Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounded pretty responsible to me tonight.”

  “Sounded good. But will he follow through? Or next time the NVA attack in force and some battalion stops em, is he going to say, ‘Hey, that’s not my responsibility’?”

  “Eh? Let’s see what these commentators have to say.” Again they turned their attention to the television. The lead-in to the commentary was followed by another set of commercials, then a recapitulation of a story from earlier in the day about the South Viet Namese treatment of captured enemy soldiers—including the stabbing of a POW.

  “Geez!” Bobby snapped.

  The comments were mixed. Senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Mike Mansfield of Montana were irate. They accused Nixon of adopting the policies of the Johnson Administration and said they would sponsor Senate hearings “to educate” the American people “to the real facts of the war.” Only a brief mention was made of the NVA and VC shelling of forty-five bases and towns in South Viet Nam and their launching of a series of attacks on outposts along the Cambodian border.

  “I can’t watch this.” Bobby stood. “Let’s see what the papers say tomorrow. They tend to make more sense.”

  “Yep. Course this is easier,” Grandpa said.

  “Yep,” Bobby echoed him. “Course, like you taught me, the easiest way usually isn’t the right way.”

  “Yep,” Grandpa said. He rose and turned the set off. “Glad you was listening.”

  On the eighth, the day Red arrived in California, Bobby turned to the recent newspapers he’d stacked but hadn’t read. The stories irritated him. Gallup polls showed 77 percent of those who had heard Nixon’s speech approved of his planned de-escalation. Only 6 percent were opposed. President Thieu of South Viet Nam hailed the speech as important, and Nixon, clutching a stack of telegrams, claimed the support of the Great Silent Majority. But Fulbright and Mansfield, along with a growing number of senators and representatives, denounced the president’s plan—Fulbright stating that Mr. Nixon has “taken full as his own the Johnson war, based on [the] fundamental error” that the war was being fought against an international communist conspiracy. A coalition of antiwar groups was planning a massive march on Washington for the fifteenth.

  Wapinski could feel the divisiveness, the polarization of the anti- and pro-war elements digging in for battle, but he could not cope with the feeling. Though he read the lines he did not fully absorb the details or the implications. Nor did he project between the lines using information he possessed as an ex-infantry captain.

  On the eleventh, a letter:

  My dearest Bob,

  There was no doubt in my mind that I would miss you but I didn’t realize just how much. As soon as I find someplace to settle I’m going to start the greatest public relations campaign San Martin has ever seen in hopes of luring you away from your grandfather and High Meadow and to me.

  I’m rooming with another girl from work and her boyfriend and his sister. You won’t believe how much they get for rent here. Timmy jokes that I’ve joined his harem and that he needed a redhead. Where I work the people are nice too, even if the job isn’t exciting. But I think there is great room for promotion and growth. The man I work for is a real businessman and he runs a tight ship. I’m learning a lot and actually used my shorthand for the first time since high school. I miss Mill Creek Falls sometimes. There’s 50 times the construction going on here. Things are hopping all around. Why don’t you come, even if it’s just for a visit.

  Please come. It’s raining now. They say this is the rainy season, but it’s not as bad as winter back there. If you’ll come and help me get out of these doldrums I’ll let you play with me. Oh, I don’t believe I wrote it like that. I think I’m a little homesick but mostly I miss you.

  If this job doesn’t pick up, I might look for another one. I told Suzie that I was getting $10,000 to start and she said, “How come you started at less than everybody else?” Did I ever tell you it excites me when a guy talks dirty?

  Love you a whole bunch,

  Red

  For several days Bob Wapinski savored the letter. It tickled him every time he read her sexual references. He continued rising early, watching the sunrise, walking the woods with Josh. The house was in presentable shape. There were major repairs needed, new roof, new furnace, updated wiring and plumbing. The long drive needed grading. The high meadow could be turned, planted with winter wheat. But there were problems with all those projects. Roof, furnace, wiring, plumbing, all were adequate, and to upgrade them was to make a commitment. Grandpa spent most of his time in the barn office, so it mattered little to him what happened to the house. If his grandfather had asked, Bob would immediately have set to task but the only thing the old man requested was that Bob split and stack firewood for the small potbellied stove in the barn office. Bob took the tractor and wagon up the overgrown road through the high meadow to the sugarbush, pruned the trees and cleared the deadfall. In three days he had three cords worth of branches, logs and trunks stacked near the barn, all needing to be reduced to a foot long and no more than four inches in diameter. All the while he thought about Red and her letter. At night he worked on his car, finally pulling the engine, dismantling the bottom end to assess the damage, disassembling the axles and drive train.

