by Dennis Foley
Krong did as he was told.
Beck looked back down at the lifeless form of the little boy. Finding a puddle of muddy water next to his knee, Beck scooped up a palmful and slowly dripped it onto the child’s forehead and whispered a blessing in awkward altar-boy Latin. Then, with his thumb, he made the sign of the cross on the boy’s tiny forehead—baptizing him.
CHAPTER 5
IT WAS STILL WELL before sunrise when Hollister arrived at his company. The winter morning was cold and damp—characteristic of all Fort Benning winters. He entered the building through the mess hall and picked up his first cup of coffee on the way to his office. The scalding black fluid had lost some of its taste in the making. Still, he needed the coffee to clear his head. It was another morning begun with a pounding head and a sour taste in his mouth.
He swallowed several aspirin and returned the bottle to his desk drawer. His in-box was filled with a pile of what to him were make-work tasks that the overblown headquarters between him and the Secretary of Defense had created over the course of the Vietnam War expansion. He pulled the pile out of the box and put it on one side of his desk.
Hollister looked at the five inches of paperwork and decided to pass. He pushed his chair back and walked out into the outer office where the company clerk was sorting out still more paperwork.
“I’ll be out with the special training platoon, if anyone’s looking for me,” Hollister said, unbuttoning his fatigue shirt.
The troops running in front of Hollister in the small formation were not like any troops he had ever served with. They were crippled up by their addictions or their poor attitudes or both. There was no spirit in their step and no enthusiasm in their voices as they repeated the Jody cadence Garland led.
It was just as well that it wasn’t a spirited run. Hollister was still suffering from the pounding in his head. It was another in a long series of such mornings. As he shuffled down the street, also conscious of the sourness in his stomach, he made a small resolution to cut down on his drinking and smoking and to try to get more exercise to purge his system of the residue of his bad habits. That, too, was a repetition of so many similar promises.
They reached the top of the hill, adjacent to the parade field. At the end of a company street, Hollister spotted a lone figure, silhouetted by a barracks fire light, watching the runners approach.
Hollister recognized Colonel Valentine, wearing his fatigues and a sweatshirt with his name stenciled on the front.
“Morning, Captain,” Valentine said as he fell into step with Hollister.
“Good morning, sir. You going to join us?”
“I want to see what’s happening with your special training here.”
Hollister was glad he had picked that morning to go out with his troops to inspect training. Being there would keep any of Valentine’s critical remarks from being directed at Garland, who neither created the special training nor should be blamed for any failure.
“What’s the score now?”
“We’ve accepted forty-two into the training, graduated twenty-two and sent them back to their units, and have a dozen right now—not counting the one who died. That means we’ve only had seven who have ended up in the stockade,” Hollister said with a note of pride in his voice.
“Not good enough,” Colonel Valentine said.
“Sir, without this training platoon you’d be facing forty-one courts-martial.”
“It’s not how many didn’t face military punishment—it’s how many did I’m concerned with. Starting today, anyone who doesn’t look like he’ll be safe to send back to his unit—recycle him. Keep him here a couple more weeks.”
“But sir—”
“No buts, Hollister. I want the court-martial numbers down, and we’ll sweat this damn crap out of their systems or kill them trying.”
Hollister let Valentine’s words sink in. His orientation on the numbers and not on the troops bothered him.
They covered the best part of another block of barracks before Valentine spoke again. “You have some problem with my plan?”
Hollister knew better than to argue. “No, sir. I’ll take care of it.”
Hollister tried to cool down while watching the troops as they found their grounded headgear and shirts. Some of them looked tired, not from the PT but from the drugs and the booze that had brought them to his training platoon.
“You been here how long?” Hollister asked the boy who had been brought in wrapped in a wet sheet.
“Be nine days tomorrow, sir,” he replied, tucking his shirttail in.
Hollister recognized the name over his pocket. “What’s the story, Greenwood? You gonna clean up your act or get a stay in the post stockade?”
“I’m not going to the gray-bar hotel, sir.”
“How’d this happen? Your paperwork says you’re a Ranger, Airborne, and made sergeant in Vietnam. How the hell do you get from there to here?”
“I wanted to go to an Airborne unit and ended up in a fucked-up mechanized infantry battalion for nine months. We thrashed around in Three Corps and damn near knocked down everything standing. I got malaria, and they evac’d me to Camp Zama in Japan. I spent a little time in the hospital, and then they put me in the casual company waiting for reassignment. I fucked around there for almost three more months, pulling shitty details for some fat-ass acting first sergeant who kept screwing with my papers to keep me from going back to Vietnam.”
“You didn’t say anything to anyone?”
“Sir, I wasn’t gonna complain about not going back to that lame-ass mech company.”
“You didn’t want to go back to Vietnam, huh?” Hollister asked.
“I don’t think Vietnam was the problem. I just didn’t want anything to do with sitting on my ass on a track hull or at that godforsaken firebase getting rocketed and pulling details. I’da much rather pulled details in Japan, and time off was terrific. But it’s what got me in trouble. Some of the guys who’d been there a while were into drugs, and I, ah …” He shuffled his feet and rolled his cap around in his hands. “I got into it, too.”
