A Perfect Husband

by Aphrodite Jones

  When Peterson arrived in Vietnam, he was quite anxious and considered to be gung ho. Commissioned as a lieutenant, he was assigned to a small outpost, called Oceanview, located in the northernmost region of South Vietnam. His battalion was small, comprised of no more than thirty men. And by the time he arrived there, in the middle of 1968, Lieutenant Peterson found himself and his men in a tough position.

  The platoon he was with had the job of defending a region that the North Vietnamese Army wanted control over; the Oceanview outpost was just at the edge of the demilitarized zone that separated North and South Vietnam. According to marines in his battalion, by early 1969, Peterson and his men were having a growing problem with North Vietnamese soldiers who would sneak inside American bases with explosives.

  Just months after Michael Peterson’s arrival, the official log of the unit’s activities recorded that on the night of February 22, 1969, numerous positions across South Vietnam were being attacked by the North Vietnamese Army. At Oceanview, the fighting would continue for six hours. As Michael Peterson, the highest ranking officer at Oceanview, recalled the events of that night, he said his outpost spotted enemy troops through night-vision telescopes. Peterson himself, from his command bunker, saw twenty-five enemy soldiers descending near Oceanview. It was a life-and-death situation and his outpost was in jeopardy.

  In recalling the incident, Peterson would confide that he demanded his patrol not shoot at enemy troops until he gave the command. Even though Peterson would later claim that instead of listening to his order, his patrol panicked and opened fire, in an interview that was taped right after the battle in 1969, Peterson had said something different: he had admitted that his crew opened fire on his order.

  Whatever the case, when the crew from Oceanview had opened fire that night, killing two and wounding others, it was Michael Peterson who was finally able to stop the firing, long enough, at least, to pull his marines back to the command post. In a dramatic moment following the return of his men, Peterson’s nineteen-year-old radio operator, Corporal Jack Alfred Peterson, died in Michael’s arms, saying, “I hurt, Lieutenant, I hurt.”

  Michael Peterson would later incorporate part of the Oceanview battle into his novel A Time of War. It was a novel that was so epic, Peterson’s editors would liken it to the James Jones masterpiece From Here to Eternity. Calling Peterson’s account a “classic story of Vietnam,” the book jacket described A Time of War as “a richly textured novel” that captures “the essence of a time and place.” Indeed. Peterson did recount the 1969 battle in one scene in particular, which detailed a lieutenant who sent two men to their death. In that same scene, Peterson described a marine who had to be restrained for being angry at the lieutenant for deliberately getting their men killed by sending them out on patrol.

  Perhaps it was based on true life, certainly much of it was fictionalized, but in any case, A Time of War was Peterson’s way of chronicling the brutal action he’d witnessed in the fields of his remote outpost. True to his own account of what happened that night, one of the marine warriors, who dies in the lieutenant’s arms, repeated the same real-life line, “I hurt, Lieutenant, I hurt.”

  But the recollections of Michael Peterson, while dramatically fictionalized in his war novel, were never entirely confirmed by all of his former battalion marines. Apparently, Peterson’s memory of the Oceanview battle, was not quite the same version that everyone else had recorded. One of the members of Peterson’s company, Corporal Leo Hazelton, would later tell reporters that Michael Peterson panicked. Hazelton would confide that as the North Vietnamese soldiers began to descend on Oceanview that night, Michael Peterson had to be restrained because the lieutenant was “running around in circles.”

  In Hazelton’s reported account of the 1969 battle, when Michael Peterson learned that no reinforcements were being sent to his outpost, Peterson acted as if “the world was coming to an end.” Another marine who was at Oceanview that night, Dennis Coney, recollected that when things got really heated at the outpost, “somebody had to grab Michael Peterson and slap him,” forcing the young lieutenant to face reality.

