The Colonel sat there for a moment, staring at his son.
The Sergeant Major took the cigar out of his mouth and pulled a notebook out of his satchel.
“Sir, I'm afraid the boy is right. They stuck it to you down in the Delta, when all you was tryin’ to do was your job. Now they stuck it to your son. You don't have no choice, sir. It's us against them, same as it was in the Delta. Only thing we got goin’ for us is stickin’ together.”
“I know, Top. I know.” The Colonel turned to his son, the Lieutenant. Tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke.
“It makes me so goddamned sad to see this happen to you, son. I just wish you could have grown old in the Army, loving the Army the way I have loved the Army, the way your grandpa loved the Army. That's all I ever wished for you, son. I just wanted you to find your home in the Army the way I did. That's all.”
The Lieutenant hugged his father hard, for a long moment, then pulled away.
“I love the Army, Dad, in my own way, in this way: I love my men. I love my platoon. I love being a platoon leader. But they won't let me be the kind of platoon leader you brought me up to be. If I had just gone along and done what I was told, seven men would be dead right now. I couldn't do that, Dad. You wouldn't have wanted me to. Neither would Grandpa. Don't you know I asked myself those questions a thousand times . . . ‘What would Dad do? What would Grandpa do?’ Don't you know I did what I knew you'd have wanted me to do? If doing my job the way I was brought up to do it means that you get court-martialed here in Vietnam, then fuck it. Let them court-martial me. I did the right thing. I'm proud of what I did. That court-martial is my Silver Star.”
“Then tell us what happened, son. I believe you. Tell us.” His father sat back and listened.
With four sets of attentive eyes around him, the Lieutenant began his story with the arrival of Lieutenant Colonel Halleck in the Battalion. He was interrupted several times by Captain Morriss, who wanted details about orders he was given and what he did or didn't do to carry them out.
An hour passed before the Lieutenant started describing the incursion into Laos. His father's interest increased measurably when he heard his son describe how his platoon had gone inside the Laotian border and off the operations order map.
“You're sure of your location, son?” he asked. “Absolutely sure?”
“You taught me how to read a map, Dad. Hell, I was first in my class at West Point in map-reading. I know exactly where we were. I don't know why they didn't indicate in the ops order that we were going over the border. I know we're not supposed to run operations into Laos, but everyone knows that . . . that it's done. It wouldn't have been a big deal if they said we were sweeping a ways inside Laos, going after one of those base camps over there. It's happened before. It'll happen again. But it became a very big deal—in my eyes, anyway—when I discovered that nobody wanted to admit we were inside Laos.”
“You're not saying that this whole thing is a cover-up of an incursion into Laos, are you, son?” the Colonel asked.
“No, I'm not. But I am saying that the charges against me are an attempt to cover up something else.”
“What's that?” Captain Morriss asked.
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean, you don't know?” The Sergeant Major and the Colonel exclaimed nearly together.
“I saw a plane being loaded with some kind of burlap bales one night on a patrol in Laos.”
“What kind of plane?” Captain Morriss had his pen and notepad out, and he was scribbling away.
“A DC-3.”
“Did it have any markings indicating who it belonged to?”
“None.”
“What were they loading into the plane?”
“I don't know, for sure.”
“What does any of this have to do with your being charged with desertion in the face of the enemy?” asked the Colonel, looking grim.
“Well, if all I saw was a plane being loaded in the middle of the jungle in Laos, it wouldn't have much to do with anything. But it was the middle of the night, and the men doing the loading were Americans, and they were armed, and when I called out to them, they fired on my patrol and they killed one of my men, Corporal Lester G. Strosher. It was when I handed in my after-action report, my report of casualty due to friendly fire telling how Strosher got killed, that's when all hell broke loose.”
The faces around him looked wan and drawn. Even the face of Captain Morriss, a fleshy piece of work if there ever was one, had lost a pound or two. Nobody said anything for one minute, two minutes. Then the Sergeant Major pulled the cigar out of his mouth and spoke.
“Lieutenant Blue, what you're telling us is that you lost a man in a firefight with a bunch of American soldiers?”
“I don't know if they were soldiers, Sarenmajor,” said the Lieutenant. “They were dressed in Levi's and camouflage T-shirts and boots, and they were carrying Kalashnikovs.”
“Then how do you know they were Americans?”
“Strosher was hit by three rounds from a Kalashnikov. But the man firing it was an American. I know he was. I could see his face.”
“You are absolutely certain of that?” Captain Morriss studied the Lieutenant's face for any signs of uncertainty. He found none.
“Absolutely.”
“How can you be so sure?” Captain Morriss asked.
“The grass strip the DC-3 was sitting on was lit with cans of diesel down both sides of the strip, so there was enough light to see their faces. We were only a hundred feet away, and before I called out to the men loading the plane, I had a close look at them and at the men guarding the plane through my binoculars. They were Americans, sir. They weren't Vietnamese, and they weren't Russians, and they weren't Chinese. They were Americans.”
“Damn.” The Sergeant Major took the cigar out of his mouth and studied its ash. “I knew there was some shit going on inside this thing. I knew it. I fucking knew it. Sorry, ma'am.”
