Army Blue

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “I'll fix my own goddamned old-fashioned,” rasped the General.

  The General walked through the door to a bar in the hall just outside the living room and mixed his drink. When he returned, he sat down next to Aunt Aggie on the sofa. She puffed on her Fatima and considered him with her knowing gray eyes.

  “You look well, Ma-a-a-atthew,” she said. “Your life in Washington must be agreeing with you.”

  “I got fired two weeks ago. Didn't you hear?” said the General. “Other than that, everything's rosy.”

  She laughed and puffed on her Fatima, gripping its holder between her thumb and forefinger as she tapped the ash into a large crystal ashtray on the coffee table. The Colonel arrived with another old-fashioned and handed it to her.

  “Thank you ever so much,” said Aunt Aggie. She coughed, turning her head to the door.

  “I'd like to propose a toast,” said Aunt Aggie. “To troubles and problems and pain, for these human curses are what truly hold families together.” She raised her glass and glanced at the General. He was smiling.

  “You're a sly old bitch, aren't you, Agnes,” said the General, raising his glass.

  “The slyest of the sly old bitches,” said Aunt Aggie, raising hers.

  The Colonel didn't raise his glass with the others, and said nothing as the others sipped their drinks.

  “Is there something wrong, Matt?” Aunt Aggie asked.

  “I'll be glad to join any toast after we discuss what we're going to do about my son,” he said, looking directly at his father. The General placed his glass on a coaster and slapped his knee.

  “Let's get down to it,” he said. “What have you been told?”

  The Colonel told him about the call from his son, how they were cut off before Matt could tell him anything about the charges and how they'd been brought, what had happened.

  The General recounted everything Bruce Pelton had reported that morning. When he got to the name of the division commander, Lieutenant General Lawrence Cardozo, the Colonel stood up and walked over to the window next to the fireplace.

  “What's the matter? Hit a nerve?” his father asked, coughing into his handkerchief.

  “I had a run-in with Cardozo years ago,” said the Colonel.

  “What about?”

  “About church,” said the Colonel, still staring out the window. “He was my battalion commander over in Stuttgart. I had C Company. I was new to the Battalion, there just a week, and he issued an order that all troops would attend church every Sunday. It was part of some big program of his to improve the Battalion's morale . . .”

  “Or morals,” Aunt Aggie laughed.

  “Or morals,” said the Colonel, turning to face his father and his aunt. He wasn't smiling.

  “I pointed out to him that his order was illegal, that it was unconstitutional to require attendance at church. That didn't earn me many points my first week in the Battalion, let me tell you.”

  “What did Cardozo say to your amateur reading of the Constitution?” asked the General.

  “He said he didn't give a damn, it was his Battalion and he'd do with it what he liked.”

  “And what did you do? Call a goddamned lawyer?” the General asked.

  “I told him I refused to transmit the order, because it was patently illegal.”

  “Why didn't you just button your lip and go along?” asked the General. “You'd be a general by now. That was the situation that got you sent to that damn munitions depot, wasn't it? Sent to goddamned Siberia?”

  The Colonel looked at his father long and hard before he spoke.

  “I didn't go along, as you say, because I learned something at West Point that I never learned in your house,” said the Colonel, slowly and very deliberately. “I learned honesty. At the Academy they made us attend church every Sunday, and they knew it was illegal and we knew it was illegal. On the one hand, we were being taught that it was our duty to uphold the Constitution, to defend it with our lives if need be. The West Point honor code said that duty and honor and country came before all else, and that honesty was a nonnegotiable demand, an absolute necessity if you were ever to lead men in combat. What was honest about knowingly breaking the law every Sunday by forcing cadets against their will to attend church? The situation was hypocritical on its face and criminal in its effect on the cadets. What I learned, Dad, if you really want to know, is that hypocrisy is a poor substitute for leadership. And I learned that I couldn't stand there and be part of an illegal conspiracy to deprive those troops of the most fundamental of the constitutional rights that they were being paid to defend.”

