We Were Beautiful Once

by Joseph Carvalko

  “Damn it!” hollered Girardin, so loud his wife came running.

  “What’s the matter, cheri?” she asked, drying her hands on her favorite, thinned apron.

  “Those idiots are giving up,” he clamored, flapping the letter. “I know Roger’s out there somewhere, they’re just giving up. I’m calling Congressman McKnight. We need answers.”

  Lisa rushed to the kitchen, her head in her hands. She wept inconsolably. Jean wondered if she would ever stop. He sat in the living room and later heard a pot boiling in the kitchen, but Lisa’s sobbing persisted. Thoughts about what he might possibly do raced through his head. He wanted to comfort his wife, but thinking about what to do next, while fighting his own grief, took all his strength. He went to his room, threw the letter on his desk, and sat, head on his chest. He waited while the letter faded into the silhouettes of late afternoon, waited while the moon cast its penumbral light on the last letter he would receive about his son’s fate.

  The next day, Girardin called McKnight’s office. A staff member listened politely and promised he would get back in a few weeks. He received a letter from the congressman the following month telling him there was nothing he could do. To McKnight, Girardin was a potential liability to the image he was polishing up for the ’56 campaign. In fact, his re-election manager told him to avoid the subject of MIAs at all costs. What McKnight did not share with anyone, including his staffers, was that he attended a meeting between the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the Committee on National Security and President Eisenhower, where the President said, “We have had long, serious discussions with the Chinese Communists, trying to make them disclose where our approximately 450 prisoners are being held. We might be making progress. Just last month four F-86 pilots were returned. They’d been shot down in Manchuria. Gentlemen, I trust you will keep this to yourselves.”

  Art Girardin never discussed the idea that his brother Roger might still be alive beyond the occasional commiseration with his parents when Roger’s birthday rolled around. But it wore at him through his college years, then his marriage, and the death of his mother in 1976. Following the Vietnam War, a new controversy erupted over claims that Americans were still captives in Vietnam and Laos. In March of 1977, Art was listening to the radio in his living room, when he heard a newscaster report that a U.S. commission had traveled to Vietnam to make inquiries about GIs missing in action and to lay the groundwork for diplomatic relationships. During the visit, the Vietnamese surrendered the bodies of eleven identified American servicemen. Art could not stop thinking about what he had heard. The next month he took time off from his job at the Department of Transportation to travel to the U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C. to investigate whether there was anything that might shed light on Roger’s disappearance. Under the heading “Korean War” he found a yellowed folder on POWs/MIAs, including something McKnight apparently did not share with his father: HR Resolution 1957-3544 titled Korean War POW Initiative-A309 demanding an account of 450 POWs. He leafed through dozens of official documents. The papers came in a variety of forms, from thick, brown thermographic paper to an occasional onionskin carbon copy. A document in the last category listed more than 400 names under the heading POW. His fingers trembled while he scanned the list. Under “G” he saw Girardin, Roger. Pvt. RA 22 006 482, infantry. How could Roger have been listed MIA if the government knew he was a POW? Struggling to contain his wide-ranging emotions, he managed to calmly ask the clerk for a Xerox. He went back to the carrel where he was working and held the copy under a lamp, studied it like a Dead Sea scroll, praying it would lead to answers about whether or not Roger might still be alive.

  Armed now with a piece of evidence concerning his brother’s possible fate, Art wrote the Army requesting the last known whereabouts of the men who had information about his brother. He received a tersely worded letter signed by an Army captain, indicating that such a review or hearing would be “impracticable.” The refusal came in a four-line letter read to him by his wife when he spoke to her one afternoon from a payphone on a noisy street.

  “Yeah, Art, the letter just came. It says... ”

  “I can’t hear you, Marge, talk louder,” he yelled anxiously.

  Raising her voice she continued. “It says, your letter doesn’t provide ‘sufficient specificity’... it says that ‘if it did, we have insufficient resources to gather up information of this kind for matters long since disposed of... We appreciate your request... ”

  Art finished the sentence, “But unless you have political pull, we’ll dispose of your request in the circular file.” At that moment, an eighteen-wheeler raced by.