The Sergeant Major nodded in the direction of Cathy Joice.
“Forget it,” she said.
The Colonel pulled a toothpick from his pocket and started sucking on it.
Captain Morriss scribbled madly in his notebook.
Cathy Joice looked at the Lieutenant quizzically.
“Tell us more about what happened when you handed in your, uh, report,” she said.
The Lieutenant described the meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Halleck, the battalion commander, and Colonel Testor, the brigade commander, in the bunker at the battalion base camp. When he was finished, he sat back on the wicker sofa and said:
“Whew. I haven't even thought about that since it happened. I guess your mind has a way of shutting stuff out, doesn't it? Weird.”
“If you're lucky, it does,” said his father.
“Tell me something, Matt,” said Captain Morriss. “When it became clear to you that this after-action report of yours was going to cause you big trouble, why didn't you just knuckle under and do what they said? Why didn't you just change the report and forget about it?”
“That would have been lying,” said the Lieutenant, looking directly at Morriss. “And worse, it would have been denying that Strosher died the way he died. He was shot by an American, goddammit! I told the Colonel ... I told both of them. I've seen some strange shit in this war, and I've had some strange shit happen to me and to my men. But nothing prepared me for having one of my men killed by another American in cold blood. Strosher was a good troop, and goddamn if I'm going to have someone tell me to write Strosher off and forget him. Goddamn if I'm going to do that, no matter what Halleck and Testor say, no matter what anyone says. If telling the truth about how Strosher got shot means that I'm going to take a lot of heat, then fuck it. I'll take the heat. Strosher took heat for me when he was alive. And he'd do the same for me if he was in my place. You taught me that, Dad. That's what a platoon is. . . was. You stick together no matter what. I know he would do the same for me. I know it.”
N
obody looked at him and nobody said anything for a moment, and then Captain Morriss spoke up.
“I hope you understand I wasn't advocating that you change the report. I simply had to ask the question, because if this becomes an element in our defense, which I'm sure it will, you are certain to be asked the same question somewhere along the line, and I have to know the answers to every question you might be asked, before they ask you.”
“I understand, sir,” said the Lieutenant.
“Cut the ‘sir’ crap,” said Captain Morriss.
“Okay.”
“I've got a question,” said the Colonel, looking very grave. “I want to know what we're going to do with this information. It seems to me that unless we can tie this business down so there is no question whatsoever of the truth of what Matt says, then we're right back where we started. It's going to be Matt's word against the word of Colonel Testor or Lieutenant Colonel Halleck, and we all know how courts-martial tend to consider the word of the accused. Very, very skeptically. The natural tendency of any officer in the Army is to take the dimmest of views of any fellow officer accused of a crime. If Matt's going to beat this thing, we're going to have to go in there with an airtight defense. And I mean airtight.”
“You've got a very good point, sir,” said Captain Morriss. “I'm glad to see that someone has the same ideas I have about Army courts-martial.”
“Well, I've sat on a few of them in my day,” said the Colonel, “and I've convened a few. And I wouldn't describe either experience as a completely pleasant one.”
“Exactly my point, sir,” said the lawyer. “Now. Since they have apparently ‘disappeared’ the Lieutenant's platoon, in the marvelous word of the Sergeant Major here, we don't have witness one who can attest to the facts surrounding this incident on the patrol as the Lieutenant knows them.”
“We've got one witness,” said the Lieutenant. Every eye turned to him.
“Repatch.”
“Who is Repatch?” Captain Morriss asked.
“One of the guys in my platoon. He walked point the night the patrol ran into the DC-3.”
“But the Sarenmajor says they reassigned every man in your platoon, and he's been told they even went so far as to destroy their personnel records,” said the Colonel.
“Well, they missed one, Dad. I saw Repatch last night ... er ... this morning. He's right here in Saigon.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“Nope.”
“How can you not know the whereabouts of someone as important to you as this man Repatch is?” asked his father.
“He comes and goes,” said the Lieutenant. “He's kind of a ghost.”
“I'll say he is,” said Captain Morriss. “I have a copy of your platoon roster I was able to get from MACV before they deep-sixed your records. His name is nowhere on the list.”
“It wouldn't be,” said the Lieutenant. “Repatch isn't his real name. His real name is Fish.”
“There's a Fish, all right,” said Morriss.
“That's him.”
“A Fish who rotated home over a month ago, according to MACV records.”
“What? Let me see that.”
The Lieutenant studied the platoon roster Morriss handed him.
“You're right. He's supposed to be gone. But he's here. I saw him last night. Cathy saw him.”
“When was the last time you had a look at a company morning report, son?” the Colonel asked.
“I don't think I've seen a morning report since I've been over here.”
“How did you keep track of your platoon?”
“In my pocket notebook, the way they taught us at Benning.”
“So you've never seen an official roster for your platoon.”
“Never.”
“That must account for the discrepancy. The situation with personnel over here is rather fluid. What I'm saying is, anything can happen in a war, especially this war. About this war, I'd believe anything.”