  At the end of the battle, the North Vietnamese withdrew before dawn, never having injured any member of the Oceanview outpost. The men who died, it turned out, were killed by members of their own battalion. Of course Lieutenant Peterson would continue to claim that it was his troop who panicked and opened fire, unknowingly killing members of their own patrol. But Leo Hazelton and others would assert that the Oceanview troop lost American soldiers because they acted on Michael Peterson’s panicked command. “Peterson didn’t know it was our own people,” Hazelton later told the News & Observer.

  Michael Peterson would deny being the cause of any battle fire; he would maintain that his troop panicked because the enemy was chasing them. Of course one could never know the actual truth about the 1969 battle. Some of the enlisted men blamed Peterson for the “friendly fire” deaths of their fellow soldiers. Others in the Oceanview troop would praise Lieutenant Peterson for his valiant efforts, claiming Peterson behaved like a leader, that Peterson was able to get them through the night.

  After the battle was over, for his successful defense of the Oceanview outpost, Michael Peterson received the Silver Star of Valor. At the end of his tour of duty, Peterson also received the Bronze Star for leadership in combat. For many years following that 1969 battle, Peterson would tell the story of how he was injured that night in Vietnam, the night his radio operator was killed. According to stories told by Michael Peterson, his radio operator had stepped on a land mine when he was killed, a land mine that sent shrapnel into Peterson’s leg, earning him a Purple Heart.

  But there was never any documentation of a Purple Heart in Michael Peterson’s military record, nor was there any record of a land mine exploding. When Peterson ran for mayor of Durham in 1999, when he was forced to admit that in actuality he was injured in a traffic accident in Japan, Peterson would explain that the accident happened just after he left Vietnam, and would claim that he spent months in a hospital with dying and wounded soldiers.

  To members of his shocked family, who didn’t understand why Michael would misrepresent something as significant as a Purple Heart, Peterson would claim that his memory of that time period was too painful for him to discuss in further detail.

  Years later, when local reporters later speculated that Michael Peterson’s Vietnam combat might have shaped Peterson’s character, that the 1969 battle might have had some bearing on the man standing trial for murder, it would be Peterson’s attorney David Rudolf, who would rush to Peterson’s defense.

  Disappointed over the News & Observer article that detailed the differing stories of the “Battle at Oceanview,” Rudolf felt it was unfair for local reporters to bring up old stories about Vietnam. Rudolf would assert that, even if it were true that Michael Peterson panicked in the first few minutes of battle, all that mattered was that his client “pulled it back together and won a Silver Star.”

  Twenty-five

  After his three-month recovery in Japan, Michael Peterson joined his wife, Patricia, in the Frankfurt region of Germany, where she was teaching elementary school at the Rhein-Main Air Base. It was the early 1970s, and Patricia Peterson was happy to have Michael back by her side. She had missed her husband dearly, and was anxious to start a family. By the mid-1970s, Patricia and Michael had become the parents of two beautiful boys, Clayton and Todd.

  All of them enjoyed the expatriate life, spending their time with the American military families on the base. For Patricia, working for the Department of Defense was a way of fulfilling her dream. She loved being an educator, and raising her children away from American materialism was an extra bonus. Michael was happy to be a part of the air force’s base as well. He spent his time writing, jogging, working out at the gym, and he socialized with a small group of Patricia’s friends.

  Patricia’s best friend was Elizabeth McKee, a levelheaded young woman who had expatriated herself from Ameri
ca in the late 1960s. Also a schoolteacher at the Rhein-Main Air Base, Elizabeth was happier living overseas. Liz was very fluent in German and French, she enjoyed traveling around Europe, and she was good at teaching. Children of military families on the base flocked to her.

  Elizabeth had many friends, and as time passed, she became extremely close with both Michael and Patricia Peterson. In many ways, they had become like family. In fact, Michael and Patricia became such close companions, they even talked Liz into spending a summer with them in Durham one year. It was back in the late ‘70s, the end of the hippie era, that Liz agreed to stay with Patricia and Mike in the Durham home they still owned. The three of them became very close during that summer in North Carolina, especially after Liz had some kind of abrasion surgery done to her skin at the Duke University Medical Center. Liz needed special care, and the Petersons became a great source of love and support for her.

