Greg didn’t miss a beat. “Who’s he?”
That made Julie scowl. Greg grinned. But then we got down to business.
Julie assigned me and her a couple of regular books — one a pretty standard history book and the other one a first-person account of the siege by a guy who was there. She got the first one, I got the second, and we spent the next couple of hours poring over our books, every now and then one of us telling the others about something we read or saw. Greg had the picture book and he did the most interrupting and sharing with his photos. Some of them — the ones of men who’d been killed or wounded — were pretty hard to look at.
Together, we found out a ton about the Siege of Khe Sanh. It was on January 21, 1968, when the battle actually started. The marines were just sitting on the base, doing their regular stuff at three in the morning — most of them sleeping — when the North Vietnamese Army attacked a marine outpost on a hill overlooking the base. Two hours later, this terrible barrage of about three hundred bombs rained down on the base. One scored a direct hit on the main ammunition dump. Greg showed us a photo of the explosion, which was enormous.
The NVA divisions had a ton of hidden artillery, including a bunch of cannons in caves in the mountains, and that’s where they were firing from. Nobody knew how they’d been able to sneak all that artillery into place. The next afternoon, helicopters, sort of a rescue force, were sent from somewhere to the base to carry out wounded men and to bring more ammunition, but the NVA were waiting and opened fire and shot down most of the helicopters when they tried to land. There were pictures of the downed helicopters, too.
Eighteen marines were killed that first day.
And that was just the beginning. The bombings kept up, and didn’t stop — for seventy-seven days! Julie’s book said the North Vietnamese wanted to force the marines out of their base so they would be easier to attack. They blew up the ammunition dump and kept attacking the perimeter of the base and observation outposts all around the base, and for weeks, any time a U.S. helicopter tried to land to bring in more supplies or ammo, or to take away killed and wounded marines, the NVA shot it down, too.
The roads were closed, all bridges had been blown up.
Nobody could get in, and nobody could get out.
The marines fought off every attack on their perimeter, and there were air strikes on the NVA positions almost constantly — or what they suspected were NVA positions. One problem was the NVA cannons in those caves. They were on tracks, so the NVA could roll them out and fire a bunch of shells into the base and onto the marines. But before the marines could trace the trajectory of the bombs and locate the cannons — and order air force bombers flying over from an aircraft carrier just off the coast to hit those targets — the North Vietnamese would just roll them back inside the caves and camouflage the openings, and then they would roll them out again. They did this at random times over the course of the day, so the marines never knew when to expect an attack.
The NVA dug trenches and tunnels to get closer and closer to the marine base — working like crazy all night. They also kept attacking marine outposts on high hills that overlooked the base, and the NVA had so many more men that a lot of the marines in those outposts ran out of ammunition and had to fight hand to hand with their fists and knives. The guy I read about had been in one of those outposts, and had been in these really awful hand-to-hand combats. It was hard to read about how many of his friends got killed, and how much he missed them.
One account told of nearly fifty men who were killed when the transport plane they were on — trying to bring them in as reinforcements — was shot down by the NVA with heavy machine gun and recoilless rifle fire. Greg showed us the picture. Nobody survived.
And as the siege wore on, even more men were killed. A lot more. As many as a thousand marines and other U.S. soldiers died in all.
When we finally left the library, all three of us just sat on the steps outside in the sun, just sort of in a daze, blinking, not saying anything at first. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.
“I wonder if Z is remembering any of this on his own?” Greg finally asked.
“Too bad he’s not here with us now,” I said. “You know, reading over our shoulders or whatever.”
Julie nodded. “But we should go. We have a phone call to make, and it’s getting late in the afternoon.”
Five minutes later, we were at the Kitchen Sink, upstairs at the counter, since it was Sunday and Uncle Dex wouldn’t be in, and because none of our phones worked in the basement too well.
“Do you think she’ll be mad at us?” Greg asked.
“Why would she be angry?” Julie replied. “We’re not trying to sell her anything, or say anything that she wouldn’t want to hear.”
“Well, she might be mad at us for calling because maybe she hasn’t thought about him in a long time,” I said. “And, you know, maybe she doesn’t want to have to think about something that was so painful and all. Or talk about it.”
“To strangers,” Greg added.
“Yeah,” I said. “Kid strangers.”
Julie tapped her cell phone on her chin for a minute. Then she said, “Maybe. Or maybe she will appreciate that even so long after the war, that someone — us — is still interested in what happened to her husband, and what happened to her. What she suffered in losing him. And raising her son, the nugget, by herself.”
“Nugent,” Greg corrected her, even though it was Julie who’d actually found out the name.
Julie narrowed her eyes and gave him a look. “I’ll make the call,” she said. “You two can just listen.”
“Mind if I listen in, too?” It was Z, suddenly there standing next to us.
“You scared me,” Greg said, laughing nervously.
“Me too,” I said, though I’d sort of been expecting him — or hoping he’d show up, anyway.
“Of course,” said Julie, already dialing. It felt like I held my breath forever while we waited to see who would answer, and what she’d say. Greg must have held his breath, too, because I could see his face getting really red. Z studied the unlit end of his cigar.
