Army Blue

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “I'm glad I reached you this morning, sir,” said Morriss. “I figured you'd want to come along.”

  The Colonel climbed in. He was still in civvies, and he was carrying a briefcase.

  “Thanks, Terry. I'm glad you called. Let's go.”

  Captain Morriss pulled away from the hotel and beeped his way into traffic. In a few minutes they were on the outskirts of Saigon, heading for the airport. The MP at the gate stopped them and checked the Colonel's identification, saluted when he saw his rank, and signaled them through.

  The General was standing at the curb in front of the main terminal at Tan Son Nhut. He was wearing a light blue seersucker suit, a panama hat with a navy and red striped hatband, and shiny brown shoes. He was shorter than Morriss would have guessed from hearing his voice on the phone, but he made up for any lack of physical stature with the scowl on his face, which was practiced and profound. His lips turned down at the corners and his large eyes squinted into the morning sun. As the jeep coasted to a halt, his eyes opened wide for an instant, then squinted again. He stood at the curb, immobile, a fearful, squat statue of doom. Captain Morriss imagined him on a beachhead in Italy, squinting into the sun as a million men under his command came ashore and readied themselves to fight and if necessary to die for him. He shuddered.

  The jeep stopped and the Colonel climbed out. He and the General stood there looking at each other for a long moment, then the Colonel reached for the General, but the General looked away and the Colonel stopped and said softly, “Nobody told me you were coming back, Dad.”

  “That's because I didn't tell anybody,” the General growled. “What took you so goddamned long, Captain?”

  Captain Morriss jumped out of the jeep, put on his cap, and stood at attention as militarily as he could.

  “I stopped to pick up your son, sir,” he said.

  The General grunted and reached down for his suitcase.

  “Wait a minute, Dad.”

  The General straightened up and stared stonily across the runways of Tan Son Nhut. C-130s followed each other on and off of the runways like great green ducks landing on and taking off from a huge pond.

  “I'm glad you're here, Dad,” said the Colonel. He looked straight at his father, who was scowling into the early sun.

  “It means a lot to me, and it will mean a lot to Matt. I know you arranged for his release from Long Binh. I want to thank you, Dad. And I know Matt thanks you.”

  His father half-turned and glanced at the Colonel, then looked away.

  “I want to thank you, Dad,” said the Colonel again, his voice even, unwavering. He took a step toward his father and the old man half-turned and the Colonel folded his arms around his father and hugged him hard and didn't let him go.

  Slowly the General's arms lifted and he held his son and patted his back gently.

  He cleared his throat.

  “What does a man have to do to get a goddamned drink around here, goddammit? It may be breakfast time for you, but it's cocktail hour for me, goddammit!”

  The Colonel gave one last squeeze around his father's shoulders and let go and stepped back. Tears were forming in his eyes and he resisted the impulse to reach up and wipe them.

  The General dug in his back pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to his son. He watched him wipe his eyes, and slowly a warm smile crept onto his lips.

  “You're the lawyer,” said the General, turning to Captain Morriss.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Drive this goddamned thing to the nearest officers’ club, son. We three have got some things to talk over.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Morriss, climbing back behind the wheel. The Colonel threw the General's suitcase in the back and vaulted into the backseat as the General eased himself into the passenger seat. He slapped the top of the windshield with his palm and nodded. It was a slap he'd made maybe ten thousand times during the war, riding in jeeps from North Africa to Sicily to Italy to France to Germany. He'd slap the windshield and his driver, whom he called “Bull,” would hit the gas and the jeep would jerk forward, heading down the never-ending rutted road of World War II.

  “Let's go, Captain. We're not sitting in this goddamned vehicle as decoration.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Morriss. This guy ought to teach procedure to first-year students at Harvard Law, Captain Morriss thought. They would love him up there.

  The General turned around in his seat to address his son.

  “How's the boy?” he asked.

  “He's doing about as well as can be expected, Dad,” the Colonel said.

  “Well, he's going to be doing one hell of a lot better than that from now on, goddammit,” the General growled. “I didn't fly all those goddamned hours on that goddamned plane to get to this godforsaken hellhole to preside over a goddamned wake. When those sons of bitches decided they'd court-martial a man by the name of Matthew Nelson Blue, they bit off one hell of a lot more than they could chew, goddammit. When we're through with them, there's going to be a few sons of bitches choking on those goddamned charges they filed. They didn't know what circle of hell they stuck a stick into when they decided to mess with that boy of ours, goddammit. Nobody puts it to a Blue and gets away with it.”

  He took a deep, wheezing breath and turned around and looked through the windshield across the brown fields of Vietnam.

  “Nobody, goddammit,” he muttered. “You got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Captain Morriss.

  “Yes, Dad,” said the Colonel.

  The sun slipped behind a cloud and the rice fields were plunged into dull gray light and then the sun peeked around the edge of the cloud and illuminated a row of shacks with a soft light that made them look rose-hued and golden and in the distance thunder sounded and at the edge of the field it began to rain and the rain spattered the jeep. The General tugged on his panama, pulling it over his eyes, and he reached up and held onto the windshield and shouted:

  “Drive this goddamned thing, Captain, goddammit! I want a drink sometime before taps today, you hear me, goddammit!”

