Memorial Bridge

by James Carroll

  Even in the months since he had been here, a number of the names on the signs in front of the generals' houses had changed. Senter was gone, so was Davis. Basel too. New names that meant nothing. The endless rotation of their neighbors had always seemed unfair to Richard growing up, how he had forever stayed behind at Boiling—his father alone never getting transferred, the great General Dillon, indispensable at the Pentagon—while other kids moved in and out. Now what reminders of that rotation evoked in Richard was anger at how the war machine just used up endlessly its supply of faceless, soulless men, who came and went without effect, doing what they were told.

  As he approached number 64, he slowed down. Was he really going to do this? Did he really have to?

  He stopped his car in front of the house, turned the engine off and slumped over the wheel, at the mercy of his despair. Yes, he had to do it. Yes, he would.

  Moments later he was inside. He had opened the door quietly. His parents were in the enclosed porch beyond the living room where the television was. He heard the sound of the late night news. A weather forecaster was talking about the winter rains. He crossed the living room to the threshold of the porch.

  Neither his mother nor his father had noticed him yet. He stood there for a moment behind them, studying them. They were on the couch, close to each other but not touching. His mother was wearing her glasses because she was knitting; his father sat with the sports page spread open on his lap, but he was looking at the TV screen.

  "Hi," Richard said at last.

  His mother was the one he was watching. The one he could bear to look at. Her eyes came right to his, and danced with surprised delight. "Richard!"

  Her knitting fell as she started to get up, but she checked herself, glanced at Sean and sat back down. "Richard," she said again, but forlornly. The last time she saw him she had slapped him.

  His father folded the newspaper.

  "I'm sorry I've been so out of touch. I had a lot to get straight about."

  His father said coldly, "Are you all right?"

  "Yes. I'm fine."

  His father stood and crossed to the television, to snap it off. He faced Richard.

  Richard was surprised to find himself taller than his father. He'd been taller for years now, but he never pictured it so. "I can't stay long. I came by to tell you something."

  "Of course you can stay," Cass said. "Where are your things? Here, sit." She made room for him on the couch.

  "No, really. I'm only here to tell you something. I tried to write..." Richard's eyes went directly to his father's. Half a dozen yards of open space separated them, pale blue air force–issue carpet.

  "What?" Sean Dillon asked.

  "I've been drafted."

  "Drafted?" Dillon said, genuinely surprised. "Did you quit law school?"

  "No. They reclassified me anyway. I've been 1-S since around Thanksgiving. I got my induction notice ten days ago. I'm supposed to report tomorrow."

  "Where?"

  "Anacostia." Richard laughed. "Up the river, like they say in prison movies."

  Sean gestured at the chair in the corner. "Have a seat, Rich. Let's figure this thing out."

  Richard did not move from the threshold. He thought of how, in earthquakes, the threshold is where it's safe.

  Since his son didn't move, Sean didn't either. He was paying close attention to him, looking for signs of his distress, as if he were standing on a ledge. But Sean could read very little in his son. He seemed to be in some kind of shock.

  Cass was the one to recognize how very much like each other Sean and Richard were at that moment. Her two men. Neither was moving. Neither was showing anything. She thought of that television program, Gunsmoke, a pair of gunslingers facing off in the street, daring each other to draw. She said with false cheer, "Anacostia! Well, that's all the more reason to stay over."

  "No, Mom."

  A ledge. Sean hated the thought of his son in such a position. He wanted to reach a hand toward him. He said, "We can meet in the morning, before you report to Anacostia. You have a lot of options. I'll help you look at them. I can send for OCS forms—"

  "I'm not going for OCS, Dad." Richard had resolved just to declare himself, but the words were stuck in his throat. Finally he forced them out. "I'm not reporting for induction."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm against the war. It would be against my conscience. I'm not reporting for induction."

  "You're not serious."

  "It's against my conscience, Dad."

  "Your conscience?" Dillon asked quietly, but the step he took toward his son was so charged with violence that he stopped.