  “That's a very noble notion,” the General growled. “I'll have to write that down so I can remember it.”

  “Now, you two,” said Aunt Aggie, holding a cigarette aloft on her black holder, waiting for a light. The Colonel stepped forward and lit her cigarette.

  “We're not here to fight old battles. We've got a new one to fight, and I don't see that we've done much to that end at this point.” She leaned back against the chintz-covered sofa and puffed on her Fatima.

  “You seem to know so much,” said the Colonel to his father. “Why don't you tell us what we should do?”

  The General looked at his son through narrowed eyes. He stood up and walked into the hall and mixed himself another old-fashioned. The Colonel and Aunt Aggie could hear him back there, methodically mashing the lemon rind and maraschino cherry at the bottom of the glass with a wooden pestle. He added the simple syrup and the ice and poured in the bourbon. They heard him swirl the liquid around in the glass for a moment, then he reappeared in the doorway.

  “You're such a goddamned self-righteous and pious son of a bitch, and you've done things so goddamned legally and correctly all your goddamned life, boy, tell me this. Are you ready to get on a plane with me and go over to goddamned Vietnam and say to hell with the consequences? Are you ready to go back to Benning and tell your CO that you're sorry but you have to leave for a while so you can take care of your son? Are you willing to cash in your career for the sake of that boy and his troubles?”

  “I'm ready to get myself over there and back up my son, but I'll be damned if I'm going to follow along with you and doing things your way. I followed you into the Army and encouraged Matt to do the same, and I'm through following you and your ways.”

  “You're still the same self-righteous son of a bitch you were when you were twelve years old,” said the General. “And here you are back at the Randolph family womb, Wild Acres, hiding behind a woman's skirts, like you used to hide behind your mother's skirts. You'll never change. You were a goddamned mama's boy then, and you're a goddamned mama's boy now.” He walked across the living room to the window and took a long, slow sip of his old-fashioned.

  “You can do whatever the hell you want to, boy. I've got a plane to catch. Bruce Pelton is heading for Tan Son Nhut tomorrow morning on one of those goddamned State Department fact-finding tours. I'm going with him. I'm going to that godforsaken goddamned country of Vietnam with you or without you, and I'm going to get that boy out of the crap he's found himself in.”

  “Why cahn't you go together?” drawled Aunt Aggie, her cigarette holder gripped tightly in her yellowed teeth.

  The General sipped his old-fashioned, waiting for his son to reply. The Colonel stood and faced his father.

  “Do it your way, General. Go ahead over there with Bruce Pelton and grandstand around the countryside and bellow and fluff your damn feathers. I don't care what you do. All you'll be doing, as far as I'm concerned, is getting in my way. And there's a pretty good chance you'll jeopardize any chance that boy has to beat this thing.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that crack?” asked the General, glowering at the Colonel.

  “It's not your war,” said the Colonel. “And he's not your son. He's my son. You can't treat this situation the way you've treated everything else in your life—with the back of your hand. Things are different from the way they were when you commande
d troops in World War II. For better or worse, it's Matt's war. My war was Korea. Your war ended twenty-five years ago. Now it's Matt's turn. It's his war. He called me this morning. He didn't call you. And I don't want you over there trying to apply the lessons of World War II to Vietnam. They won't work. This is a new age. It's a new Army. It's a new war. I don't need you over there, and neither does Matt. Do us both a favor. Keep out of this.”

  “Go to hell,” said the General, never removing his eyes from his son.

  “Maybe I could be of some help,” said Aunt Aggie, trying to put a damper on things.

  “This isn't one of those problems great-aunts can solve,” said the General. “That goddamned war was started by men, it'll be ended by men, and I'm making it my responsibility to see to it that boy comes out of it not only alive, but with his honor intact.”

  “I want to propose a toast,” said Aunt Aggie, now into her third old-fashioned.

  She raised her glass with her left hand, held her cigarette holder with her right, and said, “You're a bastard, Ma-a-a-atthew, and you're not even our bastard, but right now I've got a feeling we're going to need more than one.” She looked from the General to the Colonel and raised her glass.

