“God, he’s beautiful,” said Crowe through his mask, but loudly enough for the squad to hear. “I want him!”
“Crowe, shut up,” said Donny.
The man from the Justice Department departed. The sun was high, the weather sticky and heavy. Overhead, helicopters hovered, their rotors kicking up the only turbulence.
Another amplified voice, this from the demonstrators as the older people warned the kids.
“Do not attempt to pick up tear gas canisters as they will be very hot. Do not panic. The gas is not contained and it will disappear very quickly.”
“Gas!” came a command.
Six soft plops marked the firing of six DC Police gas guns, and the missiles skittered across the pavement leaking white fumes, spun, rolled and slid raggedly along. The point of firing them into the ground was to bounce them into the crowd at low velocity rather than firing them into people at high, possibly killing velocity.
“Gas!” the command came again, and six more CS shells were fired.
The sergeant major’s scream carried through the air: “Assault arms!” and with that the rifles left the cross-chest position of carry and were brought around the right side of the body, stocks wedged under right arms and locked in, muzzles with sheathed bayonets angled outward at forty-five degrees to the ground.
“Prepare to ad-vance!” came the command.
Only Crowe’s rifle wavered, probably out of excitement, but otherwise the muzzles lanced outward from the formation. Donny could sense the crowd of demonstrators drawing back, gathering somehow, then reinflating with purpose. Tear gas drifted loosely amid their ranks. It was just a crowd, identities lost in the blur and the gas. Was Julie over there?
“Ad-vance!” came the final command, and the Marines began to stomp ahead.
Here we go, thought Donny.
They looked like Cossacks. The rank was green, slanted in two angles away from the point, an arrowhead of boys, remorseless and helmeted, their facial features vanished behind their masks.
Julie looked through her tears for Donny, but it was useless. The Marines all looked the same, staunch defenders of whatever, in their sharp uniforms with their helmets and now their guns, which jutted out like threats. A cloud of tear gas washed over her, crunching her eyes in pain; she coughed, felt the tears run hot and fluid down her face, and rubbed at them, then dipped for her wet washcloth and wiped the chemical from them.
“Assholes!” said Peter bitterly, enraged at the troops advancing on him. He was trembling so hard he was locked in place, his knees wobbling desperately. But he wasn’t going to move.
“Assholes!” he repeated as the Marines closed in at a steady pace.
Donny was in the lead, solid as a rock; next to him, on the left, Crowe seemed strong. They clomped forward to a steady beat of cadence from the sergeant major, and through the jiggling stain of his dirty lenses, Donny watched as the crowd grew closer. The sergeant major’s cadence drove them on; tear gas wafted through the chaos; overhead a helicopter swept low and its turbulence drove the gas more quickly, into whirlwinds and spirals, until it rushed like water across the bridge.
“Steady on the advance!” screamed the sergeant major.
Details suddenly swam at Donny: the faces of the scared kids before him, their scrawniness, their physical weakness and paleness, how many of them were girls, the cool way the leader exhorted them with his bullhorn and that shocking moment when at last the two groups clashed.
“Steady on the advance!” screamed the sergeant major.
Maybe it was like some ancient battle, legionnaires against Visigoths, Sumerians against Assyrians, but Donny sensed a great issue of physical strength, of pure force of will as expressed through bodies, when the two came together. There was no striking; no Marine lifted his rifle and drove through for a butt stroke; no blade came unsheathed and leapt forward into flesh. Rather, there was just a crush as the two masses crunched together; it felt more like football than war, that moment when the lines collide and there are a dozen contests of strength all around you and you lay what you’ve got against someone else and hope you get full-body weight against him and can lift him from his feet.
Donny found himself hard against not an enemy lineman or a Visigoth but a girl of about fourteen, with freckles and red, frizzy hair and braces, headband, tie-dyed T-shirt, breastless and innocent. But she had more hate on her face than any Visigoth ever, and she whacked him hard on the helmet with her placard, which, he read as it descended, stated MAKE WAR NO MORE!
