Thorne repeated himself in a rambling monologue over the next few pages, telling Mama that he is hurting bad and that he just doesn’t know what to say. He said Daddy didn’t have any last words for us, his family. But then Thorne admitted that he wasn’t with Daddy after he got hit, so he couldn’t really be sure about that.
He made reference to the discrepancy surrounding the mortar blast. Thorne said at first everyone thought it was fire from one of their own guns, but he knew better because he’d heard the mortar round when it came in. At no point did Thorne say that the round might have come from his gun.
He repeated again how close he and Daddy and Osborne were and how grieved he was over Daddy’s death. He said he and his men were exhausted after being in the jungle for one hundred days. But, he added, they still had a job to do.
Thorne said he would be home on December 7, and he encouraged Mama to be at the airport with his wife, Nita, for his arrival. Then he asked Mama to continue to write to him because letters are the best thing a soldier can get in Vietnam. Thorne added that Osborne was giving him pep talks on a daily basis, telling him not to lose hope, but survivor’s guilt was eating away at him.
Then Thorne made an outlandish remark, one that proves just how distraught he was over Daddy’s death. He told Mama he wished he could come home, marry her, and take care of her and us kids for the rest of his life. That remark alone was enough to scare Mama away. She did not answer his letter, and she never discussed the contents of it with Nita. I’m convinced Sergeant Thorne was just so overcome with grief that he was talking out of his head when he told Mama he wanted to marry her. But I’m equally convinced that he suspected that it was a blast from his gun that killed my father and not an incoming mortar round.
Hank Thorne died before I began searching for him. Nita told me that her husband never spoke of Vietnam but woke up often in the middle of the night, yelling out my father’s name. If Sergeant Thorne ever mentioned the discrepancy over the mortar round to his family, they never said. I’m still not sure if he told them that the Army brass had determined that the shrapnel came from a howitzer he was firing that morning. They made that decision about a month after my father’s death. Osborne said some of the brass came out and conducted an investigation. The official Army report concluded that the shell from Thorne’s gun had hit a tree near the middle of the camp and exploded and it was shrapnel from that explosion that killed my father.
But according to Osborne, “It ain’t what happened, and I’ll argue that until after I’m dead. The wounds all of us had came from ground level. If the round had hit this tree and went off prematurely, the shrapnel would have been coming toward us at a downward angle. This can’t be what happened.”
Osborne believes without question that the mortar round that exploded that morning was incoming fire. Two other mortar rounds had exploded in the base camp that morning, he explained. “This round went off at the same time and confused people. They didn’t know if it was incoming or outgoing.” Moreover, Osborne said the distance from Thorne’s gun to the tree in question was less than sixty meters, not far enough for the shell’s safety features to release and its inertia functions to kick into place. “The setback on an artillery shell precluded it from going off before it traveled over one hundred meters,” Osborne explained. “It can’t. You could take one and hit it with a hammer, and it’s not going to go off.
“They can call it official, whatever they want to,” Osborne said. “I’ll never believe that’s what happened. Because the way the wounds were and where it landed. Your dad’s had come in through his back into his lungs and through his back into his intestines. His intestines were protruding from the front out. If he’d been hit from the top down, they would have gone the other way. So it had to come from the ground.”
Later on, sandbags around the tents would prevent that sort of injury from occurring, Osborne said. But up until my father’s death, Osborne said the company’s practice had not been to sandbag around their tents.
“Your dad’s death saved a lot of lives in Vietnam,” Osborne said, noting that the subsequent investigation had included a report of what they could do to prevent further casualties. Osborne had been lying on a cot less than four feet from my father when the incident occurred. He knows how fortunate he was to escape the fate my father met that day.
I asked Osborne if he thought my father knew he was going to die.
“He knew he was hit bad,” Osborne said. “I don’t think any of us knew, except the doctor, how bad. We were all just in shock when he died. We didn’t think he’d been hit that bad. I knew he had an intestinal wound, but I’d seen enough of that. But I didn’t know about the wound in the lungs.