  Back in Germany, in the early 1980s, Elizabeth met Captain George Ratliff at a party held at the Air Force Officers’ Club. If ever there was love at first sight, the two of them experienced it. George and Liz fell head over heels. An air force navigator who was almost ten years her junior, George Ratliff had come from a small Texas town. George was already married and divorced from his Texas A&M sweetheart, and his air force friends recalled how elated George was when he first met Liz. Even though they came from different backgrounds—she was a New England girl with a love of classical music, he was a Texas cowboy who drank beer—the two of them became inseparable.

  On their wedding day in early 1981, Liz and George glowed. They had chosen to have a small civil ceremony at the Gothic-gabled Roemer City Hall, a medieval building that suited their storybook romance. Elizabeth’s matron of honor was Patricia Peterson. George’s best man was fellow air force navigator Randy Durham. Elizabeth wore a simple white dress with a garland of roses in her hair; George wore his military whites. The pair looked stunning, and shared vows that people believed could never be broken.

  Missing from the occasion was their friend, Michael Peterson. He was the only person who avoided the reception, which was held in a small town called Klein-Gerau. Everyone there was absolutely delighted on that occasion. One of Elizabeth’s sisters had flown over from New England, as had some of George’s family, and Elizabeth and George were the two happiest people on earth. After a romantic honeymoon spent in a castle hideaway, the couple moved into an exquisite cottage in Klein-Gerau. They enjoyed the peace of living in a country setting, not far from the air force base, and it came as a big surprise when Elizabeth got pregnant right away. Shortly before Christmas of that same year, she would give birth to their first daughter, Margaret, a healthy, happy girl. They nicknamed her Gigi.

  When Margaret was born, Patricia Peterson was one of the friends who helped out at the hospital in Wiesbaden. People recalled that Elizabeth couldn’t believe how blessed she was at the time. To Elizabeth, it was a miracle that she’d found such a brave young man who adored her, that she was actually starting a family at her age, in her late thirties. And George was equally ecstatic. A quiet and shy type, he had always dreamed of having a true love with someone, of sharing a lifetime together.

  A navigator on C-130 airplanes, large aircrafts, the size of 737 commercial jets, George Ratliff was a highly regarded officer in the U.S. Air Force who frequently spent long stretches away from his home. His main duty was to deliver troops and supplies along the Berlin corridor, but he was also called upon for certain top secret missions. George never discussed his military service, not even with his wife, and Liz understood that. There were certain things that Liz didn’t need to know about. Her main concern was that her husband remained safe. She trusted that the officers in George’s squadron were all top-notch, but she worried about his dangerous missions.

  George and Liz Ratliff were living in the Cold War era, which meant George and his fellow air force officers were flying over Communist territory. His squadron supplied “special support” for the U.S. military, and often their missions were veiled in code, deemed “highly sensitive.” For the most part, Liz was content to keep uninformed about the secret military aspects of her husband’s life. She really only wanted to know George as a loving husband and devoted father. Liz appreciated her time together with George. The two shared a unique bond, a rare connection that many people never find. The two of them would communicate without talking, and whenever he was home, George and Liz enjoyed happy times. Still crazy in love with each other, the two would soon learn that Liz was pregnant again. The news came very quickly, and George and Liz were elated to add Martha into their lives, just a little over a year after Margaret was born.

  In his four years of service in Germany, George had become close with Major Bruce Berner, a senior flight officer who often flew back and forth between Frankfurt and Berlin. Flying special missions together along the three Berlin corridors of East and West Germany, the two men became good friends.

  “It was always a real pleasure to listen to George direct a mission,” Major Berner would recall. “There was a sensitive navigational mission that he was dealing with all the time, which was serious business. He was actually standing up for most of the flight, navigating, directing the flight, directing every little turn that we made. And George would do it with a smile, so he was a really pleasant guy to be in that position, to essentially lead the crew.”