  Cass stood up abruptly, planting herself between them. "Stop this," she said.

  "Did you know he was doing this?" Sean asked without looking at her.

  "No, she didn't," Richard said fiercely, as if defending his mother from charges.

  Cass put her hand on her son's chest. "We can still help you. I've thought about this. It's not that unusual now. You can apply for conscientious objector. They give that if fighting is against your conscience."

  Richard shook his head. "I'm not against fighting, Mom. Just this war. This war is immoral, maybe not all war. They don't give COs for selective objection. You have to be a Quaker."

  "That's not true," Sean said. "Catholics can obtain CO status."

  Richard brought his eyes to his father again. "I'm not a Catholic."

  Cass took her hand back from his chest to stand before him, deflated. "Oh, Richard," she said quietly.

  "I'm sorry, Mom."

  She stared at him, not angry but terribly, terribly hurt. Her eyes filled, but before they spilled over, she said, "I'm making some tea," and she went to the kitchen.

  Sean and Richard remained frozen in place.

  Sean said, "You have such a sensitive conscience, but you'll do that to her."

  "If her religion is so important to her, it's because of what you've done, not me."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "Living with you, what else does she have, what else has she ever had but the Church?"

  "She had a son."

  "Yes. And her son grew up. It's what happens. And like it or not, he grew up the way she raised him."

  Sean lifted both his hands, palms outward. "Wait a minute. Let's not do this."

  "Do what?" Now it was Richard who took a step. "Tell each other the truth finally? How I hate your fucking war?"

  "Don't you talk to me like that."

  "Like what? Saying 'fuck'? Is that what's wrong? Saying 'fuck'? I guess if our pilots were flying over Vietnam with big loudspeakers attached under their wings, blaring 'Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!' all over the countryside, then you'd say the war is immoral, right? But as it is, what our pilots do instead is drop napalm on villages. Napalm! And they drop it on the villages that you pick out for them. Isn't that what you do? Pick the targets? Isn't it? Isn't it?"

  "In point of fact, it's part of what I do."

  "And you talk to me about the word 'fuck'!"

  "Use the word again, Richard, and you leave this house."

  "You have it all backwards, Dad. You really do."

  "Not me. You say you want the war to end, right? Right?"

  "That's right."

  "But what you are doing prolongs it. I guarantee it. You and all your friends, with your demonstrations, your marches on the Pentagon."

  "I was at the Pentagon that day."

  Dillon knew that his son's announcement was intended to jolt him, and it did. "I suppose I should have known that, after what you did at the archbishop's funeral."

  "I had the feeling, even in that huge crowd, that you were watching me with the same look of disgust you showed me at the Shrine."

  Dillon shook his head slowly. "I guess after that I blanked it out. At the Pentagon I didn't allow myself to—" He stopped, and with a fresh push of anger asked, "Were you one of those who defecated on the stairs?"

  " 'Shit,' Dad. Say 'shit
,' for Christ's sake. Is the word 'shit' so offensive to you?"

  "No, what's offensive is your flight from responsibility."

  "I'm taking responsibility. Don't you understand that? Ever since that day at the Pentagon. No, I didn't shit on the stairs! What I did do was turn my draft card in."

  Dillon nodded. "You're a fool, Richard. You have no notion that certain acts bring certain consequences."

  "I accept the consequences of what I do."

  "You don't even see the consequences. Were you one of those carrying the Vietcong flag? Do you have any idea what the consequences of that are? When the rulers in Hanoi see their flag on the steps of the Pentagon, don't you know there are consequences? They don't know what a bunch of badly raised, spoiled-rotten kooks you all are. They think you are their serious allies. Don't you see that, Richard? We're not trying to defeat the Communists in Vietnam. If we wanted to, we could obliterate them. What we're trying to do is get them to negotiate with us. We're trying to convince them that their war is futile, that they can't win. And we are very close to convincing them of that. This war could be over, and soon! It's my business to know this! We are on the eve of what could be the last battle right now! But do you know what could screw it up? Your so-called peace movement. You and others like you make the Communists think they can win. You are encouraging the enemy to hang on."