  Suddenly a place called My Lai was in the news. First in a few newspapers, then on the TV evening reports. Policy was no longer debated, no longer newsworthy, only atrocities.

  Red wrote again.

  Bob, you’re such an idealist. I love that in you. This is a great place for an idealist. I’ve been exploring the hill right behind the house. I can hardly believe I’m so winded. My goal is to get my legs back in shape before you get here. I hope that leaves me only a few weeks.

  The hills are beautiful. I’ve already found five places for picnics and two of them are so secluded we could do anything. Even in broad daylight! I can hardly wait for you to get here. I hope I can live up to your ideal. And I hope you get here before the rains really start.

  The job market here is really good. I know you’ll be able to get a job. With your background there’s no telling how much money you could make. It’ll be so rewarding being with you again.

  Suzie and Tim are thinking of moving to LA. We could keep this house but it’s a wreck. The rent’s only $325 and it has a large yard and three bedrooms. Suzie wants to leave her cats. I could say I’d take the house and then we could have Josh come and frighten the cats away. If Josh comes it’ll either cost more or take longer to find a nice place. I miss you so much I think about you touching me all the time.

  Red

  Soon, he thought. He thought about her legs, about her thighs, about her delicate feet. He thought about “Tim” who he did not know, about “Tim’s Harem,” about her meeting others at work. And Bobby asked himself, what if she finds someone else? If I do go ... I can’t offer her much ... Do I have the right to ask her to wait? Could I really leave Granpa? In his room he wrote a letter.

  To the Loveliest Red in the World,

  I have been keeping quite busy since your departure, trying to keep from reminiscing. Keeping busy helps little. Images of pretty curls getting tangled in the car door handle are driving me crazy. Images of green eyes, images of firm thighs.

  I’m a bit surprised. This ol’ head feels more emptiness than it knew it could. Your leaving never really was realized until the moment you left. I’ve reread your letters dozens of times. Please keep writing.

  I’m goina say it. I feel terrible. I can hardly believe how hard it hit me when I saw you drive off. I watched the VW all the way down the drive and out as far as it was visible. I never realized how much you have come to mean to me. I’ve discovered that I think you are the most delightful, prettiest and wonderful person I’ve ever met. That is I’m falling in love with you more and more each day.

  You don’t have to sell me on California. I’m sold on you. If you truly want me to come out, say so. I�
��ll be there. I want you back. Not back here, just back with me. You’ve been gone for twenty days. That’s a terrible long time. I don’t know what to say. I think I should move out there and I think we should get married.

  All My Love,

  Bob

  Robert Wapinski stared at the page before him. He meant it. He meant it as he was writing it but he wasn’t so sure he meant it on rereading it. Still he sealed it, and the next morning he drove to town and mailed it at the post office.

  Several days passed. Brian called, told Bobby that Cheryl had miscarried. Bobby didn’t know what to think. The news about My Lai, about a guy named William Calley and a newsman named Seymour Hersh, had become an uproar. The Cleveland Plain Dealer published graphic photos of the April 1968 massacre. The Army announced Calley would be tried at general court-martial for the premeditated murder of 109 Viet Namese civilians. At first ex-Captain Robert Wapinski was defensive, explaining to his grandfather that a unit in the lowlands might have gone berserk in a village if they had been hitting booby traps and ambushes, and had been losing soldiers to snipers—AND if they found evidence that the villagers were participants.

  “You watch a buddy get killed, you get angry,” Bobby said. “You watch a lot of them get wounded or wasted, you want revenge. That’s probably what happened. A good commander, though, would of reeled in his men. He’d have controlled it.”

