by Rinker Buck
The clouds were fully parted now and the snowy bosom of the Bighorns glowed a soft purple-blue in the haze. A marine was being lowered to his prairie grave. And it did seem at that moment that all of it, the values he stood for, the dreams he had lived, all the peaks he had climbed and the many lives he had touched, was evoked in the mountains and the clouds. For his father and then for the marines he had done all that was asked of him, he was always good to go. More, even, was present in that western landscape that moment in the afternoon—that he represented something big, that he gave back to a generous land. All of that was joined now under Shane’s last sky.
EPILOGUE
The Childers Recon
The summer after Shane Childers was buried, Captain Hutchison drove back down over the Pryors several times, enjoying the rugged landscapes and moody sunsets as he traveled back and forth to see Judy and Joe. He was busy with his marine work that year. Hutchison traveled to Texas for training with his Fourth Reconnaissance Battalion, requalified as an underwater demolition diver at a marine scuba course in Hawaii, and ranged far out through Montana and the Dakotas on long “weekend recon” missions with the reservists who reported to the Billings command. But he felt that it was important to remain in close touch with the Childerses. They had all exchanged something quite moving during the intense, ten-day period in late March when they were preparing for Shane’s funeral. Hutchison felt very proprietary toward the Childerses now, and he wanted to demonstrate that he wouldn’t abandon them simply because his job was done.
Sometimes Hutchison arrived in Powell just to visit, sometimes he was carrying important paperwork that still had to be completed to close Shane’s CACO file. The Childerses were still having trouble with a couple of Shane’s bank accounts and loans, and they also had to order a military regulation headstone for his grave. But their relationship was growing more personal now, and was no longer based on the shared work of burying Shane. Often, when Judy introduced him to the visiting wives of the Shoshone Back Country Horsemen, or just friends from town, she told them that “Kevin is our adopted son.”
Hutchison didn’t consider this odd, and he resisted the temptation of concluding that Judy, out of sadness and confusion over losing her son, was transferring her maternal love to another, similar marine. He felt that what Judy said was true, and he was very comfortable about it. Because of his own upbringing, Hutchison had always believed that the concept of family was as big as his heart could make it, as broad as his natural curiosity about people would allow. The marine code of duty, honor, and service to others had delivered him to the Childerses in a way that made them all family now. Hutchison enjoyed the simplicity of that, but also the irony. The marines had taught him to love.
“My feelings were that the Childerses and I had gone through a lot together, and it was natural for us to think of ourselves as family now,” Hutchison said. “I have a wonderful father and mother in California, and a stepfather and stepmother, too. But it’s possible to have family in a lot of places according to what you’ve experienced with people. It had just developed, because of Shane’s death, that Joe and Judy were now my Wyoming branch of family.”
Hutchison was a good listener, and he was able to nurse the Childerses through the aftereffects of Shane’s death and the national attention he had received. By the end of the summer of 2003, the occupation of Iraq was not going very well for either the American military or the civilian reconstruction officials working under the Coalition Provisional Authority. Reporters from all over the country and even Europe had begun calling the Childerses, asking how the parents of the first soldier killed felt about the war in Iraq now. Joe and Judy remained steadfast in their support for Bush administration policies and what they felt Shane stood for, but the interviews kept reopening the wounds they had over his death. Hutchison never explicitly suggested that they stop doing interviews, but by talking the problem out with him they eventually decided to make themselves less available to the press.
In the fall, Judy had begun to complain about another problem. She was experiencing annoying memory lapses about the period just after Shane died, and couldn’t recall details about the long wait for his body or the funeral. Hutchison went on-line and read up on this, and was able to reassure Judy that this was a normal outcome of grief. The details would probably return after more time had passed and her mind was more comfortable dealing with the pain she had experienced at the time.
There were other responsibilities that Hutchison enjoyed. Jonna Walker traveled to Wyoming the summer after Shane died to visit with her aunt and uncle, but she was leery about spending all day on a lonely Wyoming ranch while Judy and Joe were at work. By this time Hutchison had become friends with other members of the family that he had met at Shane’s funeral and was helping out in other ways. So he met Jonna’s flight in Billings, showed her the tourist sights, and then drove her down to Powell and remained for the day himself. At a horse sale, Joe had bought a new two-seat driving wagon, and they all spent the day together in the barn, painting the wheels and the wagon bed.
Hutchison also sensed that Joe missed the companionship of military men. He was doing remarkably well that summer, working at his oilfield job and preparing for a covered-wagon trip with a trail-riding group across the Absaroka Range in southern Montana. There were other signs that life was returning to normal for the Childerses. Judy was bugging Joe to install the new cabinets that had arrived for her kitchen, and Joe was pulling his usual act. He kept promising her that he’d “get to the cabinets soon” but he never did. Meanwhile he had gathered on his workbench all the tools and hardware he needed for the job. But he also missed Shane terribly. Hutchison thought that it would be good for Joe to enjoy some play time with the marines, to indulge in a little goofing off around the ranch with platoon types like Shane. Perhaps this would allow Joe to slowly wean himself off his feelings of loss about his son.