  “I can’t hear you,” Marge yelled.

  “Goddamn it!” Art yelled back, hanging up the phone.

  The following week, Art made a trip to Stamford to visit Dave Walkovich, his congressman, who held Saturday “Meet Your Representative” forums. When he arrived the congressman was out of town, so he only spoke to a clerk. But through the clerk’s efforts, Walkovich did send a letter to the Office of the Secretary of the Army to ask if the Army might provide a “better answer” than the one Art had received. August and September passed. In October, Art received an envelope with a transmittal letter from the same captain he had heard from earlier, that began, “Dear Mr. Girardin, The army has reconsidered... ” Attached was a freshly typed list naming two soldiers, Broadbent, who had died in 1960, and Montoya, who had seemed to have disappeared.

  The following June, Art went back to the Archives. In a dark corner of the public vault that he had passed by on prior visits, he found a 1952 account by the International Red Cross (IRC) following its inspection of North Korean prison Camp 13. Again, Roger’s name was listed among the other POWs. This time he thought Roger might still be alive. After all, he reasoned, the IRC does not list as “alive,” someone who is “dead,” despite having been “pronounced dead” by the Army.

  In April 1978, Art filed a petition with the U.S. Army Board for the Correction of Military Records requesting an amendment to the record, from the presumptive finding of death to that of prisoner of war. Even after several appeals by Congressman Walkovich—the last one in 1980—the Army refused to change the record. A short time later, on account of fried fish, one might say, Art met Nick Castalano.

  Presumptions and

  Points of View

  1983

  BEFORE THE TRIAL RESUMED ON the second day, Nick met Mitch and Kathy for breakfast at Zorba’s Luncheonette. He took a sip of black coffee from the bone white, chipped mug that Annie saved for her best customers.

  “Wow, you missed a good day in court yesterday!” ribbed Kathy, as she poured syrup over her French toast.

  “All right, no need to rub it in. Nick, why am I point man for the library?”

  “Because you’re the best.”

  “You’re the only one he’s got, so it’s a shoe-in,” smirked Kathy.

  “Next assignment, ‘presumptions.’ Let’s see what Connecticut law is on that. The judge has to take certain things for granted. No one has to prove that the Korean War happened. But that’s also a problem—the system takes things for granted.”

  Mitch, pushing aside the remains of a browned Spanish omelet covered in ketchup recalled his evidence class. “You mean legal presumptions, right?”

  “Exactly, like the presumption that the government’s actions are reasonable. Sometimes a judge, who let’s not forget is a government worker, stretches this too far. Like, in our case, Uncle Sam would not forget to repatriate a POW. Would they? He might answer, ‘No, they wouldn’t’ and that’s what I’m afraid of. The court’s letting the Army get away with this. It happened when the Feds locked up thousands of Japs during WWII. The Supremes held it was constitutional because the government had the presumption of legitimacy, though looking back, it’s hard to believe.”

  “Japanese, Nick, Japanese,” Kathy chided.

  “We have to lay it out step by step, to show how it could’ve happened, how outrage
ous it was to leave a red-blooded American hanging out to dry.”

  “How can you keep the judge from lowering the bar?” Mitch asked, as he chewed on toast covered in globs of jam.

  “We need good witnesses, that’s how. We need men like Sheer, like our next guy Bradshaw, who can testify about what they saw over there. Bradshaw’s experience is Roger’s. And he’s got to come across as credible, the eyewitness who’ll testify for those who didn’t come back.”

  “What’s he look like? Will he make a good witness?” Mitch asked.

  “No worse than you would, with a good hair cut.”

  “Ha, ha. Come on, you know what I mean.”

  Nick smiled. “Never laid eyes on him, just talked on the phone.”

  “Nick, how confident are you that these guys will remember?” asked Kathy.