  “To the two of you,” she said.

  The General ignored her and turned to the Colonel.

  “I'm going over with Bruce Pelton. I don't give a good goddamn what you say, boy.”

  The General glared at the Colonel, spun on his heel, and left the room. In a moment he could be heard repeating the elaborate process of mixing a fresh old-fashioned, grinding, grinding the lemon rind and cherry at the bottom of his glass with the wooden pestle.

  The Colonel stared out the window, drink in hand, his toe beating a slow tattoo to the insistent rhythm of the pestle grinding away in the next room. It seemed as though he'd spent his whole life dancing to his father's tune.

  He had been expected to follow in his father's footsteps, and he had. In turn, he had made it clear that he expected his son to follow his father and grandfather into the Army, and he had. War had been their destiny, and war had been Matt's destiny, too.

  Not so subtly, the General's distinguished service in World War II and the Colonel's service in Korea had encouraged the boy to volunteer^ for Vietnam, to take his turn with his war. He was expected to serve as others before him had served. They were a family of warriors, and Vietnam was a war. He wasn't expected to fight in Vietnam to prove his manhood. He wasn't expected to fight in Vietnam for his country. But he had been expected to fight in Vietnam for the Blue name. So he volunteered for a war that by now no one really believed in, and now he was in more trouble than the Colonel could imagine, and the guilt of having encouraged him to volunteer for Vietnam bubbled up inside the Colonel like a bad meal.

  The Colonel hated his father most of all because he wished he had been more independent of him. If he hadn't danced to his father's tune, maybe Matt wouldn't have ended up dancing to his. The Blue name was a vicious circle, always threatening to come around and swallow you whole. The Colonel winced at the thought.

  Now the almighty family name had swallowed another victim, and this time the victim might not come out alive.

  All his life the Colonel had followed in his father's footsteps.

  Well, not this time, he thought.

  Not while his son's life hung in the balance.

  TWO

  * * *

  * * *

  Eyewash for the Telex-Devil

  Firebase Zulu-Foxtrot Day Two

  * * *

  * * *

  Eltee! Eltee! It's gettin’ on to 0530, so I'm shakin’ you, jus’ like you said.” Dirtball Magee leaned over the Lieutenant and tried to see if he was awake. Dirtball was from Mountain View, Arkansas. He looked like it and he sounded like it. But the amazing thing about Dirtball was the fact that he was a graduate of the University of Arkansas. He'd given some thought to Officer Candidate School but decided against it when he heard a rumor about casualty figures for a typical class of ninety-day wonders: seventy-two percent. Dirtball decided to take his chances as a grunt.

  Outside the 113, somewhere beyond the surrounding jungle, the sun was coming up. Lieutenant Matthew Nelson Blue IV turned over on his air mattress and squinted at the face hovering over his own. It was Dirtball, all right. He looked around, trying to focus his eyes. Yeah, there's the cupola, there's the track commander's fold-down seat, there's the lowered back ramp and the berm the track was parked up against. He rubbed his eyes and sat up.

  “What's going on, Dirtball?”

  “Nothin’, sir. Not a fuckin’ sound last night. No mortars, no RPGs, no nothin’. Them Charlies musta forgot where we're at, sir. Quiet as a church. Yessir.”

  “You hear anything about the resupply ship yet, Dirtball? They're supposed to be bringing a hot meal this morning.”

  “Yessir. They're due at 0600. Two of em comin’ this mornin’. One carryin’ breakfast. The other carryin’ the new CO, Lieutenant Colonel Halleck.”

  “Halleck. Jesus. I almost forgot about him. All right. I better get my ass up and have a look at the perimeter. He's probably going to inspect us with white gloves. Tell Sergeant Davis to start rounding up the troops. I'll be out in a minute.”

  Halleck. Christ. What a fucking pain in the ass.