  “Yes, sir!” Morriss yelled into the wind and rain and mud that was spattering the windshield.

  The General was back in Vietnam, but this time he hadn't come on a Pentagon plane so nobody knew he was there.

  The General squinted and wiped rain from his face and grinned widely at his son.

  The jeep wheeled around a curve, throwing mud in a brown arc, and they were gone down the road in the thunder and the rain.

  18

  * * *

  * * *

  It was the first thing you noticed: the courtroom was not air-conditioned and inside the air was a hot, still, stale, humid, lifeless gas that must have been ninety degrees at ankle level, ninety-five around your neck, one hundred stifling degrees at your face.

  The second thing you noticed was the absence of press—no TV cameras, no reporters standing around, notebooks in hand. No microphones. Nothing. Cathy Joice and her crew had been turned around at the Tan Son Nhut complex gate. Nobody else who could wield a pencil in Saigon, it seemed, even knew the court-martial of Lieutenant Blue was taking place. The Army had accomplished what it had set out to accomplish: In seven days, they had the Lieutenant on trial for desertion in the face of the enemy, and other than Cathy Joice, nobody knew about it.

  Nobody.

  The court was a small Quonset hut on a street in the American military complex between the MACV compound and Tan Son Nhut, and not only wasn't it air-conditioned, but there were only three dormer-style windows jutting from the gently curving sides of the Quonset hut, and one of them didn't open. Circulation in the hut was about that of a walk-in closet, although the hut wasn't as luxurious.

  The court-martial of Lieutenant Matthew Nelson Blue IV was to take place in what had to be one of two or three non-air-conditioned places in Saigon. Captain Morriss's theory was simple. The prosecution, which had lost its team leader the day before the court-martial, hoped the oppressive heat of
the courtroom would discourage any lengthy questioning of their witnesses and further discourage any delaying tactics by the defense. Just walking into the room made you realize that every moment spent under its green, peeling, damp corrugated-steel ceiling would not be tallied in the defendant's column. Captain Morriss was about to file an official protest with the MACV court-martial convening authority but the General stopped him.

  “That's precisely what they're goddamned waiting for,” the General rasped between bites of his breakfast at the Caravelle. They want to goddamn sweat, we'll goddamn sweat with them. They are the ones who'll get goddamned flustered. Did you see the goddamned prosecutor? What in God's name was that?”

  “Captain Alvin Z. Dupuy,” said Captain Morriss. “They had a colonel they flew over from Hawaii to head up the prosecution team, but he spent the night out on the town in Saigon about a week ago, and he hasn't been the same since.”

  “This Dupuy is all they've got?”

  “Dupuy and a major by the name of Thompson, Harold Thompson. But Dupuy will be running things. He ran the 32 investigation, and he's the only man they've got who really knows the case. Thompson is just window-dressing. They want the court to know the command feels this case is very, very important.”

  “What in hell is Dupuy's goddamned problem? I have never seen an Army officer with a face quite like his. There is a softness around his eyes and his chin ...” the General's voice dropped off. He couldn't find the words to describe what he saw in Dupuy—or what he didn't see.

  “Then you've never seen an Army officer with a trust fund approximately the size of the NATO budget, sir,” said Morriss.

  “So that's it,” the General said, digging into his eggs.

  They finished breakfast and met the Colonel and the Sergeant Major and the Lieutenant in front of the Continental. Captain Morriss had followed instructions from the General and found and exercised a regulation that permitted the defense team in any general court-martial the number of Army vehicles necessary to transport the team to and from court. In the case of Lieutenant Blue's team, it was two air-conditioned staff cars driven by two spec-4's supplied by the Sergeant Major. He didn't want drivers from MACV overhearing their conversations on the way to and from court, reporting back to the prosecution.

  The Lieutenant looked straight ahead as they walked into the court. He wanted the defendant looking as much like a defendant as possible. In the military, especially in the Army, when you were about to be court-martialed it made sense to act contrite, even if your innocence boiled inside you like oil in a deep-fat fryer. If you were a lieutenant, the idea was to act the way a lieutenant was supposed to act in such a circumstance: scared out of your wits.

  One of the peculiarities of the system of military justice was the presence of rank in the courtroom. Almost invariably the defendant would be the lowest-ranking man in the room, and it was expected that he behave that way. The court-martial of Lieutenant Blue was no different.

  Inside the Quonset hut, the court was arranged by rank. On a raised platform at the end of the room were tables to the left and right for the court and for the military judge. The table for the court sat seven. The table for the judge was smaller, and it had been draped with a forest green cloth. An armless wooden chair for the witnesses sat on the platform exactly between the judge and the members of the court. In front of the platform were the tables for the prosecution, on the right, and for the defense, on the left. A court reporter sat at his stenotype machine between the tables for the court and the judge. An old oak lectern stood at the foot of the platform between the tables for the defense and prosecution.

  The court sat by rank, left to right, and cards with the names and ranks of the members of the court stenciled in black letters sat on the table before the appropriate chairs.