The placard smacked him, its thin wood broke and it slipped away. He felt his body ramming the girl’s and then she was gone, either knocked back or pushed down and stepped over. He hoped she wasn’t hurt; why hadn’t she just fled?
More tear gas drifted in. Screams arose. Melees had broken out everywhere as demonstrators leaned against Marines, who leaned back. One could feel strain as the two leaned and leaned and tried to press the other into panic.
It only lasted a second, really; then the demonstrators broke and fled and Donny watched as they emptied the bridge, leaving behind port-a-pots and sandals and squashed Tab cans and water buckets, the battlefield detritus of a vanquished enemy. There seemed no point in pursuing.
“Marines, stand easy,” the sergeant major yelled. “Masks off.”
The masks came off and the boys sucked hard at the air.
“Good job, good job. Anybody hurt?” yelled the colonel.
But before anybody could answer, a considerable ruckus arose to the left. Policemen were clustered around the railing of the bridge and the word soon reached the Marines that someone had panicked as they had approached, and jumped off. A police helicopter hovered low, an ambulance arrived and paramedics got out urgently. Police boats were called, but it took only a few minutes to make it clear that someone was dead.
CHAPTER SIX
The scandal played out pretty much as expected, depending on the perspective of the account. GIRL, 17, KILLED IN DEMONSTRATION, the Post headlined. The more conservative Star said, DEMONSTRATOR DIES IN BRIDGE MIX-UP. MARINES MURDER GIRL, 17, argued the Washington City Paper.
No matter; for the Marine Corps the news was very bad indeed. Seven liberal House members demanded an investigation into the matter of Amy Rosenzweig, seventeen, of Glencoe, Illinois, who had evidently panicked in the tear gas and the approach of the Marines and climbed over the railing. Before anybody could reach her, though several young Marines tried, she was gone. Walter Cronkite appeared to generate a small tear in his left eye. Gordon Petersen, of WTOP, developed a catch in his voice as he discussed the incident with his co-anchor, Max Robinson.
WHY MARINES? wondered the Post two days later on its editorial page.
U.S. Marines are among the world’s most feared fighting forces, an elite who have honored their country and their service in hostile environments since 1776. But what were they doing on the 14th Street Bridge May 1?
Surely, with their esprit de corps and constant immersion in the theory and practice of land warfare at its most savage, they were a poor choice for the Justice Department to deploy against peaceful demonstrators who had taken up a harmless “occupation” of the bridge as an expression of the long-precious tradition of civil disobedience. The D.C. police force, the Park Police, or even Guardsmen from the District’s own unit, all riot-trained and all experienced in dealing with demonstrations, would have been preferable to combat infantrymen, who tend to perceive all confrontations as us against them.
The place for the Marines is on the battlefields of the world, and the parade ground of the Eighth and I barracks, not on American streets. If the tragedy of Amy Rosenzweig teaches us anything, it teaches us that.
As for the Eighth and I Marines, in the immediate aftermath they were trucked back to the barracks, where they remained on alert and in isolation for two days. Teams from the FBI and the District Police and the U.S. Park Police worked over the members of Alpha Company, Second Platoon, Second Squad, who’d been on the ex
treme left wing of the crowd control formation, and who had seen the girl hanging on for dear life. Three of them had actually dropped their rifles, thrown away their masks and helmets and rushed to her, but in the instant before they reached her, she closed her eyes and gave her soul to God, relaxing backward into space. They got to the railing in time to see her hit the water thirty-five feet below; they got DC Police there within seconds, and within minutes a DC rescue boat was on the scene. If they’d had a rope, they would have rappelled down to the water themselves, but a quickly arriving platoon sergeant had forbidden any of them to jump off the bridge in attempts to rescue. It was just too high. And it wouldn’t have mattered. When she was located thirteen minutes later, it became quickly apparent that Amy’s neck had been broken by the impact of striking the water at an extreme angle. A report later exonerated the Marines and made it clear that no actual force had been applied to Amy. The Marines said she chose to martyr herself; the media said the Marines killed her. Who knew the truth?
