Lost Soldiers

by Lost Soldiers (retail) (epub)

  The string quartet was playing elegantly near the front of the restaurant. He heard Petain mention casually to Van that the piece was from Tchaikovsky. A young woman in a yellow silk ao dai came to the table selling roses. Petain bought one for Van and another one for her mother. They both thanked Petain appreciatively, and then both smiled almost secretly to Condley as Petain paid the flower girl.

  Soon the food was gone and the wine bottle was empty. Petain looked at his watch yet again, ready to leave. Sensing the evening was finished, the colonel now turned to Condley. As always, they spoke in Vietnamese. ‘What is it that you have to report to me?’

  ‘Yesterday we located the remains of an American soldier in Quang Nam Province. In Ninh Phuoc, along the Song Thu Bon west of Da Nang. He was buried during the war in a family plot in the village. We have the full skeleton, and also his dog tags.’

  The colonel nodded appreciatively, then frowned. ‘I find this very strange. Why did it take them so long to report him if they knew he was buried in their village?’

  ‘They didn’t know. The recent floods washed away part of the cemetery and they found the body. The man who buried the soldier had been afraid to report it. He’d buried him when he was a little boy. He found the body outside his family home one morning and his grandmother made him bury it.’

  Colonel Pham looked at Condley for another moment, digesting the report. ‘I don’t know of another case like this. The Americans kept very careful records of when and where they lost their soldiers. There have been no reports from that area in Quang Nam.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Condley. ‘We’re trying to find more information. Perhaps he was captured on a different battlefield in Quang Nam, or Quang Tin or even Quang Ngai, and died while your side was marching him to a camp back in the mountains. We have his name. Professor Muir will be contacting Washington and asking for an examination of his military records.’

  ‘Should our government announce this discovery?’ asked the colonel.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Condley. ‘I agree with you that there is something strange about this case.’

  Petain had paid the bill and now was standing. His eyes were on the door, signaling the maître d’ to have the valet summon his limo. He checked his watch for the tenth time and again put his hand possessively on Van’s shoulder. As Condley stood, Petain made a great display of reaching for his hand and shaking it dismissively.

  ‘Bonjour, Mr. Condley. Good luck with all your skeletons.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I hope you sell a lot of perfume down there in District Four.’ Condley turned his back on Petain, leaning down to shake the hand of Tho, the wife of Colonel Pham. He spoke to her gently in Vietnamese. ‘Mrs. Pham, I will look forward to praying with you.’

  ‘You must come to our home very soon,’ she answered, her eyes then shifting to Van.

  And as he walked out of the restaurant, Condley’s last glance was at the mischievous grin of Van herself. Petain’s hand was on her shoulder, but her eyes were on Condley.

  * * *

  Dzung had drunk three beers. He teetered atop his cyclo as he steadily pedaled Condley back toward District One.

  ‘So I gave you too much dinner allowance,’ teased Condley, noting Dzung’s reddened face and neck and the wetness in his eyes.

  ‘No, Cong Ly,’ laughed Dzung, his gaze now staring far away into the quiet darkness. ‘You gave me just the right dinner allowance. But I used it very badly!’ He pedaled harder, working his way up a small hill, and now grew serious. ‘My little baby very sick, Cong Ly. Yesterday I take him to the hospital. They say they can do nothing for him.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He just sick,’ answered Dzung blandly, as if no further explanation were possible. They were nearing Condley’s hotel. Dzung pulled on his brake, stopping the cyclo. ‘Maybe he die. My wife, she very sad. I can do nothing. So tonight I drink beer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dzung. If I can help, I will try.’

  ‘Thank you, Cong Ly. But you are not a doctor.’

  Condley jumped down from the cyclo, heading for the hotel’s front door.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ asked Dzung somewhat dizzily, watching him depart.

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ said Condley, waving good night. ‘Right here.’