  “Good men,” Grandpa had agreed, “don’t always exhibit good judgment.”

  But soon—based solely on TV news, for he was still clipping, saving but not reading the newspaper—Bobby came to think they should convict Calley and execute him, if the charges had any substantiation.

  That day marked the beginning and the end, the resolution and the commencement. It marked the end of Wapinski’s questioning, the end of investigation, the end of his concern over Viet Nam, for five years, years in which other concerns would be paramount.

  The barn office was silent except for an occasional muffled crackle from the old potbellied stove. The quietness invaded Wapinski, oozed into his mind, seeped into his heart. For an hour he read his clippings, ordered them, made a few notes, a few underlines. If his ire rose over the story of a university professor’s home being bombed because he did not teach the left’s perspective on the war, it quickly diffused as he plodded on, pushed ever deeper into not only what the news said, but what it was. After an hour he began jotting notes about his own experiences and about himself.

  I grew up on Grandpa’s farm—until I was 8—and later spent many summers and weekends there. I fished, hunted, trapped, and spent many days by myself in the woods. I would have been a great point man—I think I was a passable company commander.

  He stopped to think, think back to himself at Go Dau Ha, at Cu Chi, at Trung Lap, to picture himself at Quang Tri, at Evans and Eagle and on various firebases, in various NDPs. It surprised him, in his calm, that he could actually see himself as if he were someone else, see himself talking to Quay, to Thompson, to Billings, to any of a score of his troops. He could see the vegetation, taste the water from the mountain streams, hear and fear the crinkle of dry leaves as he stepped cautiously along a trail in the defoliated regions. He could not see the firefights. He could not hear the cracking of small arms or the booming of artillery. He could imagine them, force them, but he could not, at will, recreate them as if they were happening in the here and now, as they sometimes happened in his dreams. That did not bother him.

  For another hour Bob Wapinski chronologically organized his military records, wrote brief descriptions of various places he’d been, various actions he’d seen. Then he came to May 1969, Hill 937, Dong Ap Bia, Hamburger. Still he maintained his calm but it now was more difficult. He had not written to Blackwell and that unfinished task ate at him.

  NVA from across the border, in Laos, registering their rocket launchers and guns—122s, 130s, and heavy mortars—in anticipation of our move into the A Shau. When our troops first air-assaulted to the valley the NVA were ready, waiting, with reinforcements, open supply lines and on-call supporting fire. How did they know, before we launched even our first helicopter, where we were headed? What would they have done if we had not stumbled across 937? Would they have attacked us in force or only have sniped at us? Mortared our NDPs but not have engaged us fully? Waited until we’d reported “The A Shau has been cleared,” let us leave, and then carry the war forward into the populated lowlands—attacking our bases, Viet Namese towns and cities on their own schedule? By Day 2 our units were catching sporadic mortar fire. By 3, 300 rounds of mortar and rockets! By the time I arrived I knew we’d be hit again. It was only a question of when. We monitored radio traffic of all the allied companies—listened to some being mauled. Still, as good as the NVA were, with the advantage of being dug in, of being nearer to their supply lines and sanctuaries, of having on-call artillery and numerical advantages, AND with weather and terrain on their side—we did finally overrun them—sheer stubborn persistence called Airborne Spirit by some, stupidity by others. How else could the battle have been fought? Generate alternatives. Was it worth it?

  Wapinski wrote on, listed the corps, division, brigade and battalion commanders, their radio call signs and even frequencies if he recalled them, summoning far more detail than he realized he’d retained. He listed every company, every commander he could recall, the name or nickname of every troop he could remember under his own brief stint as leader of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry, 3d Brigade, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile). Then he stopped. There were images of Dong Ap Bia he was not certain he wished to explore. If Blackwell was Bro Black of the Sugar Shack, Wapinski could indeed send him a positive response. But was he? It then occurred to Wapinski that there were no slackers at Dong Ap Bia. Perhaps there were men who had been afraid. Fear was an appropriate reaction. Half the company was either wounded or killed. Images, feelings, physical sensations flooded back, deluged his mind—lost there, left on the hill when they withdrew under intense enemy kill-zone fire. Were they KIA, MIA, or POW? On the next assault they could not find even a trace—not a piece of uniform, not a traumatically amputated limb.