It went to voice mail. “Hello. This is Philomena Miller. Not home right now, but you can leave a message. And if you’re a burglar checking out the place to see if anybody’s here, you should know that I have two big dogs just sitting next to the door waiting for the likes of you to ever show up.”
I just about swallowed my tongue, but Julie kept her cool. “Hi, Mrs. Miller,” she said. “My name is Julie Kobayashi, and my friends and I are calling because we were hoping it would be okay to talk to you about Sergeant Zorn Miller. It’s for a school project about Vietnam. And we apologize if we’re bothering you and you would rather not speak with us. Thank you, and here’s my number if you want to call us back.”
Julie left her number and hung up.
We all just stood there for a minute. I was wondering if Z recognized his wife’s voice.
He did.
“That’s her all right,” he said softly, and then he whistled. “Haven’t heard that voice in a long, long time.”
“So she sounds the same?” Greg asked.
“Little bit older,” Z said. “Guess she’d be a lot older, from what you all have told me about what year this is.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I mean, is it weird, or hard, or whatever, to hear her like that?”
Z smiled. “Kind of nice, really,” he said.
We all just stood around for a while, waiting, hoping we’d get a call back right away, but that didn’t happen. Julie filled Z in on everything we’d learned about the Siege of Khe Sanh, and he listened intently the whole time she talked, but when she finished he didn’t say much.
“Kind of fuzzy,” he said. “Gonna have to let it all sink in, see if it’ll come into focus. Something tells me maybe I wasn’t around for most of it.”
“Well, actually, you weren’t,” Julie said, kind of apologetically. “The date when you went miss
ing — it was just a few weeks after the beginning of the siege.”
Z nodded but didn’t say anything. Then I guess he got tired of us standing there just staring at him, waiting to see if he remembered anything else, because he suggested we go ahead with band practice.
“You kids could use a little more rehearsal time,” he said. He nodded at me. “Break in your new singer here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “About that …”
Julie sniffed. “Well, if you don’t want me,” she said. “And if it can’t be Greg anymore, which it can’t …” She didn’t finish.
We went downstairs for our instruments and brought them upstairs, then ran through what Julie called our “standards” — that one song about bullying that she wrote, “Monkey See, Monkey Do,” and that other one she wrote about a hamster called “Hamster Talks.” I had a hard time matching my voice to the key we’d been playing them in when Greg was our singer. Z, who was actually managing to stick around longer for once, had a good laugh about that, and it made me happy that he was staying around. He’d been fading out so quickly lately, and not showing up at all sometimes, that I’d been worried we were already losing him and running out of time. Maybe it was being so close to us while we were talking to his wife, and finding out more about what happened to him, that was keeping him around longer today.
I did a lot better when we switched keys. Julie had to coach Greg and me on the new chord progression, of course. Greg must have been doing a lot more practicing than me because he was playing a little bit of the melody on his guitar while I did my regular strumming. Naturally, Julie didn’t have any trouble on the keyboards.
“I like it,” Z announced when we finished.
“Which song?” Julie asked.
Z shrugged. “Both. Anderson there has a sweet voice, and those are some nice songs.”
I wasn’t so sure I liked being described that way — as sweet — and it made me anxious all over again at the thought of being the lead singer for the Ghosts of War at the next All-Ages Open Mic Night.
Julie suggested we try one of the Dismemberment Plan songs, which she’d obviously been thinking about because she had already prepared sheet music for us, with the chords and lyrics and everything. It was that song of theirs called “Girl O’Clock.” We muddled through it for half an hour, me and Greg messing up repeatedly while Julie did her usual sighs of exasperation at us.
Toward the end, I noticed Z flickering in and out, that staticky thing that happened when he stopped being stable or whatever.
Greg saw it, too. “Don’t go! She might call!” he shouted, as if that might stop the disappearing process, and as if Z hadn’t already stayed with us so much longer than usual.
And then, as if on cue, Julie’s phone rang. She froze when she looked at the number.
“California!” she said. “It’s the number I called for Mrs. Miller.”
“Well, answer it already!” Greg urged.
So she did. Greg and I pressed in close so we could hear. Somehow Z managed to stay with us, too, though he kept fading in and out so much that it was hard for me to see his face and how hearing everything might be affecting him.
“Hello?” Julie said. “This is Julie.”
“The young lady who called earlier?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes,” Julie said. “That was me. Are you Mrs. Miller? Mrs. Philomena Miller?”
“I am,” the lady said. “And Zorn Miller was my husband.”
Julie took a deep breath, and then continued, “I hope you don’t mind that we have called,” she said. “To ask about Sergeant Miller. We are very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Miller said. “It was a long time ago, but we still miss him. Every day.”
“Do you mind if we ask you some things about him and about Vietnam?” Julie asked.
Mrs. Miller hesitated for a long time, so long I almost thought she’d hung up on us, but then she responded. “No, I suppose not. And you said in your message that this was for a school project.”