The visits by the men of Fourth Recon were arranged in the usual Hutchison style. Paperwork was filed with command certifying that vital reconnaissance training would be occurring that weekend in the vicinity of the Polecat Bench in northern Wyoming. Then Hutchison and seven or eight of his weekend warriors piled into the government Suburbans or their pickup trucks, and Fourth Recon convoyed south over the mountains. Arriving in Powell, the marines helped Joe move his piles of farm machinery around or remove the rubble left over from his various construction projects. Sometimes they just drank beer out behind the barn, or got smashed in the bars on the way home, but they were good marines and this was their work too. They all enjoyed big lunches and dinners together in the ranch house.
Those junkets down into the Bighorn country to see Joe and Judy—at the Billings command, they were called the “Childers Recon”—were wonderful for Hutchison. He loved the way all the reservists grumbled during the ride down about having to move farm machinery around for Joe Childers, and then as soon as they got there how they all fell under Joe’s spell. The reservists were mostly Wyoming and Montana men who liked ranching and cattle and horses, and on each visit there was a marine or two who had not yet enjoyed a Childers Recon. Joe would pull the newcomer aside, escort him into the barn, and commence his standard lecture on MacClellan saddles, walking plows, and the foxtrotter filly. All the other marines laughed about it and then began muscling some farm machinery around.
The weather that fall and spring was beautiful and Hutchison no longer thought of these visits as CACO followup for Joe. It was a vacation for Hutchison too, just being there, surrounded by the Childerses’ clutter, listening to Joe’s incomparable schemes and dreams. The play value for everyone was exceptionally high. Hutch and his marines loved being down there together, clowning around with Joe, getting a few projects done before they harnessed up the team, then enjoying big meals with the views out the windows to the prairie and the Polecat Bench. That was the agenda now, just being together, doing the Childers experience just right. They were all getting past the immediate trauma of losing Sh
ane.
Iraq beckoned another marine, two of them, actually. Over the winter of 2003–2004, while he continued to run the Billings command and junket around the country on training missions, Hutchison felt anxious about Iraq, disappointed that he wasn’t serving while so many other marines were fighting in the Middle East. He was still vexed by the riddle of his career with the marines. Could he lead men in combat? Could he keep his head under fire? Had ten years of training and sacrifice in the marines amounted to anything, after all?
Hutchison spent the winter and spring working the bureaucracies of Recon Command and Quantico for assignment to Iraq, but he didn’t really have to push that hard. By this time the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah was erupting, and there was fighting in Ramadi, Tikrit, and Samarra, too. Marine rifle platoons and specialized units from Lejeune and Pendleton were being called back to Iraq for a second time. It simply made no sense for the marines to keep a captain with Hutchison’s experience and high performance reviews marking time in Billings, Montana. By July, Hutchison was aware that he could be deployed at any time.
While angling for an Iraq assignment for himself, Hutchison was involved in a quiet subterfuge regarding First Sergeant Barry Morgan. Recon Command was aware of how well Hutchison and Morgan had worked together and wanted to assign the capable and experienced Morgan to Iraq as well. But Hutchison deliberately stalled on the paperwork for Morgan and intervened with command as much as he could. Morgan had a wife and child in Billings now, he had put in his combat time in the Persian Gulf War, and Hutchison was intent on protecting his first sergeant from dangerous duty in Iraq. Meanwhile, Morgan was working all the angles behind Hutchison’s back, trying to get an assignment to Iraq.
They both knew what the other was up to, of course, but there’s a silent protocol among marines about that. If Hutchison was trying to protect a beloved first sergeant from combat, Morgan would just have to maneuver for the assignment on his own.
Hutchison finally deployed for Iraq in early September 2004, and Morgan secured an assignment to a unit at Camp Pendleton that was also scheduled to leave for Iraq in early 2005. But when Hutchison left just after Labor Day and they said good-bye at the Billings airport, Morgan did not know yet about his orders for Iraq. He hated watching his California surfer-boy captain going off to war alone like that, and felt that he was letting Hutchison down. He wanted to be at Hutchison’s side in Iraq and help protect him.
“Sir, goddamnit, this just isn’t right,” Morgan said, beginning to cry. “I should be going with you.”
“Barry, this was out of my hands, you know that,” Hutchison said.
“Bull,” Morgan said. “I should be going with you, Kevin.”
They embraced, and then Hutchison caught his plane out. All the way across the country to Lejeune, and then across the Atlantic to Germany, where he met his flight for Baghdad, Hutchison was preoccupied by his departure from Billings. He’d never seen Morgan emotionally ramped up like that.
In Iraq, Hutchison was sent directly to Fallujah and spent his first two months as an operations planner for the Battalion Reconnaissance and Operations Center, the marine command unit that managed the massive November assault against the insurgents in the rebellious city. He worked sixteen-hour days in a large command tent, helping to plan and then execute the Fallujah operation, sitting with his laptop computer at a long table manned by other reconnaissance officers. The marine camp outside the city was frequently attacked by the insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs, but otherwise the conditions were good. His work and living areas were air-conditioned and the food was excellent.