On the third day, they arrested Crowe.
Rather, under small arms and under the supervision of two officers from the Naval Investigation Service, Lieutenant Commander Bonson and Ensign Weber, four Marine military policemen marched into the barracks where he and the rest of B company were relaxing while maintaining ready-alert status, and put him in handcuffs. Captain Dogwood and the battalion colonel watched it happen.
Then Lieutenant Commander Bonson came up to Donny and said in a loud voice, “Good job, Corporal Fenn. Damn fine work.”
“Good work, Fenn,” said Weber. “You got our man.”
In the aftermath, a space seemed to spread around Donny. He felt it open up, as if oceans of atmosphere had been vacuumed out of the area between himself and his squad and others in the platoon. Nobody would meet his eyes. Some looked at him in horror. Others merely left the vicinity, went into other squad bays or outside to lounge near the trucks.
“What the hell did he mean?” asked Platoon Sergeant Case.
“Uh, I don’t know, Sergeant,” Donny said. “Uh, I don’t know what the hell they were talking about.”
“You had contact with NIS?”
“They talked to me.”
“About what?”
“Ah. Well,” and Donny swallowed, “they had some security concerns and somehow I got—”
“Let me tell you something, goddammit, Fenn. If it happens in my platoon, you come tell me about it! You got that? This ain’t a one-man goddamn motherfucking operation. You come tell me, Fenn, or by God I will make your young sorry ass sorry you didn’t!”
The man’s blazing spit flew into Donny’s face and his eyes lit up like flares. A vein throbbed on his forehead.
“Sergeant, they told me—”
“I don’t give a monkey’s fuck what they told you, Fenn. If it happens in my platoon, I have to know about it, or you ain’t worth pig shit to me. Copy that, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You and me, boy, we got some serious talk ahead.”
Donny swallowed.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Now, get these men off their asses. I’m not going to have them sitting around all goddamn day like they just won the fucking war all by themselves. Get ’em on work detail, drill ‘em, do something with them.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“And you and I will talk later.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Donny turned in the wake of Sergeant Case’s departure, which was more like an ejection from a jet fighter than a normal retrograde adjustment.
“Okay,” he said to the squad. “Okay, let’s get outside and run through some riot control drills. There’s no point just sitting in here.”
But nobody moved.
“All right, come on, guys. I’m not shitting around here. You heard the man. We have an order.”
They just stared at him. Some looked hurt, the rest disgusted.
“I didn’t do anything,” Donny said. “I talked to some Navy lifers and that’s all.”
“Donny, if I flash the peace sign in a bar, will you turn me in to NIS?” someone asked.
“All right, fuck that shit!” Donny bellowed. “I don’t have to explain anything to anybody! But if I did, I’d point out I didn’t rat anybody out. Now, get into your gear and let’s get the fuck outside or Case’ll have us on a barracks party until 0400 next Tuesday!”
The men got up, but their slow heaviness expressed their bitterness.
“Who’ll take Crowe’s place?” someone asked.
There was no answer.
———
Julie was released from the lockup at the Washington Coliseum at 4 P.M. that same day, after forty-eight hours of incarceration with several hundred of the more recalcitrant demonstrators. At least physically, it was almost pleasant being arrested; the cops were old hands by this time and as long as everybody cooperated, the process was all right. She spent two nights on a cot in a field where the Washington Redskins practiced when it was their season. The seats of the junky old place rose above like a Pentecostal cathedral from the twenties, and in the pen, all the kids had a good time and nobody watched them too carefully. Grass was abundant; the portable toilets were cleaner than the ones at Potomac Park. The showers were never crowded and she got a good wash for the first time since leaving Arizona in the Peace Caravan. Some of the boys caught fantasy touchdown passes in what had to have been an end zone.