  "They aren't my enemy, is the point."

  "The hell they aren't. You are a naive young man. People like you are put to death by Communists everywhere, and the Communists in Vietnam are the most vicious brutes of them all. They have already killed twenty thousand fine young American boys who didn't weasel out of the draft."

  "Is that what you think I'm doing?"

  "Of course it is, and I am ashamed of you. You're hiding behind a claim of conscience, but all you are is a coward."

  Richard felt his knees start to go, and he thought, Now. Here. This is where I collapse. I knew I couldn't do this.

  But somehow he braced his legs, did not collapse. "That's not true," he said, but weakly. "If I was a coward, I would not have come here to face you. Mr. Crocker told me—"

  "Crocker! Have you been talking to Crocker?"

  "He agrees with me. He thinks the war is wrong too. A lot of good people do, Dad. He thinks you've been too influenced by the other generals."

  "I forbid you to see him again."

  "Dad, that's ridiculous. You don't 'forbid' me now. Especially not about Mr. Crocker, who happens to be devoted to you. He's the one who said I owed it to you to come here. Otherwise I'd have just split for Canada. You would never have seen me or known what—"

  "That's the way you should have done it."

  "Mr. Crocker was sure you'd respect me for—"

  "Respect? Never. I want to tell you something. I want you to be very clear on this. If you refuse induction tomorrow, you needn't ever come back here again. Do you understand me?"

  "Yes." Tears were running freely down Richard's cheeks, but strangely enough, he had never felt less like sobbing. He turned and walked back through the living room toward the front door. His mother was standing, beyond, in the threshold of the kitchen. He wondered, Could she have heard?

  "You're having tea," she said.

  "No, Mom." He opened the front door.

  She crossed to him and took his arm. "You can't just leave."

  "I have to, Mom. Don't you understand? I have to."

  But she would not let go. Still holding him, she whipped around toward Sean, who was still an entire room away. "Tell him!" she cried. "Tell him not to go."

  But from that side of the house no sound came, only a silence which had all the weight of a father's reply.

  Richard kissed his mother, then pulled away from her and dashed into the black rain.

  Twenty-one

  "They made total fools of us," General Dillon said. "And of me in particular, because frankly, I had my doubts about our strategy at Khe Sanh until it approached climax, at which point, like everyone else I became a true believer. I thought we had them snookered, but it was the other way around."

  He was standing in his crisp uniform, stars gleaming, ribbons glowing on his tunic breast, a rubber-tipped pointer lightly in his hand. Beside him was an easel holding a large map of Indochina. Its legend read, "Enemy Offensive, Tet, 1968." The map was marked with two dozen red arrows of various sizes, cutting arcs across all of South Vietnam, from the DMZ to the Ca Mau Peninsula. The tips of the arrows punctured the major cities; half a dozen converged on Saigon alone. The attack had occurred during the traditional cease-fire at the end of January, nearly a month ago now.

  Dillon was speaking to the special group of eminent elder statesmen. A shaken Lyndon Johnson had convened to review the entire war effort after the shock of an offensive that had sent the American ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker, fleeing in his pajamas. They were seated on one side of a long conference table in an ornate room on the second floor of the Executive Office Building next to the White House. They were men who'd spent their lives at such tables, and among them were the notables Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, Omar Bradley, George Ball and Randall Crocker. It was exactly such a group of New Deal veterans, Johnson's heroes, that Dillon had hoped Crocker himself might convene when he'd approached him in the early fall, but what Dillon failed to accomplish, the Communist initiative had. Dillon's sense of Crocker's enduring influence as a counselor-to-power was confirmed by the President's appointment. Of course, their encounter in the fall, after Bowers's death—not to mention Crocker's outrageous, glib sponsorship of Richard's flight to Canada—guaranteed that wise man Randall Crocker would have no influence with Sean Dillon. But the collapse of his friendship with Crocker was not the point. The possible collapse of the American will was the point.