  The military judge, Colonel Charles Kelly, had his name and rank on his table, and he had brought his own. It was of hand-carved wood, and it was about twice the size of every other name card in the court.

  “Trouble,” whispered the Lieutenant to Captain Morriss after they sat down.

  “What trouble?”

  “The judge. The colonel. Only assholes have those wooden name plates.”

  “Yeah? Well, I think for once you're right when it comes to Kelly. He's one of the bigger assholes they've got.”

  The Lieutenant turned and looked behind him. The Quonset hut had seats for about forty people, but most of the chairs were empty. The General and the Colonel sat directly behind him with the Sergeant Major. They were the only people in the room.

  It wasn't much of a crowd.

  The Army had set out to court-martial the Lieutenant in virtual secrecy, and by the looks of things, they were well on their way to accomplishing just that.

  An MP appeared in a door at the far end of the Quonset hut and announced in a loud but high-pitched voice:

  “All rise!”

  The members of the court filed in, followed by Colonel Kelly, the military judge. He wasn't wearing traditional judge's robes. In the Army, in the tropical heat of Vietnam, khakis were considered traditional enough.

  “This court will come to order,” said Colonel Kelly. He was a florid-faced man with a salt-and-pepper crewcut, broad shoulders, thick arms, and huge, meaty hands. He wore a pair of half-glasses over which he peered like an all-state fullback playing bookkeeper.

  “Before we begin, I have something to say to both sides in this case.”

  The Judge peered over his half-glasses as he read from a document before him.

  “I have been informed by the court-martial convening authority, Commander-in-Chief MACV, that the case before this court today involves matters of national security. For this reason, all those present in this court are ordered as of now that they are not to speak to any members of the press. If anyone is found to have contacted the press, or have been contacted by the press, you will be held in contempt of court, and I will personally see to it that your punishment is commensurate with the national security aspects of your crime. This is a combat zone, gentlemen. Rules of procedure are different when the enemy threatens. Do I make myself clear?”

  The Judge peered over his glasses.

  “Do I make myself understood to all those present in this court?”

  Morriss stood up.

  “Yes, Your Honor. The defense understands and respects your order.”

  “Can he do that?” whispered the Lieutenant when Morriss sat down.

  “You heard him,” said Morriss. “This is Vietnam, my man. They can do anything here. Any fucking thing. That much ought to be clear to you by now.”

  “Yeah. It's clear enough,” said the Lieutenant. He turned around. They could court-martial him and hang him and the only people who would know it happened were sitting right behind him: the General, the Colonel, and the Sergeant Major. He was scared.

  He nodded to the prosecution table.

  Captain Dupuy stood and read from a sheet of paper.

  “This general court-martial has been convened pursuant to Court-Martial Convening Order number 779-A issued by the Court-Martial Convening Authority, Headquarters, Military Assistance Command Vietnam. A copy of this order has been given to the members of the court, to the military judge, to the defense counsel, and to the defendant.”

  Dupuy took a deep breath, looked meaningfully at the judge, and announced, “The prosecution is ready with its case against Matthew Nelson Blue, Second Lieutenant, United States Army, Fourth Division, Second of the 22nd Infantry. The defendant is present in court along with his defense counsel, Your Honor.”

  Dupuy sat down.

  Colonel Kelly peered over his spectacles at Lieutenant Blue, then at the court, then at Dupuy.

  “I will now swear the members of the court.”

  He turned to the seven officers on the court and swore each one individually. Then he swore in Dupuy, Major Thompson, and Captain Morriss. When he was finished, Dupuy stood to swear in the judge. Dupuy sat down.

  Colonel
Kelly turned to Dupuy.

  “Does the prosecution have a preemptory challenge or a challenge for cause?”

  “No, sir, we do not,” said Dupuy, half-rising from his chair. He sat down and looked over at the defense table.

  “Does the defense have a preemptory challenge or any challenges for cause?”

  Captain Morriss whispered to Lieutenant Blue, “Recognize anybody? Anybody from your unit, from Benning or West Point or anywhere else?”

  The Lieutenant looked them over. The panel consisted of one lieutenant colonel, three majors, two captains, and a first lieutenant. All were white. All wore khakis. All had gotten recent haircuts. Three of them had burrs, one was almost bald, and the rest had white sidewalls.

  Every last one of them looked as if he couldn't wait to put that lily-livered little deserter on the gallows and personally watch him hang.

  “Nobody. Never seen any of them before.”

  “Anybody you want to preemptorily challenge?” Captain Morriss asked. “We can kick one of them off the court for no reason. Anybody you don't like the looks of?”

  “I don't like the looks of any of them,” said the Lieutenant.

  “Then let's leave them up there to sweat it out in this hole with the rest of us.”

  “Okay by me.”

  Captain Morriss looked up at the judge.

  “No challenges, Your Honor,” he said.

  Colonel Kelly nodded at the defense table.

  “The accused will rise.”

  Lieutenant Blue and Captain Morriss stood.

  “Lieutenant Blue, we are gathered here today to try you by general court-martial. You are charged with violating Article 122 of the United States Code of Military Justice. How do you plead to the charge and to the specification?”