“A mistake?”
“Biggest mistake I ever made.”
“You seem to be shaping up here. Your training record says you are keeping your nose clean.”
“Sir, I’ll do anything to make up for this. I’m not real proud of getting myself so fucked up.”
“What do you want to do when you get out of here?”
“I want to get a decent job in an Airborne battalion and see if I can soldier my way out of the hole I got myself in.”
“You finish this two weeks, you got a chance.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said. “I know that.”
The next six weeks were only more of the same for Hollister. At work, things were not improving. More dead American soldiers were returning to the Southeast, and more of Hollister’s burial details were dispatched to provide military funerals.
Then, one morning’s activities were interrupted by First Sergeant Mann, who stuck his head in the door of Hollister’s office. “Sir, call for you—Infantry Branch.”
Hollister had dreaded the call. “Captain Hollister, sir.”
“Hollister, this is Colonel Marchand in captain’s assignments. You ready for movement orders, son?”
Accepting his new assignment was sure to go badly with Susan. Hollister had tried to make her understand that it wasn’t a job like working for a bank. He couldn’t just quit, just walk away, just forget it all. He would have to call her and tell her and listen to her repeat the same complaints and make the same promises to leave him for good.
Circling back to main post, he pulled his car in at the corner of Eubanks Field—the Airborne School’s tower training area—and parked. Getting out, he looked across the several dozen acres of open, manicured grassy fields at the three 250-foot jump towers. The training area brought back memories of an easier time. He remembered the hours on the asphalt track—running in formation with the three hundred other traine
es in his jump school class. He wondered how many of them had survived the first years of Vietnam. But he knew the answer. He was burying soldiers like them every day.
He lit a cigarette and looked back over his shoulder at the Officer Candidate School barracks. They, too, held many memories. He remembered Kerry French, his old OCS roommate, killed in Vietnam. Kerry was only one of so many of his friends who had died over there. The thought of all of their sacrifices being pissed away to suit a political sway made him feel a twinge of nausea.
He missed the days before the war. The days when he was young and excited about becoming a paratrooper-Ranger. How could he ever make her understand?
The morning dew cast a dulling drape over the normally shiny tops of the soldiers’ black helmets. For Hollister, it was just another predawn inspection of still another burial detail readying itself to load the buses and head out into the Georgia countryside.
“Sir, Lieutenant Garland just called from the hospital,” First Sergeant Mann said from the top of the landing leading into the barracks.
Hollister stopped his inspection and turned to his first soldier. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem, sir. Seems like the lieutenant’s baby won’t wait until he gets back from the burial detail. His wife is in the delivery room right now. He wants to know if you want him to get back here.”
Knowing Garland would even consider his job so important made Hollister feel good about picking him as his executive officer. He shook his head and waved his hand for the first sergeant. “No. Tell him to take care of mama, and we’ll get along.”
“Roger that, sir,” the first sergeant said and he turned to step back inside.
“Oh, Top,” he yelled. “Look at my schedule and see what can be rearranged. I’m going out with Lieutenant Garland’s detail.”
The drive was pleasant enough for Hollister. A couple of aspirin and more coffee dulled the ache in his head, and a piece of dry toast from the mess hall eased the sourness in his stomach.
The Georgia countryside was separated from Alabama’s by the coffee-colored stripe of the Chattahoochee River. Once they passed into Phenix City, it was an unending string of used car dealerships, small bars, and roadhouses.
He remembered the nights when he was in Airborne School and they used to go to Phenix City for the girls, the booze, and the bars. He allowed himself a moment to remember the fun—but only a moment.
The names were written in his notebook in his first sergeant’s handwriting. He had entered them for Hollister while Hollister was changing uniforms. Eleanor DeWitt was the widow of a lieutenant killed in Phu Yen Province. She was the mother of their three-year-old, born during their four-year marriage.
Hollister appreciated having the information the first sergeant was able to get from the Survivor’s Assistance Officer who had been helping Mrs. DeWitt with the administrative details of settling things between her and the army.
The burial detail was to meet the funeral party at graveside and not the church. Pallbearers from the family had taken the casket from the church to the hearse, and the widow wanted the interment to be with military honors.
Checking his watch, Hollister saw they still had enough time to set up before the family arrived at the cemetery.
A representative from the funeral home rushed up to meet Hollister as his detail got off the small army bus. “Captain, I’m Renaldo,” the nervous little man said. Hollister didn’t know if it was the man’s first or last name—but didn’t really care.
“Yes?”
“You are here for the DeWitts?” he asked, looking over toward the ground crew securing the tie-downs on the canopy stretched over the folding chairs for the mourners.
“Yes—you weren’t expecting another military burial detail, were you?” Hollister asked, concerned there might have been two funerals scheduled and he only got the word about one. It had happened to him before.
“No—no, you are the only people I am expecting.”
“Okay, then. Where are we?”
Renaldo pointed to the sharp, red-clay edges of the gaping hole in the Alabama grass. “The graveside services will be held here, and you can place your firing squad anywhere in the cemetery.”