  Wapinski wrote to Blackwell, wrote to all levels of command, to the adjutant’s office. He had nothing but praise for every soldier who’d served in the A Shau. He suggested the defense lawyer obtain affidavits from Thompson, from Quay Le, from Billy Smith and Johnson and Edwards, the medic who treated Blackwell in the field. If Tyrone Blackwell refused to return to the field, Wapinski wrote, it was likely because of rational and justifiable fear based on self-preservation—which the man had earned. Before he finished the last letter he realized his eyes were clouding; he was choking. There was before him a loaded chopper, the smell stuck in his nose, a chopper full of dead Americans.

  He breathed heavily, ran the back of his wrist across his cheeks. Could we have lured them into ambushes in the valley? Could we have cordoned off 937? Waited them out? Bombed them out? He did not answer the questions but instead flipped to a news story of accusations made by Senator Ted Kennedy. His concentration faltered. He skimmed the article, whispered with little conviction, “He doesn’t understand. He just doesn’t fuckin understand.”

  More hours passed. Bob Wapinski read the file his grandfather had assembled on the 101st. Then he read the stories his grandfather had collected for his father from ’42 to ’45. As he read, it again hit him that news was something more than what it reported—something much more. And that answering the question, What is today’s news? with a recap of the stories was like answering the question, What is God? by saying the Our Father.

  Bobby Wapinski opened the manila envelope, opened the first letter. There was no date of writing, but on the envelope, Miriam, in her efficient manner, had noted “Received: 11 Oct. ’42.” The penmanship—pencilmanship—was crude. Bobby had not recognized that in 1959 when he’d last read those pages. Nor had he recognized how simply the letters were written, as if his father were a young boy who’d grown up poo
r on a farm in the mountainous outback of the Alleghenys. Letter after letter repeated the same phrases, made the same grammatical and spelling errors. Bobby almost began correcting them. Letter after letter asked about Brian, asked for a photograph of their baby and a photo of mother and child. There were no mentions of having received one. And all the letters from the Pacific ended with “I pray for you. Pray for me. I’m a melancholy baby until we meet again.”

  Bob Wapinski paused. Ah Pa, he thought. Pa! Pa! Why? He closed his eyes. In his hands he still held the new letters, letters written after Paul Wapinski abandoned his family, abandoned his son Robert who so wished he’d not. Pa! he thought again. His face sagged. Pa, I wanted to come home to you. You know that? Sometimes I thought, sometimes over there I thought maybe when I came home, you know, maybe I could bring you home, too. I would have told you all about it. You could have held me. Once you did. I know you once did. With you Pa ... why do I have to think patient inquiry? Obligations? Responsibilities? I wanted you to be here ... to hold me ... to tell me it ... it was ... What drives this thing, ME? What steers it? I—I feel like a damn raft on some damn river. Pa, we could have come home together!

  January 14, 1948

  Dear Miriam,

  Cleveland is a big city. Bigger then I like. I got a factory job. The pay isn’t much but I don’t need much. I’m sending you everything I can. Don’t try to get to me. I got things to work out and I can’t do it with you harpin on me. I guess I’m not enough man for you and you deserve more then me. Buy Brian a baseball glove and some crackerjacks. There’s extra money here for it. And something for the baby. I pray for you.

  Paul

  Bobby stared at the letter. Again he’d expected more. How badly he wanted his father to be more, wanted to see in those letters the man his grandfather described. The second and third letters were similar, each mentioning money sent, requesting she spend some on the boys. The fourth acknowledged Joanne’s birth. The fifth was postmarked St. Louis, December 1952. It too mentioned money sent, indicating Paul Wapinski had been mailing cash to his wife every month for four years, that there was trouble at work and he’d been laid off. Finally there was only one more; the postmark was but half-printed, the date barely legible. Bobby deciphered 53 and Texas. Miriam had not receipted it.