  * * *

  Condley kept a permanent room in the Vien Dong Hotel, even though he spent more time in Hawaii than in Viet Nam. In his simply furnished room were a half dozen changes of clothes, a long shelf of books, a full medicine cabinet, a useless TV, and, incongruous with his normal style, a fax machine. He had arranged for the hotel to supply him with his own fax machine after numerous telephone messages from Hawaii had been boggled in translation by the well-meaning clerks who worked the front desk.

  Condley knew that in reality the fax belonged to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and that the ministry monitored all his faxes, just as it monitored the faxes at all the hotels in Viet Nam. It hadn’t mattered to him, since he knew that most of his telephone calls were also monitored, as were his comings and goings whenever he was in Sai Gon. The Vietnamese were the great spies of Asia, not only because they were masters at intuition but because they genuinely loved the game. With the game came revenge, and they especially loved revenge. They kept files on everyone, including on one another. He never acknowledged that he knew he was being monitored, and sometimes he sent bogus faxes just to play with the minds of the unseen agents off in some dank, ugly office who spent their days meticulously keeping his file. But it was helpful to know that the game was being played. Most Americans inside Viet Nam were oblivious to it, and thus at a constant disadvantage.

  Somewhere in the middle of the night, Hanson Muir sent him a fax. He heard the machine go off as he slept but could not bring himself to read it until morning. It surprised him that Muir would have faxed him so quickly after arriving in Hawaii. But then he read the fax.

  Saigon, we’ve got a problem. Or shall I say, BC phone home?

  It was morning in Sai Gon but five in the afternoon in Hawaii when he called. Hanson Muir was just getting ready to leave for the night.

  ‘So where have you been?’ Muir asked when Condley said hello. ‘Off getting married again?’

  ‘You’re not allowed to be jealous, Hanson. Take what you can get and leave the rest of us alone.’

  ‘He’s not an MIA,’ said Muir with a sudden bluntness.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Our boy. The skeleton from your famous little village. The guy we risked our lives to bring home.’

  ‘Stop being dramatic, Professor. You loved that boat ride.’

  ‘Sure, about as much as I’d love riding a bicycle in an ice storm. I said he’s not on anyone’s list. He was never missing in action and he was never a prisoner of war.’

  ‘So what was he?’

  ‘Brandon, I don’t know what he was. He did exist. I mean, we have his dog tags. We’ve asked the Department of the Army to put a rush on pulling his file from the archives in St. Louis. I should have it in two days.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ asked Condley. He had been listening to the Professor, but mostly he was deciding what he was going to have for breakfast.

  ‘Be back here in two days,’ said Muir. ‘I need your help. We have to talk about this.’

  Chapter Five

  Hawaii

  ‘Coming here is always like visiting a hospital,’ said Brandon Condley as he entered the doorway to the Army’s Central Identification Lab. ‘Except all the patients are already dead.’

  ‘An illusory distinction, if one is an anthropologist,’ assured Hanson Muir, shaking his partner’s hand and ushering him inside. ‘They get excellent care here. And lots of individual attention.’

  Located in a corner of Hickam Air Force Base just outside Honolulu, the Central Identification Lab, Hawaii, also known by the acronym CILHI, was home to a few dozen soldiers, anthropologists, and scientists. Their principal mission was to
identify American military personnel whose remains had been found after becoming missing in action during World War Two, Korea, and Viet Nam. They were also frequently brought in to help identify those who died in civilian disasters such as the crashes of commercial airliners.

  The nondescript one-story lab did indeed look something like a medical clinic, with administrative offices and a conference room off to the left of its main entrance and a string of examining rooms off to the right. As Hanson Muir led Condley down a long corridor toward the room in which the remains from Ninh Phuoc were kept, they could look through glass windows into other rooms on their left and right and see numerous skeletons, laid out on white sheets atop rigs that resembled surgical gurneys. Many of these remains were actually partial skeletons, and some held only a few pieces of bone. But each gurney was nonetheless laid out carefully, with whatever bones that had been found placed in their proper anatomical locations.

  ‘Look in here,’ said Hanson, stopping suddenly and opening a door into one of the examining rooms. ‘Come on in, Brandon. This will interest you.’