But no word at all from Donny. Had he been there on the bridge? She didn’t know. She’d looked for him, but then it’d all dissolved in confusion and tears as more of the gas flooded in. She remembered crumpling, rubbing her eyes desperately as the gas drifted by, and then there was the shock of the Marines and she found herself looking into the eyes of a boy, a child, really, big and booming behind his lenses; she saw fear in them, or at least as much confusion as she herself felt, and then he was by her and the Marine line moved on, and as she watched, teams of policemen pounced on the demonstrators behind the lines and led them away to buses. It was handled very simply, no big deal at all to anybody concerned.
Only later, in the lockup, did the word come that a girl had somehow died. Julie tried to work it out but could make no sense of it; the Marines had seemed quite restrained, really; it wasn’t anything like Kent State. Still, it was an appalling weight. A girl was dead, and for what? Why was it necessary? In the lockup, they had a television, and Amy Rosenzweig’s young and tender face, freckled, under sprigs of reddish hair, was everywhere. She looked to Julie like a girl she’d grown up with, though she could not remember seeing Amy amid the crowd, but that wasn’t surprising, for there had been thousands, and much confusion on the ground.
They let her out and she went back to the campground in Potomac Park. It was like a Civil War encampment after Gettysburg: mostly empty now that the big week was over and the kids in their multitudes had returned to their campuses and the professional revolutionaries to their secret cabals to plot the next move in the war against the war. Litter was everywhere and the cops no longer bothered. A few tents still stood, but the sense of a new youth culture had vanished. There was no music and no campfires and the Peace Caravan had departed. All, that is, except for Peter.
“Oh, hi.”
“Hi, how are you?”
“Fine. I stayed behind. Jeff and Susie are driving the Micro back. Everybody is with them. They’ll be all right. I wanted to stay here, see if you needed anything.”
“I’m okay, Peter, really I am. Have you seen Donny at all?”
“Him? Jesus, you know what they did to that girl and you want to know where he is?”
“Donny didn’t do anything. Besides, I read the Marines tried to save her.”
“If there hadn’t been any Marines, Amy would still be here,” Peter said obstinately, and then the two just looked at each other. He drew her close and hugged her and she hugged back.
“Thanks for hanging around, Peter.”
“Ah, it’s okay. How
was the Coliseum?”
“Okay. Not so bad. They finally reduced charges, parading without a permit. They let us all go today.”
“Well,” he said. “If you want me to drive you to the Marine Barracks or something, I will. Whatever you want. I have a VW from a guy. It’s no problem.”
“I’m supposed to get married this week.”
“That’s fine. That’s cool. Good luck and God bless. Let me see if I can help you in any way.”
“I think I ought to hang here until I hear from Donny. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Sure,” said Peter. “That’s a good idea.”
The alert was finally cancelled at 1600 that afternoon, to the cheers and relief of the companies. It took an hour or so to actually stand down—that is, to return the rifles to the armory, to shed and repack the combat gear in its appropriate place in the lockers, to shed the utilities, bag them for the laundry, shower and shave. But by 1700, when the work was done, the captain at last released his men—the married to go home, the rest to relax in town or on base as they preferred, with only a few left on skeleton duty, such as duty NCO or armory watch.
That is, except for Donny.
He was done, and still in his cone of isolation, finally changing into civvies—jeans and a white Izod shirt—when a runner came from headquarters and said he was wanted ASAP. No, he didn’t have to dress in the uniform of the day.
Donny returned to Captain Dogwood’s office, where Bonson and Weber waited.
“Captain, we could take him to our offices. Or would you allow us to use yours?”
“Yes, sir, go ahead,” said Dogwood, who wanted to get home to see his own wife and kids too. “Stay here. Duty NCO will lock up when you’re finished.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Bonson.
So Donny was alone with them at last. They were in civilian clothes this time, Weber looking like the Sigma Nu he’d undoubtedly been at Nebraska, and the dour Bonson in slacks and a black sport shirt, buttoned to the top. He looked almost like a priest of some sort.