“I was kind of ticked at the doctor. With no more major wounds than Dave had, I didn’t understand why he couldn’t keep your dad alive. That’s when the doctor said, ‘Wait a minute. There are two wounds, one in his back y’all didn’t know about. That’s what killed him.’”
Osborne said prior to my father’s death, the artillery unit had considered themselves invincible. “We thought, ‘We’re back here where it’s safe. They’re not going to mess with us.’ Well, we found out after that they did mess with us…a lot.”
A second Army report confirmed Osborne’s account. The report stated, without any further explanation, that my father’s death had been the result of enemy fire.
I’D BEEN AT Osborne’s home for nearly three hours, and I had questions still unanswered. But before I could ask them, Osborne asked a question of his own. “Something I want to know is did your mother get the money I sent?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” I replied.
“There was about six thousand dollars, in Vietnamese currency, in a safe of your dad’s,” Osborne said. “We bought one-hundred-dollar money orders in her name and sent a damn stack of them to her.” As he spoke he stretched out his fingers six inches wide to show the depth of the stack.
I told him I didn’t think Mama had ever received the money.
“I had to send it through channels because it was an estate thing, and I just wondered whatever happened,” Osborne said. “I was in the boonies where I couldn’t follow up on it.”
Later I learned that Mama didn’t receive that stack of money orders from Osborne. She said the only personal effects of my father’s she received were his wedding band, his watch, a few pictures, and his wallet, which contained only one dollar. She gave that dollar to Aunt Mary Sue, who kept it in her Bible.
Mama knew Daddy had a stash of money somewhere—money he made playing poker or saved back from his pay. He had written to her about it shortly before he died. The letter is postmarked July 16, just eight days prior to his death:
I will be sending you that big bank account that you have been looking forward to. When I send it let me know how much you get so that I will know that you got all of it. For I will have to send it in hundred dollars money orders.
You know how we used to sit down on payday and wish that we could put all that money in the bank? Well this is our chance to do just that. You will be getting almost $2,000 with my back pay and what I have got playing poker. Yes, I still play poker. Now don’t get too pissed off because I only get $50 a month so I can’t loose all our money playing poker. That is about all we have to do with what we get paid over here.
The Army had some concerns about my father’s personal items being returned because his records contained numerous references to a tracer ordered by someone. Mama knew nothing about that. A letter dated Feburary 16, 1967, and addressed to Oren Womack, chief of Support Services in Washington, D.C., notes that a thorough investigation was conducted by headquarters and that there didn’t appear to be any documents regarding an inventory of my father’s belongings. That letter calls for further investigation by the Army’s inspector general.
On May 25, 1967, another letter was added to my father’s file that ultimately resolved the matter for the Army. It stated that Mama hadn’t made any inquiri
es about Daddy’s belongings, so it was assumed that she received everything and no further action was necessary.
I suspect someone fraudulently cashed the money orders Osborne sent to Mama. It was Mama’s responsibility to put a tracer on anything of Daddy’s that wasn’t returned. If she had known that Captain Osborne had sent her that stack of money orders, Mama would have done just that. She didn’t know about it, and Captain Osborne never followed up to ensure that Daddy’s money was delivered safely to Mama.
I hoped Captain Osborne could help me resolve the question of whether my father had been decapitated, as some of my kinfolk had claimed, so I asked him about it. I showed him a picture of my father in his casket. The photo disturbed him immensely.
“You know, I don’t understand this picture,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, he’s swollen very, very badly. His face is very full. And his hair is too long. That bothers me. That’s the first time I’ve seen that.”
Then he expressed the same reaction that I had as a child. “It doesn’t look anything like him to me. Not forty years later. It doesn’t. I wouldn’t have known who that was.”