  Inside the room were a dozen gurneys, each holding a largely complete skeleton. Along the floor at the rear of the room were numerous other plastic bags, all carefully labeled with dates and a peculiar form of grid coordinates. The dirt-flecked skeletons were the colour of copper. Rotting tatters of military uniforms still clung to some of them. On a nearby gurney Condley could see that the skull of one of them rested inside a rusting World War Two-style helmet.

  As was his tendency, Professor Muir became immediately emotional when he surveyed the roomful of remains. His bearded chin lifted slightly and his eyes went distant, as if he were surveying an old battlefield.

  ‘You were a Marine,’ said Muir. ‘Do you remember Carlson’s Raiders?’

  ‘Every Marine remembers Carlson’s Raiders,’ said Condley, his own skin beginning to tingle as he stared across the room.

  ‘Hand-picked infantrymen,’ continued Muir. ‘Tough. They were the very best we had. In the summer of 1942, the Pacific campaign was in doubt. When our Marines landed at Guadalcanal on August 7th, the Raiders struck just across the channel at Tulagi, preventing Japanese reinforcements. A few days later Colonel Carlson loaded 221 of his best troops into two submarines, the Nautilus and the Argonaut, and headed out for the Makin Atoll, many hundreds of miles away. You also remember Makin, Brandon?’

  ‘Tarawa,’ said Condley instantly. ‘But the main battle at Tarawa wasn’t for another year.’

  ‘Exactly. But at midnight on August 17th, 1942, the submarines surfaced off the Makin Atoll, dropping the Marines in landing boats over the side. And just before dawn, Carlson landed his men on Butaritari Island and surprised the Japanese Army garrison by attacking them on their own turf. The raid was an act of strategic deception, designed to discourage massive reinforcements on Guadalcanal. Strategically, for the good of the country, it made sense. But can you imagine what that was like for these two hundred men? Vastly outnumbered. Attacking the Japanese when they were hundreds of miles from any other American forces. No reliable maps that showed where the Japanese positions were on the island. No supporting arms other than a couple of six-inch guns mounted on the submarines themselves. They fought the Japanese through the day and into the darkness. By all accounts it was a vicious, confusing mess. They took casualties throughout the day, and then when they were pulling out, several of their boats were lost in the surf as they were returning to the submarines. In all, twenty-one Marines were left behind. Their remains were never recovered. Until now, that is.’

  Muir moved forward to the nearest gurney, looking down at the bones as if peering at a living Marine, one whom he in his competence was going to heal. ‘We always imagined that our casualties had been cremated, although the locals on the island have been telling us for decades that the Japanese buried the Marines in a mass grave at the edge of the island. We tried several times but never were able to find them. And finally, a few months ago, we did. Our people performed an archaeological dig, as if we were attempting to uncover some ancient city. We staked out the possible site, laid azimuths through it, and dug deep into the sand at various spots until finally we found a set of remains. After that, it was easy. And now comes the hard part, although I don’t need to tell you it will be the most rewarding. We are going to identify every set of remains, Brandon. We are going to return these Marines to their loved ones.’

  Condley stood respectfully, his usual sarcasm fully in check in the presence of such certifiable heroes despite the nearly sixty years that had passed since their deaths. And he had no doubt that Hanson Muir and the others at CILHI would indeed identify the remains. First, they would pull the military files of all those who had perished in the famous raid. The starting point would be dental records, which on skeletal remains were as accurate as fingerprints, so long as a jaw had been recovered. Where dental records were not sufficient, the anthropologists and scientists could go to identifiable trauma on the skeletons that would have been present before the war, such as evidence of broken limbs. They could also narrow down the unknowns through one’s height. And if they could find a maternal relative and a good sample from the skeletons, they could match DNA.

  ‘We leave no one behind, Brandon,’ said Muir with his unending emotion. ‘I don’t need to tell you that, you’ve lived it. I’m not a soldier and I’ve never been one. But I’m an American, and when I look across a room like this it makes me so proud that we are the way we are.’