  Lyndon Johnson's hypnotic—and despotic—attachment to good news was apparently broken, but would it be replaced by its opposite? Since their number included men already known to be critics of the war, like George Ball and Randall Crocker, it was clear that the panel had been gathered to summarize the bad news for Johnson. But Dillon wondered if they, like the media and the liberal politicians, were going to make an absolute of American failure, as, before Tet, Johnson had tried to make an absolute of American success.

  Dillon knew that anyone inclined to do that would be able to find justification aplenty in the testimony it was his obligation to give. He had just laid out in fuller detail than even his critics from CIA had done the massive failure of his own intelligence operation. He knew that whatever else Tet meant, it meant the end, over the next months, if not sooner, of his career as the military intelligence chief. Already McNamara was gone as secretary of defense, and Dillon was certain that soon Westmoreland would follow him. Tet was the hole into which their personal futures had fallen, and it could yet swallow, since this was an election year, the President's too. Indeed, the self-anointed Eugene McCarthy had just come close to defeating Johnson in New Hampshire.

  But the end of careers did not matter. What mattered now was getting the truth out, the truth of what they'd learned and the truth of what the war required yet. Dillon was in no mood to mince words, and hadn't. But throughout his presentation he had found himself unable to look Randall Crocker in the eye. Sean Dillon, it turned out, was incapable of feeling angry at his former mentor. Time had touched them too deeply for that, and in fact Dillon's heart had sunk when he first saw Crocker, how time had turned against him. The skin on Crocker's face had begun to come loose from its bones.

  Dillon was summarizing now. "So instead of our blindsiding Giap in Khe Sanh, he blindsided us"—he touched the pointer to the various targets as he named them—"in Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Nha Trang, Pleiku, Saigon, and Hué. Civilian losses everywhere were staggering."

  "How staggering?" a voice asked.

  Dillon answered without hesitating. He knew these goddamned numbers very well. "14,300 civilians killed, 24,000 wounded, 27,000 displaced from their homes, 72,000 homes destroyed."

 
; "All that?" the same voice pressed. "And the attack on Khe Sanh was for real?"

  "Yes, sir. Two NVA divisions hit Khe Sanh."

  "That part you saw coming, though? At Khe Sanh?"

  "Yes, sir. And, of course, we held our ground there."

  "But you foresaw nothing else?" It was Acheson, a long-standing supporter of the war.

  "No, sir."

  Then another voice piped up, "Ninety thousand enemy troops moving en masse throughout South Vietnam—and you didn't see it? I don't understand that, General."

  What Dillon didn't understand was how the row of gray-haired old men could seem so uniform to him, and how in their speaking they could manifest so little of themselves that often, as now, he was unsure whom to address. All he knew for certain was whom to avoid—Crocker. He said, to the panel generally, "We didn't see them, sir, because we did not know they were there to be seen. It sounds anomalous, but it's that simple. It appears now, given the numbers of enemy troops we know were involved in the Tet attacks, that we have been undercoundng the enemy in place in the South for two years. Frankly, at various times, we were afraid of exactly that, but we never confirmed it. And so by the time we were alerted last fall for some kind of offensive, we detected no increase in troop movements along the Trail into III Corps and IV Corps, because there were none. The enemy troops in huge numbers were already there. The movements we did detect were all into I Corps, so we thought Khe Sanh!"

  "You had no notion of the undercount?" Dillon recognized General Bradley, whose voice was laced with incredulity bordering on contempt. The old man was wearing a baggy brown suit, his bald head with flaky skin close to the table surface. Not a four-star general like Westmoreland or Wheeler, Dillon remembered, but five, like Eisenhower.

  Dillon answered carefully. "In fact, sir, in the spring of last year, we conducted a major military intelligence réévaluation of the entire enemy battle order. That réévaluation, over my signature and that of General Westmoreland's own intelligence chief, suggested that the estimates of enemy strength in South Vietnam could be off by as much as two hundred thousand."