  Blue pulled on his jungle boots and laced them up. He left his fatigue pants hanging outside the boots, in the manner of all grunts living in the boonies. No bloused boots out here. He put on his fatigue shirt and rolled up the sleeves. Shirts were going to be a problem. There were a few guys who still had them, but he knew there weren't enough to go around. Some would have to stand inspection in their T-shirts. No fatigue shirts wasn't going to go over big with the Halleck-monster.

  Halleck was a purebred nut case about dirt and haircuts, but that wasn't all he was. A week before Halleck arrived at the Battalion, one of the officers from the personnel section at brigade headquarters had flown out to the weapons platoon base camp and warned the Lieutenant about him. Halleck was a man on the fast track, said the personnel officer. He'd gotten his promotion to lieutenant colonel on the five-percent list, ahead of his contemporaries. He saw his battalion command as another opportunity for accelerated advancement. And his assignment to Colonel Testor's brigade was no accident, either. Those two went back all the way to West Point. They had been in the same company in the Corps of Cadets, Testor three years ahead of Halleck. They saw themselves as some kind of team, said the personnel officer. And there was a rumor going around that there was more to Halleck's assignment to Testor's brigade than just their friendship. They were up to something, the personnel officer warned. But nobody knew what it was.

  The Lieutenant winced when he heard the rumors about Halleck. There was nothing worse than a commander with a private agenda, especially a commander going to war for his own purposes. The Lieutenant was prepared to expect the worst of Halleck. Now he didn't know what to expect.

  The Lieutenant crouched and shuffled out the back of the 113. Dirt. That was all he could see. Red dirt, as fine as bath powder. Every step you took sent spoonfuls of the stuff poofing up your pantlegs, down your collar, up your nose, in your hair, in your eyes. Give the place an hour of rain, and all that super-fine red dirt would turn into mud the consistency of soft ice cream—goopy, sloppy, drippy stuff that adhered to everything and dried instantaneously to a metallic hardness that was almost impossible to chip off.

  Dirt.

  Mud.

  VC mortars.

  Halleck.

  If it wasn't one fucking thing, it was another.

  Blue wandered by the other tracks. A half-dozen of the guys could be seen desultorily rubbing down the 4.2-inch mortars with rags that were dirtier than the 4.2s themselves. Rub the dust off this one, it moves over there and gets on that one. Rub the dust off that one, it poofs up and blows over to the 113's firewall. Brush the dust off the firewall, it flies over to the machine gun and happily moves in. Wipe the dust off the machi
ne gun . . .

  Christ. The ridiculousness of this asshole Halleck coming out to the platoon firebase and running around checking to see if everything was neat and clean and tidy.

  Clean? What clean? Oh, you mean clean, like in shiny and bright and polished. Yeah, we got clean for you, shiny boots and gleaming teeth and we got the 113s all waxed and polished, sir. Sure we do.

  Neat? Sure, we got lined-up toothbrushes, sir, so if the VC stop by for a night visit, they'll see we're not guilty of inattention to detail.

  Tidy? As tidy as your desk drawer, sir, that's how tidy we keep our little asses. In fact, that's all we've got to do out here in the weapons platoon—tidy up, straighten up, make sure the rocks are painted white and the starch in our fatigues is fresh. Sure. Come on out. Just give us a minute to visit the neighborhood barber and make sure our haircuts are regulation length, and while we're at it, we'll have him give each of us an ultra-close shave and a dose of Old Spice after-shave. After all, sir, isn't that what wars are all about?

  Neatness, and

  cleanness, and

  tidiness, and

  haircuts.

  Lieutenant Blue checked the berm, the dirt levee around the perimeter of the platoon firebase. He checked to see if it was piled high, neat and clean and tidy. It was.

  He checked to see if all the tracks were dug in deep and neat and clean and tidy. They were.

  He checked the troops, to see if they were all shaved neat and clean and tidy. With the exception of Dirtball, they were.

  He checked the concertina wire outside the perimeter to see if it had been laid out in expanding circles, concentric and neat and clean and tidy. It had.

  He checked the platoon field of fire, to see if all trees and bushes had been removed for a hundred yards around the firebase perimeter, flat and neat and clean and tidy. They had.