  At the same time that George and Bruce were getting to know each other, the two officers’ wives, Elizabeth Ratliff and Amybeth Berner, also began developing a tight friendship. Even though Liz was much older, Amybeth being in her twenties, both women had been raised in New England, and both women preferred European ways. As they shared their philosophies and perspectives, Liz and Amybeth found they had so much in common, Liz became like Amybeth’s big sister. Liz was a role model for Amybeth, who felt hopeful that she too could be such a patient mom, such a loving spirit, if and when she might have her own child.

  And Liz had her fun side. She liked to sip champagne with strawberries, she liked to shop in big cities, and she enjoyed a five-star restaurant now and then. It was through Liz that Amybeth would learn more about the finer things in life. From Wedgwood china to how to arrange place settings, from fine wines to Laura Ashley prints—Liz knew about these kind of things. And Amybeth loved learning about the beauty of a particular lace pattern or the simplicity of a certain wildflower arrangement.

  A newlywed who was trying to start a family of her own, Amybeth enjoyed spending time at home with Liz and her girls, admiring all the special care Liz took with her daughters, Margaret and Martha. Liz was musically inclined, so she would sing to the girls, she would play the piano and the guitar. Liz went out of her way to make things special for the girls, and Amybeth felt that being around Liz was an enchanted experience. She and Bruce lived in Graefenhausen, a town a few miles away, where most of the other American military officers were. She and her husband were neighbors to Michael and Patricia Peterson, so the whole group became very chummy. Over the months, and then the years, the Berners, the Petersons, and the Ratliffs got to know each other well. They socialized together on occasions, and traveled in groups to cities throughout Europe.

  “Officers’ wives tend to live according to protocol,” Amybeth confided, “but the women in our squadron were very kind. Nobody had a snooty attitude, not in our squadron. In our small group, people were very personable, very caring. Maybe it was because it was Special Missions. Maybe because our husbands were gone a lot, and we needed each other.”

  Twenty-six

  As George and Liz Ratliff continued to become closer to Bruce and Amybeth Berner, they all agreed that life in Germany was more enjoyable than it was in America. It was easy to go on trips, it was easy to hang out and do things socially, and no one focused on American materialism. No one tried to outdo each other with designer labels, no one placed burdens on each other by having to keep up with the latest toys. People in Germany seemed to be above that nonsense. The Europeans seemed
more cultured. They talked about art and music, they talked about interesting films. And their sensibility seemed much more pleasing, especially to Elizabeth Ratliff.

  Elizabeth wanted to make sure that her daughters remained in Europe. She wanted them to be cultured, she wanted them to have a slower-paced and peaceful life. But she also wanted them to have more of a “world consciousness” than most Americans had. It was very important to Liz that her girls would grow up with a worldly sense of being. Liz herself had grown tired of America. It was Liz’s upbringing in Rhode Island, perhaps, that felt too puritanical and too hypocritical for her.

  Liz had been raised by nuns in a Catholic school, and the nuns had been so strict and unforgiving, they had scolded her for the smallest reasons. Things like wearing patent leather shoes were considered too sexual. The nuns implied that men could see up Liz’s skirt in the shoes’ reflection. Liz found these kind of teachings absurd, and by the time she turned twenty, Liz announced that she planned to leave New England for good. Instead of seeking fame and fortune, Liz wanted to travel the globe, and she spent time traveling throughout parts of Asia and Europe before landing her teaching job in Germany.

  Feeling the same way Liz did, once he met his wife, George became intent on staying in Germany as well. He was quite happy being a part of the 7405th Operations Squadron, flying classified missions throughout Germany and in other undisclosed parts of the world. He planned to continue his work for the U.S. Air Force, operating out of Germany, for as long as possible. But just months after Martha was born, Captain George Ratliff left on a mission to Central America, and he died under mysterious circumstances.