Moreover, looking at the photo, Osborne said he could understand why someone would think my father might have been decapitated. “I can see why someone might say that,” he said. “But we all stood there and saluted your dad before they put him on the helicopter. The only incision on his neck was from where they had put the trach tube in.”
After Daddy’s lungs had filled with fluid, the doctor sliced his throat and inserted a trach tube. The autopsy report supports Osborne’s statements. There are notations on the drawing, and the report refers to the incision. Contrary to what some of the kinfolk suggested, Daddy had not been decapitated. His head wasn’t rolling around in the casket.
It’s true, he looked all hinky-kinky squeezed into that casket. But it was a military casket, and Daddy was a broad-shouldered man; it was too narrow for him. And once a person is embalmed, he’s hard as marble. There was no way for the funeral-home folks tending to him in Rogersville to situate Daddy’s head differently, to center his chin over his tie. It was what it was, but it was not a decapitation, not according to the evidence or the eyewitness accounts.
Osborne also explained a troubling notation on Daddy’s autopsy report. Under a box titled “condition of remains,” someone had marked “apparent GSW to back from abdomen.” This was the same autopsy report signed by Bruce Means, the embalmer. Means had identified the cause of death as “shrapnel wounds of abdomen and chest.”
I knew “GSW” meant “gunshot wound.” Could it be that someone had intentionally shot my father in the back? And if so, who? Why? And, if so, why would Daddy’s buddies try to cover it up?
Osborne referred again to how the mortar hit the ground outside the tent. He is convinced that a hot piece of shrapnel, not a bullet, shot upward through my father’s cot and into his back, piercing his lung. “When the shrapnel goes in, it cauterizes itself because it’s so hot,” Osborne explained. “So there’s no surface bleeding.” A small piece of shrapnel could give the appearance of a gunshot wound, he said.
I struggled with Osborne’s explanation. While the daughter in me wanted to believe his story, the documentation, specifically the autopsy report’s reference to an “apparent gunshot wound,” bothered me.
If I could obtain them, the court-martial records might help eradicate any lingering doubts. But even with help from Senator Gordon Smith and others, I haven’t tracked down any such records. In fact, none of the men that I’ve encountered from B Battery remember anything about an investigation into my father’s death or the subsequent court-martial that Osborne referred to. They also disagree about whether it was an incoming round or a bad round from Thorne’s gun that killed Dad.
John Nash lives in Albany, Georgia. He has a baritone voice that’s as thick as milk gravy. He described himself as an independent and hardheaded fellow. Age doesn’t seem to have mellowed him much. He’s a “like me or leave me alone” sort of guy. Plain-spoken, he has little tolerance for bullshit. “I was there when your dad got hit,” he told me. “It was early in the morning when the mortar rounds came in. I was awakened by the rounds and a loud scream. It was a really loud scream. It sounded like a wildcat. That was followed by a lot of confusion. Then somebody said Sergeant Spears had been hit.”
Nash was a private first class at the time. He said he helped transfer the radio call for the dust-off. “But the fog was too heavy. By the time the chopper got there, your dad was dead.”
I asked Nash if it’s possible that somebody had shot Daddy.
“I believe if that kind of talk was going around, I’d remember that. I remember that I was in a truck, sleeping on the mortar rounds, when we got incoming fire. I was awakened by your dad hollering. Then everybody around us started scrambling around. We all hit our foxholes.”
Nash said Daddy had spent a lot of time trying to mentor him. “I was young, twenty, at the time,” Nash said. “I was a good soldier, but I drank too much. Got into trouble sometimes. Your dad looked out for me a lot. He tried to keep me out of trouble. I thought a lot of him, and I believed he liked me. Sergeant Spears had a real good personality. I didn’t know anybody who didn’t like him. He was real understanding.”