Throughout the fall, Hutchison called home to California a few times, speaking with his mother and stepfather at their home in Rolling Hills. He was upbeat and sounded good, but there were long pauses on the line when they asked Hutchison specific questions about conditions in Iraq. He changed the subject a lot, urging his mother and stepfather to get out to their vacation place in Palm Desert to play a little golf and get away from the news broadcasts on television, so they could stop worrying about him so much.
“It’s unusual for Kevin to be so reticent, because he’s always been so expressive and had an opinion or crack about everything,” his stepfather, Donovan Black, said. “I’m speculating here, but I think he wouldn’t say much because he didn’t want to lie to us and tell us that things weren’t really bad.”
Kevin’s mother, Nancy Black, could sense something else. “I know Kevin and what he’s thinking, even when he won’t say it. He was itching to get out into the field and lead a real combat operation. But of course he would never tell me that, because I would just become even more fearful.”
Then, in late November, the Blacks received a hurried call from Hutchison. He was leaving for the field. He had been assigned as company commander for a special marine unit that was conducting search-and-destroy missions against the insurgent groups, and Hutchison told them he would not be describing anything specific about his work. After that his phone calls dropped off. They assumed that he was either too busy to call, or didn’t want to alarm them by calling and then refusing to discuss what was happening on his missions.
Then, on Christmas Day, Hutchison called home. When the phone rang, Hutchison’s mother and two sisters were already crying. For Christmas presents, Nancy had given her daughters a picture of Kevin and his two sisters together in California, taken just before he deployed. Now they were all melting down because it was a beautiful Christmas Day in southern California, but Kevin wasn’t there. He was fighting the insurgents in Iraq.
When the phone rang and they learned that it was Kevin, they all gulped down water and tried to swallow away their tears, so that Kevin wouldn’t sense that they were crying. The phone connection was interrupted a few times, but Kevin called back. They all took turns on the phone with him.
When it was Nancy’s turn to talk with her son, she knew that he wouldn’t volunteer much information. She would have to phrase her questions so that he could only answer “yes” or “no.”
“All right, Kevin, have you been on any missions yet?”
“Yes, Mom. About ten so far. Don’t worry, please.”
“Have you found any insurgents, Kevin?”
“Mom, stop worrying, please. But, yes. The mission was extremely successful.”
Nancy realized that this probably meant lots of fighting, but at least now she knew.
“Okay, but look, Kevin, just one more thing,” Hutchison’s mother said. “I know that you are seeing terrible things but we’re rooting for you, we love you, we think of you, and just be safe, okay?”
“Mom, yes,” Hutchison said. “But stop worrying. You and Donovan should just go off somewhere and relax, okay?”
“Okay, Kevin, okay. We love you.”
When they had all said good-bye and Kevin was finally off the line, they cried together. It was just awful, so anxious a moment, doing Christmas morning together with Kevin in such a distant place, in harm’s way, in Iraq.
To Hutchison they must have seemed very far away too. The Bighorn country that he’d grown to love was just a memory now. The cliffs at Palos Verdes were a dream. He’d be home to see his family and those places again by April, the marines said, which probably meant that he’d really be back by July. But he was leading men in combat now. He was under fire almost every day. He had his answer now to the riddle of a marine’s life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Almost everyone I interviewed for this book had read my long article on Shane Childers, which appeared in the Hartford Courant in April 2003, and knew that I would be applying the same level of candor to this narrative. They were unstinting in their help all the same, and the portrait of Shane Childers, his family, and the U.S. Marines that emerged is more convincing and honest as a result. I am grateful for their assistance.
Joe and Judy Childers, as is evident from reading this book, were extremely generous with their time and indeed welcomed me into their ranch ho
use during the funeral for Shane and on many visits thereafter. Joe Childers in particular spent hours with me, out in the barn or while shoeing horses, describing his romantic upbringing of Shane, his navy Seabee trips, and his son’s visits back to Wyoming. I’m sure that the Childerses will disagree with a few of my conclusions, but almost all of them were openly discussed while I was preparing this book. I am particularly grateful for Judy Childers’ hospitality and tolerance of my early waking times.
Sam and Cori Childers and Sandra and Richard Brown were also unfailingly helpful and refreshingly blunt with their memories of Shane and their family life.
All of the West Virginia Childerses were open and warm, and I’ll never forget my two days touring Smith Creek Hollow and the Huntington area with Jonna Walker. Mary Bias was generous and hospitable, and wise in her observations about Shane. Jessi and Jonna Walker were particularly perceptive about Shane’s growth during his Citadel years, and I found myself wishing sometimes that I had cousins as supportive as these two. A number of other family members were quite helpful but preferred not to be quoted by name.
Family friends Robert Reagan and Bill Hendry, Robbin and Steve Whitten, and all the other marines quoted in the book also deserve my thanks. The Public Affairs Offices at Quantico, Camp Lejeune, and Camp Pendleton, and individual marines at the Billings, Montana, command were also universally helpful. Several marine friends and colleagues of Shane Childers who wished to remain anonymous also deserve my thanks.