Hollister walked away—up the gentle rise behind the grave site. He looked around for the crest of the hill. He wanted the firing squad to be silhouetted against the skyline if at all possible. It was the last thing a man with a rifle wanted to do in a war zone—stand out on the horizon.
From the top of the rise, he could see the size of the cemetery. It must have held twelve hundred graves, and there was room for at least three times that number. How many of the tenants had arrived at their final rest through wars? He wondered how many more would come there from this war. He suddenly felt tired of thoughts of the war, of days like the one ahead of him, and of widows like the one he would soon meet.
Hollister’s soldiers stood at a rigid and respectful position of attention behind the dark blue Cadillac hearse backed up to their parallel rows. He gave the near-silent commands to open the hearse, remove the casket, and turn to begin carrying it to the grave site.
Every man in C Company spent hours practicing all of the jobs required of them on funeral details. While they practiced, they became expert at hearing the very muffled snap of the detail commander’s fingers. Each pair of snaps, muted by the white cotton gloves he wore, would prepare them for the next motion and then tell them when to execute the move.
Hollister followed the casket and pallbearers from the hearse to the lowering apparatus over the freshly dug grave and caught sight of Eleanor DeWitt.
She was midtwenties, blonde, tall, and slight. Her son was dressed in his Sunday best and held her hand—walking with her from the limousine to the rows of canopy-covered chairs.
The pallbearers placed the gleaming mahogany casket onto the lowering apparatus. Hollister took his position at the foot of the casket, while the priest took his at the head. The round and balding clergyman wore a crisp, starched surplice over his black wool cassock. The stark colors were offset by the narrow purple band of satin draped around his neck.
Hollister stole a look up the hill at the firing squad. The soldiers stood abreast, rifles at parade rest, their heads and eyes fixed to the front—motionless. Off to their flank and a bit higher on the gentle slope, Hollister had posted the bugler, who stood alone and still.
After Mrs. DeWitt, her son, and her parents were seated, the priest began his final words.
“God did not tell this young woman and mother she would be here today. He did not warn her that her contribution to her country would cost her so dearly. His plans for her—”
Hollister’s mind drifted from the priest’s words to the faces in the crowd of mourners. They were all ashen, every eye swollen and red.
He thought of the widow. He would have to tell her how sorry he was, and he would have to tell—her name? He couldn’t remember her name. His notebook was inside his blouse, and he would draw too much attention to himself if he pulled it out to look again.
Sweat beaded on his upper lip, and a trickle of it ran down the channel formed in the small of his back. He had to remember. Think, Hollister! He tried to focus. He could see the page in his notebook as if it were in his hand. He had checked her name before he got off the bus, and Renaldo even mentioned her name. Christ! He could remember Renaldo’s name. Why not hers?
The priest finished. Hollister felt a shock of panic running up his spine. He had to do something. He just had to remember her name.
The priest nodded to Hollister, which gave him a chance to move. He knew he couldn’t reach in his pocket, but looking around might jog his memory. Suddenly, a hundred funerals ran through his mind, and he began to feel weak in the knees. He scolded himself to straighten up and get the job done.
He turned his head toward the firing squad and nodded—officially. The light wind kept the funeral party from hearing the whispered command up on the hill. The soldiers were pr
ecise and in unison as they aimed, fired, aimed, fired, and aimed and fired for the last time. The bugler began the slow mournful sounds of Taps, and a few under the canopy broke out in great sobs and sniffling.
The rifle volleys, the bugle call, and the flag folding over, Hollister turned to accept the trifolded American flag that had draped the casket during the ceremony. Holding it high and respectfully, he walked directly to the widow. He still hadn’t pulled her name from his head and considered just trying to get by without even addressing her by name when she, unsure of what to do, leaned forward to stand.
As she did, the tape on the chair back was revealed for just a split second. Hollister caught the words MRS DEWITT before an older man next to her stopped her and told her just to stay seated and wait for Hollister to come to her.
Reaching the widow, Hollister was careful not to look her son in the eyes. He knew if he did there was either a chance the boy would feel like speaking to him, throwing the ceremony out of its formal tone, or he would simply break out in tears for the boy’s loss.
He kept his eyes focused on Mrs. DeWitt’s and bent stiffly at the waist as he held the flag out to her. He hoped his voice wouldn’t crack as he spoke. “Mrs. DeWitt, the president of the United States and a grateful nation extend their deepest sympathy for your grievous loss and wish you to accept this flag as a token of their appreciation and respect for your sacrifice.”
The woman’s gloved hands shook as she accepted the flag. She took it to her breast and held it tightly for a moment, while Hollister stood erect and executed the smartest, most perfect salute he could give her.
She cried.
He swallowed hard to keep from doing the same. He dropped his salute; she reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you, Captain,” she whispered.
All he could muster was, “Yes, ma’am,” before he turned smartly to keep her from seeing the tears in his eyes.
He had counted the steps from the casket to her chair, and he retraced them as he tried to clear the blurriness from his flooded eyes.