  “They were there.”

  “Yeah, but most eyewitnesses are not that reliable,” Mitch interjected.

  “I suppose, but that’s all we have. Their recollections, as faulty as they may be. But I’m afraid you’re not going to get to see him.”

  Mitch groaned and dropped his fork with a clatter.

  “I’ve got an errand for you.”

  “Aw, Nick.”

  When Nick and Kathy arrived at the courthouse the clerk indicated that the judge was running a few minutes late. That’s when Harris approached him.

  “Nick, I need to call my witness Jaeger out of turn. He has to get back to Pennsy for an operation later this week.”

  “Isn’t it something he can postpone?”

  “No, it’s heart surgery.”

  “Christ, that means... ?”

  “Nick, I don’t have much choice. Lindquist will understand. The guy drove up from Pennsylvania last night.”

  “Do what you gotta do,” Nick conceded. To Kathy, he explained tersely, “Change of plan. Let’s hope it’s not Harris using Jaeger in a cheap move at primacy.”

  “What’s heard first is believed most?” Kathy asked.

  Nick nodded. He knew, as did Harris, that getting one side of the story out first placed a burden on every story that followed.

  Lindquist had been suffering from a pus-oozing abscess on his gum, making it impossible to bite through the hard roll he had for breakfast. And while the lawyers would take the witness through hours of testimony, he would half-listen, distracted by his pain and hunger. He brought his gavel down and declared the court back in session. “We will go until four, today. Mr. Castalano, please proceed.”

  Harris interjected, “Your Honor, may Counsel and I approach?”

  Lindquist nodded, brought his lips together and twisted his mouth from side to side. Lindquist leaned forward, looking at Harris and asking in an irritated tone, “Well, Counsel, what is it?”

  Harris began to speak rapid-fire. “Your Honor, the government needs to call Mr. Jaeger out of turn and regrettably break up Mr. Castalano’s presentation. Mr. Jaeger is scheduled to return home tonight, because... ”

  The judge interrupted. “Slow down, Counsel... ”

  “He... Mr. Jaeger, the defense witness, needs open heart surgery later this week. There might be times when his testimony will seem disjointed or lack foundation, but I’ll connect up before I rest.”

  “Any objection, Mr. Castalano?”

  “No, your Honor, we’ve discussed it.”

  “Very well, but let’s keep surprises to a minimum.”

  Harris assumed the podium. “Your Honor, I wish to call Mr. Thomas Jaeger to the stand.”

  A woman in her mid-fifties stood up in the front oak pew. Next to her sat a man wearing dark glasses. He rose when the woman placed her hand on his shoulder. He clutched the woman’s arm. She wore a plain, blue rayon dress, buttoned close to her thin, long neck. She opened the chrome-over-wood gate leading into the well, and together they walked toward the witness chair. Although the courtroom had a hundred occupants, the only sounds heard were the click, click, click that the woman’s matronly high heels made on the mottled, gray granite floor. Even with the woman at his elbow, the man walked toward the stand straight up. He appeared older than she by many years, though not as weary. Perhaps the shock of thinning, gray-blond hair falling over his forehead or his ruddy complexion made him appear so. One artist in the jury box imagined that he had labored hard, but only the elderly stenographer saw a workingman’s rough hands.

  The man looked like he had been poured into his suit—a brown wool, two-button that had seen days at fifteen pounds lighter. His neck protruded out of a loose collar with a green tie, the same outfit he would wear when he and Marlene, the lady next to him, and their two teenage daughters attended the Marysville Lutheran Church on Sundays.

  Jaeger took his place to the left of Lindquist’s maple perch, a perch from which a skilled magistrate detected all manner of prevaricator. The white-faced clerk planted himself to see into the usually anxious eyes—something he had done to a thousand witnesses—but this time, he only met the reflection of his own gaunt image. Unfazed, the clerk continued to study the dark, reflecting receptacles, while reciting the oath: “Raise your right hand, sir. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

  Jaeger responded in a deeply resonant smoker’s voice, “I do.”