  Sarcasm was Condley’s best refuge from his own inner emotions, and he’d found his once again. ‘So what do you want me to do, salute?’

  ‘Actually, that would be fine.’

  Condley thought about it, then came to a full attention and offered the retrieved heroes a slow, crisp Marine Corps salute.

  ‘Thank you, Brandon.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, I didn’t salute you.’ He chuckled softly as Muir turned to leave the room. ‘But I’m proud as hell to salute them.’

  ‘Let the record show that Mr. Condley has a heart.’

  ‘So where are we keeping Specialist Deville?’

  ‘He’s right down here,’ said Muir, again leading Condley down the corridor.

  The remains from Ninh Phuoc were on a gurney at the rear of the next room. Muir had carefully assembled the bones into a semblance of a skeleton but left them atop the rotting poncho. The dead man lay on his back, his skull facing the ceiling and his arms flat at his sides. Condley approached the gurney carefully, his mind exploding with odd images from the dark trails of the isolated village and the shed from which they had retrieved the remains. The lab was spotlessly clean and well-lit, but an aura seemed to rise above the bones, shimmering with sole-sucking mud, barking little dogs, bad tea, and dead, bloated pigs rushing past in the river’s chalky current.

  ‘I don’t have his complete file yet,’ began Muir.

  ‘You told me two days,’ teased Condley. ‘I busted my ass to get out of Sai Gon in time.’

  ‘You know the government, Brandon. Promises, promises. They’re sending it out from St. Louis with a courier. It’ll be here by tomorrow.’

  ‘A courier, huh? Like they don’t have overnight mail anymore?’

  Muir puffed up again, and Condley sensed that he was in for another patriotic speech. ‘We can’t risk losing these files, Brandon.’

  ‘How about a computer? Can’t they send you the data?’

  ‘You can’t e-mail dental records. And anyway, the file is thirty years old. Do you know how many million veterans there are? It hasn’t been reduced to computer text.’

  ‘What you’re saying is that somebody in St. Louis wants a few days R and R in Hawaii.’

  Muir allowed himself a small smile. ‘Why are you such a cynic? But you may be right. Partially, at least.’

  The huge scientist now looked at the remains, an unhidden revulsion creeping into his eyes and tightening his mouth. ‘But I had them fax me a few pages from his service records and giv
e me a preliminary report over the phone. I’ve got some news for you. As I mentioned to you, Specialist Deville was never a POW or an MIA. In fact, I must confess that our earlier respect for him was misplaced. It seems our man was a deserter.’

  ‘Your earlier respect, you mean,’ corrected Condley. ‘I told you something was wrong about him.’

  ‘Yes, but did you ever think he’d be a deserter?’

  ‘In Ninh Phuoc? No. That doesn’t make any sense. The people I know of who deserted in-country stayed in Da Nang or Sai Gon. I’d say there were a couple thousand of them living in Sai Gon by the end of the war, and another few hundred in Da Nang. Usually it was a guy who maybe fell in love and ran away with his girlfriend or got into a fight with his first sergeant and ran away, period. Or got involved in the drug culture.’

  ‘Two out of three isn’t bad,’ said Muir rather stiffly, picking up five pages of notes from a table next to the gurney. ‘Here’s what I do have. Specialist Theodore Deville started out as an infantryman with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, seeing extensive action in Tay Ninh Province west of Sai Gon during late 1966 and early 1967. Not a bad soldier, from all indications. Wounded in action. Received the Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medals for valor. In March 1967 he extended his tour in order to switch to a supply unit at Long Binh, just outside Sai Gon. Got involved with drugs. Was accused of being a dealer. In September 1967, while awaiting court-martial on the drug-dealing charges, he apparently killed the government’s principal witness, who was a fellow soldier, and then disappeared. Last seen heading from Long Binh to Sai Gon, in what turned out to be a stolen jeep.’ Muir fixed Condley with a steady, questioning gaze, his bushy eyebrows furrowed. ‘What am I missing here?’

  ‘When was he buried in Ninh Phuoc?’

  ‘What did they say? August 1971, I think.’