“Dad, this guy Repatch, you'd believe almost anything when it came to him, and you would too, if you saw him. They could have missed him. Hell, / missed him half the time. He lived in his own little world. All he wanted to do was walk point, which I was only too happy to have him do. He was one of those guys, the way to get the best out of him was to let him be.”
“What's he doing in Saigon, son?”
The Lieutenant chuckled, then looked up, embarrassed. This wasn't the time or the place to be laughing.
“I don't know. He showed up last night, right when we needed him. We were in a kind of sticky situation down in South Saigon when out of nowhere here's Repatch and he extracts us from the trouble we were in and as quick as he was there, he was gone.”
“How the hell did he get from the 25th Division down here?” asked the Sergeant Major, who had evidently recognized in Repatch a type he knew only too well.
“He said he walked out of the battalion logger and caught a ride from Dak To.”
The Sergeant Major laughed out loud.
“This is a troop I want to meet,” he said, pulling happily on his cigar.
“When was this?” asked his father.
“I don't know exactly. Maybe a week ago?”
“And where has he been all this time?”
“He told me he spent last week up at Long Binh, waiting for me.”
“Where was he at Long Binh?”
“I don't know for sure, but if I know Repatch, he was holed up in Bien Hoa at night, and he was probably right outside the wire of the stockade during the day.”
“How could that be?”
“If he didn't want them to see him, they wouldn't see him.”
“You think we can find this guy?” Captain Morriss asked.
“My guess is he'll find us,” said the Lieutenant.
“And you say he was a witness to the incident with the DC-3, to the death of your man Strosher?” Captain Morriss looked up from his notes, his brow furrowed.
“Yeah. He saw the whole thing.”
“So we're not out of the woods on the DC-3 thing yet, but we're not trapped in the woods without a map, either,” said Captain Morriss.
“We've got Repatch. He saw everything I saw. He looked through the binoculars, too. There isn't anyone I want here to testify for me more than Repatch. He's the best witness we could have, in my estimation,” said the Lieutenant.
“We've got him, but we don't have him,” said the Colonel.
“We've got to find him, because he's the only witness we've got at this point,” said Captain Morriss. “And there's something important we haven't discussed yet. We're in a combat zone. The jury on this court-martial is likely to begin with a presumption that you're guilty, that the charges against you are correct, before we even start. From what you've told us about the night in question, it's going to be your word against theirs when it comes to proving where you were and why you refused to call in that fire mission. So we're not only going to have to try to prove that the prosecution's version of the events of that night is false; we're going to have to attack the reason the charges were made in the first place. It sounds to me like they tried to kill you out there, and when that failed, they decided to bring these charges against you to discredit you, to hush you up, so the information you reported will never get out. Is that the way you see it, Lieutenant Blue?”
“Yes, sir. That's it in a nutshell.”
“Then we've got our work cut out for us. Let's go.”
17
* * *
* * *
The next morning the phone in the BOQ rang at 6:00 A.M. Captain Terrence W. Morriss groped in the dark and knocked the phone to the floor. He retrieved the receiver from beneath the bed and mumbled, “Captain Morriss, sir.”
“Are you the Captain Morriss who's the goddamned lawyer?” asked a voice that sounded like a Mississippi farmhand with a bad cigarette habit.
“Yes, sir, I am,” said the Ca
ptain, sitting up in bed, reaching for the light switch.
“This is General Blue. Get somebody out here to this goddamned airbase and pick me up.”
“General Blue?” Morriss found the switch and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with one hand and juggled the phone receiver with the other.
“That's what I said, goddammit. Now get your ass or somebody's ass out here. I'll be standing outside of the door in the main terminal.”
“Yes . . . yes, sir,” Morriss stammered. “I'll be there in twenty minutes, sir.”
“Did they let that boy out of Long Binh?” the General asked, gruffness slipping from his voice a point or two.
“Yes, sir. On Monday night.”
“Good. Now get out here, goddammit. It's hot as hell and I'm sweating through my goddamned suit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain?”
“Yes, sir?”
“When is the goddamned court-martial?”
“It starts tomorrow morning, sir.”
“Twenty goddamned minutes it's going to take you?”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He hung up the phone before the General could come up with something else to yell at him about.
Morriss struggled out of bed and into the bathroom, ran some water in the sink, dipped his face, lathered up and shaved, and threw his khakis on.
He had never chauffeured a four-star general before. He wasn't even sure where he could get a jeep.
Twenty minutes. They never taught you at Harvard how to get shaved and dressed and five miles down the road in twenty minutes when you didn't even have a car. He'd have to remember this lesson if he ever taught a class in law school. Those young kids sitting out there waiting to be lawyers just wouldn't believe it . . .
The Colonel was standing in front of his hotel in downtown Saigon when Captain Morriss pulled up in the jeep he had borrowed. The jeep had seen better days. It was muddy and it was heaving and bucking and running on three of its four cylinders. The backseat cushion was torn, and the ones on the front seats were thin from the wear and tear of ferrying officers around Saigon from one cocktail party to another, which was what the jeep had been doing for the last five years.
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