  “Sir, please state your name and address for the record.”

  “My name is Thomas J. Jaeger, and I live at number 15 Mifflin Place, in Marysville, Pennsylvania.”

  Rattled by the witness’s blindness, Harris unconsciously left the security of his oak chair and moved to the lectern angled toward Jaeger. He became oblivious to the crowd that packed the courtroom, the reporters scribbling notes, the sketch artists scrawling the visage of a man in dark glasses. He threw his papers onto the lectern.

  Jaeger had called Townsend just two months before the trial began, indicating he had read about the case in a local veteran’s newsletter. Harris had had two phone conversations with him, never imagining that he was speaking to a blind man. Townsend and Foster, his two Army beagles, were supposed to ferret these things out. Nevertheless, he asked the obvious, “Mr. Jaeger, are you able to see?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Mr. Jaeger, you were a member of the Army, right?”

  Jaeger mechanically turned his head toward the voice. “Yes, I was in the Army for twenty-six years,” he answered, swollen with pride.

  “When’d you retire?”

  “January of ’75.”

  “At what rank?”

  “Master Sergeant. I was also First Sergeant in my company.”

  “So when did you join? What year?”

  “Well, was the day after the eighth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the exact date, December 8, 1949.”

  “Did you enlist or were you inducted?”

  “Enlisted.”

  “All right. And what did you ... ?”

  “Army infantry.”

  “And you remained with the infantry throughout your career, is that—?”

  “That's right.”

  “Any tours of overseas duty?”

  “Yes, one tour in Korea and pulled one in Germany after Korea, two tours in Vietnam.”

  Harris caught Lindquist moving his head up and down as he made a note, and supposed the judge must so far be impressed with the witness. He had no way of knowing that Lindquist was only moving his head to relieve the stiffness in his neck.

  “Have you ever seen combat?”

  “Am credited with five years. Three in Korea, two in Vietnam.”

  Lindquist nodded again.

  “You mentioned you did one tour in Korea, correct?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When did you first go to Korea?”

  “The early part of August ’50. I’d been stationed in Kumamoto on Kyushu, Japan, with units of the 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Division.”

  “And you went from Kyushu to Korea?”

  “About 200 men ferried out on small transports—called ’em G
ooney Birds. When we arrived, we were put on the firing line.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Harris saw Lindquist wince when he picked up the pen. He dismissed it as a random tic, but the abscess would cause Lindquist’s face to grimace more and more as the day wore on.

  Harris looked at the Judge. “Your Honor, at this time I wish to produce a certified partial duplicate set of Roger Girardin’s military records and offer them as an exhibit. For the record, among other things it shows that Private Girardin was assigned to the 19th Regiment during this period.”

  “Any objection, Mr. Castalano?”

  “No, Counsel and I stipulated to its admissibility.”

  “Very well, mark it as a full exhibit.”

  “Mr. Jaeger, your unit moved north, right?”

  Facing dead ahead, Jaeger continued, “Train took us about three hours away. Where we camped. We was fed. Next day, moved us out on a train.”

  “Where exactly did the train take you, relative to Pusan?”

  “About 50 miles north, a staging area, near the Yongsan.”

  “You were still assigned to the 19th?"

  “Right.”

  “Did you immediately come under fire?”

  “Oh, yeah, the regiment had retreated from its position, but we was trying to hold the line at the river, the Naktong. We lost guys. You heard Air Rescue Squadron, you know, M.A.S.H. copters ’round the clock.”

  Jaeger let his head drop down and repeated in a low voice, “Yeah ’round the clock.”

  “Sometime in September, you and the 19th moved north past Seoul and beyond the 38th Parallel that had separated South Korea from North Korea before the war, is that correct?"

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Sir, let me turn your attention to, let's say, mid to late November. You and the 19th were well inside North Korea, not far from the Manchurian border, correct?”

  “Yes, I guess we got within 50 to 75 miles.”