to manipulate the doctors to my advantage.
The MP was a very tall young man, with his beret
tilted forward at a rakish angle and a black and white armband; he sat in the back of the Jeep. I sat next to the driver and braced my legs under the dashboard as the vehicle accelerated away from the wire barricades around the military enclosure, down the road to skirt the town. I had a last look back at the quiet suburb of majestic houses and civic buildings where my fate, so far, had been decided.
The Jeep slewed and canted over as we narrowly missed a cart; we pounded through cobbled streets, missing ditches, stray animals and people by inches. The driver dabbed his horn liberally; he shouted at heedless bicycle riders, and the bearers of bundles of wood who occasionally forced his pace to a crawl.
The flight by Chinook to Da Nang was a routine Army cattle-truck operation; we travelled with a disparate bunch of military and advisers and boxes of supplies in a reverberating hold.
At Camp Dakota, Hoi An, the 33rd Regiment was making ready for action. Trucks were drawn up in lines to await passengers. Full kitbags were piled in front of the huts; machine guns, batteries, wireless sets and ammunition boxes were being stowed. Even in the afternoon heat the men looked jaunty; they would soon be out in lines of defence or on sweep patrols, living in bivouacs and trenches, sharing the strain of constant danger. For a while, some of these huts would be empty – a few days or a few hours – chairs stacked on tables in the mess, the ovens cold, the commander’s chair empty and the flagpole bare. Then there would be another regiment, stale and bloodied, showering away the fatigue and the dust and damp of previous days to make a resting place for itself.
I went into the cabin I’d shared with Blake and Boyd and sat on my bunk. The MP remained discreetly outside the door. The mud odour of our clothes, which the laundry could not remove, reminded me of the jungle streams where we had crawled like amphibians. My eye touched a few personal items – a tiny wooden galleon carved by Boyd, Blake’s fancy leather toilet case, my own tattered paperbacks – and hung on the walls were all the accoutrements of officers on active service: the belts, gaiters, packs, jackets, capes and caps that I might not wear again. I recalled the pleasure and the pride of wearing these clothes when I first received them.