“Well, yes. Sort of,” Julie said. “We visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and we found Sergeant Miller’s name. And they had information there at The Wall about him and where he was from, and that’s how we found you.”
“Not so hard to do that,” Mrs. Miller said. “I still live in the same town. I still live in the same house, too. And I never remarried. I suppose you already know that since you got hold of me here.”
“And you have a son?” Julie asked. “He must be grown now.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Miller said. “He joined the army like his father. But he didn’t join Special Forces. He’s a helicopter pilot, stationed at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky.”
“I’m sure his father would be very proud of him,” Julie said, sounding like a grown-up herself.
I turned to Z and saw his face then, just for a second, and he did look proud. Not smiling exactly, but almost tearful, except not in a bad way.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one feeling that way just then. Mrs. Miller started to say something else but choked up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I told myself I wouldn’t start crying, that I would just answer your questions. I really do appreciate that you and your friends care enough to want to know about my husband — about Zorn. Not very many people care about our veterans — those who are still living or the ones like my husband who didn’t come back.”
Julie couldn’t speak all of a sudden and I looked at her to see why.
She was crying now, too.
Once Mrs. Miller got started talking she kept going for quite a while. She told us all about how she and Z met in high school. “I know it’s a silly cliché,” she said. “But he was on the football team and I was a cheerleader. Only he wasn’t a quarterback or anything. I’m not sure he ever actually got into a game, to tell you the truth. He was pretty scrawny in high school. Wasn’t until he joined the army that he grew and filled out. All that exercise, all those drills. Plus, he just got his growth spurt kind of late.”
I thought I heard Z sort of chuckle when she said that, but it could have just been a random noise. He was almost all the way flickering out when I turned again to look, though he still didn’t disappear altogether. I could tell he was working really, really hard to stick around for our conversation with his wife.
“Z had already done two tours in Vietnam when he applied for the Green Berets,” Mrs. Miller said. “He never talked much about those tours. He just seemed so frustrated with the whole thing, but he thought it was his duty to keep going back. At first it was about doing his duty as an American, and fighting communism, but after a while it seemed to be more about his feeling that he needed to be there to protect his men. He felt so guilty when he was back in the States and they were still over there in Vietnam. He thought Special Forces — that’s the real name for the Green Berets — would be the best opportunity to actually fight the enemy and make some sort of difference in the war. Zorn said they never knew who they were supposed to be fighting before that. There weren’t any real battles or anything. Just sniper attacks and ambushes in the jungle when they were on patrol. Not being sure a lot of the time if someone, one of the Vietnamese people, was a friend or an enemy.
“With the Special Forces I do know he was in the north, near the border. I suspect he went over into Laos, even though they weren’t supposed to. He and his team, they worked with Montagnard scouts and organized local people to provide them with intelligence information on the enemy’s troop movements. He got to be really close with one of the Montagnards, he told me. Stayed with the man’s family and got to know them, too. He said he worried about the Montagnards because they were caught between the North and the South, and really they just wanted everybody to leave them alone.”
Greg asked her what a “Montagnard” was. Julie had turned on the speaker phone so we no longer had to crowd so close to hear.
“Like Native Americans here in America,” Mrs. Miller said. “The Montagnards lived in the h
ills and jungles and apparently didn’t like the North Vietnamese, so they worked for us. Or we paid them to work for us against the NVA. Sometimes we paid them to go into Laos and do things where our soldiers weren’t allowed to go. Officially, I mean.
“Zorn and his friend Fish, after a while they preferred spending their time with the Montagnard people, and their one friend in particular, than they did back at the Special Forces camp. But mostly they were out on patrol, sneaking around the jungle to find out what was happening with the NVA. Not that he ever told me anything specific about what happened on those patrols. Just that it was like playing Boy Scouts was how he put it. Of course, I know he was just trying to keep me from worrying too much. I know he was probably in the worst place for the war. And I know they had to do some things — their Special Forces units — that regular army or marines couldn’t do because they weren’t trained for it, and because it took a special kind of person to take on those missions. Zorn never talked about those, either. I’ve read a lot about it since then, though. Until I just couldn’t anymore. It’s hard when you know too much.”
“Are you okay, Mrs. Miller?” Julie asked. She had stopped talking for a minute.
“Yes,” Mrs. Miller said. “It’s just — well, nobody has asked about Zorn in so long, and now here I am missing him all over again and wondering all over again about so many things that he kept from me. That he kept from all of us. I mean, he had to, and I understand that, I just wish I could have told Nugent more about his dad. I wish I could have told Nugent everything about his dad.”
“We’re really sorry, Mrs. Miller,” Julie said.
“That’s all right,” Mrs. Miller reassured her. “Is there anything else I can help with?”
“I have a question,” I said, speaking for the first time. “I’m Anderson,” I added.
“And your question, Anderson?” she asked.
“Well, I guess two questions,” I said. “The first one was how come Z, I mean Sergeant Miller, was on the marine base when he went missing. He was in the Special Forces, so he was in the army and not the marines.”
Lost at Khe Sanh Page 8