Nash couldn’t imagine anyone taking aim at Daddy for any reason. “I was a kid with an attitude,” he said. “I thought I knew more than anybody over there. I hated for somebody to tell me what to do. But your dad would talk to me. He was always trying to keep me from doing stupid things. I never hurt anyone else, but I hurt myself. If he seen something coming on, he’d try to stop me.”
Like Osborne, Nash was stunned by my father’s death. “I couldn’t believe it. The whole time we was there, we only got incoming like that five or six times. We moved around pretty extensively, from Kontum Province to the rubber plantation to the Ia Drang Valley. I don’t think you will ever find the spot where your father died. Our places were never marked as fire bases. And probably them places are so growed over by now, it’s as if nobody was ever there.”
MANY MONTHS AFTER I traveled to Kentucky to meet Captain Osborne, I received a phone call from another veteran who had been with my father that day. His story convinced me that I was as close to the truth as I’d likely ever get.
“Hello,” a man’s voice said. “Is this Karen Spears?”
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t place the voice. There was a long pause. I heard a muffled sound.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
When I heard his crying, I figured I had a veteran on the line. “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“Give me a moment,” he said, trying to gain his composure.
“It’s all right,” I said. Another long pause.
“My name is Pablo.”
I knew his last name. “You are Pablo Gallegos?” I asked.
His weeping intensified. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I knew your dad.”
“I know who you are,” I said. “I’ve been looking for you. I’m so glad you called.”
I had come across Pablo Gallegos’s name hundreds of times in my father’s files. If I closed my eyes, I could see the all-capital print of his signature on the Statement of Recognition form that I had received along with my father’s autopsy report. I had asked both John Nash and John Osborne if they knew who this Gallegos guy was. Neither did. The roster of Dad’s company did not list him as being a member of the 2nd Battalion. I had never heard my father mention him. At one point, in my frustration, I had scribbled a note across Gallegos’s name: “Nobody knows this man.”
But there was that troubling Statement of Recognition document, the one in which the individual signing the paper stated: “I recognize the remains because of the following facial features, scars, birthmark, and other unusual features.” And there was the signature of Pablo Gallegos.
Gallegos was a senior medic at headquarters for the Ninth Artillery.
Because my father was not wearing his dog tags at the time of the attack, Gallegos had to identify my father for the death records.
Gallegos had found me via a memorial page designed by the folks at the Virtual Wall (www.virtualwall.org). Veteran Jim Schueckler, known as Uncle Polecat, along with veterans Ken Davis and Channing Prothro, had taken several of the articles I’d written about my father and designed a tribute page to him. They did this without any financial remuneration. They design such tributes in order to help families get in touch with veterans who may have served with their loved ones.
Gallegos had gone to the site and typed in Dad’s name and found those articles and my phone number. He said he’d been haunted for the past thirty-seven years, wondering what happened to Sergeant Spears’s family. “It’s been thirty-seven years, but some things you never forget,” he said.
For Gallegos, the death of a man like my father was one of those memorable moments in a young man’s life. As a career military man, Daddy, thirty-five, was seemingly invincible to such a young fellow. Gallegos was only nineteen. He had been shaken by my father’s death and remembered the day clearly.
“They were sleeping in the tent when they got mortared,” Gallegos recalled. “The mortar tore up the tent. The other medic—I don’t remember his name—had a shrapnel wound in the butt. It was deep. But he still took care of your dad. Your dad got the majority of the shrapnel. The medic did what he could, but by the time the medvac arrived your dad had passed way.”
Gallegos said it wasn’t rain that kept the dust-off from reaching Dad. It was fog. “The dust-off couldn’t get in because of the fog and because the artillery unit was under heavy fire that day,” Gallegos recalled. “It was unusual for the artillery to be under such heavy fire because the infantry is usually the ones who get all the fire. But that day there was a lot of fog and a lot of fire. I didn’t know Sergeant Spears all that well, but I knew him. I’d been in Hawaii, at Schofield, before we arrived in Pleiku.”
After the Flag Has Been Folded Page 30
