“Double time,” the lieutenant shouted through the fog, aware of the futility of the words aimed at the platoon under his command in 1945. Moments before, Frankie had slipped in one of the snow-covered mud ruts and slid just enough to his right, a foot maybe, and got under the tank tread. The lieutenant had turned only in time to see the wide-eyed expression of terror on the young Italian-American boy’s face as the tread advanced—Frankie knew there was not time to roll out of the way, and his head disappeared with a tiny pop under the tank tread.
Another shell hit up in front of them, and the lieutenant could hear the shrapnel ricocheting off the tanks. Then came the shower of dirt and rocks raining down on him and his sergeant. He took one last look at Frankie as one of the guys pulled him off the side of the road and into the tree line. The noise of the tanks gunning their engines and the smell of diesel and gasoline were momentarily reassuring—these were the things of civilization. The tanks were firing now, but the enemy bullets were a steady rain on him and his men.
After seeing what happened to Frankie, the guys were trying to stay away from the tanks, but one of them had been picked off already by the barrage of bullets. The lieutenant shouted for them to get back down in line. Then came the steady German artillery, one shell dropping every 20 seconds—off to the right, to the left, above center where the road curved, and then one right on top of them, and there were bodies and tank parts flying through the air, and the screaming of men, wounded and dying. “God help us,” the lieutenant muttered, and charged up and out of the roadway, shouting over and over, “Follow me! Follow me!” He jogged along the tree line, motioning for his men to follow. There were hedge rows a quarter mile away on the right flank, and in the darkness the tank commanders were finding the range of the machine gun bunkers. The lieutenant’s hand stung, and at first he thought it was because of the cold. Then he saw the blood. His ring finger had been hit by a bullet and severed at second joint. He felt its warm wetness with his thumb and was reassured that his wedding ring was still there.
He pushed the last of his men down the ravine past the tree line. Three days earlier they had numbered thirty-two, including him, but now they were six that he knew of. He hoped there were more than that scattered among the mile long line of tanks, and he turned to roll away down the hill. Then the first of the American artillery zeroed in, and the fires began dancing along the hedgerows. He ordered his men to dig in. They could still sacrifice themselves in the morning if need be.
“Morning, Dan,” a familiar voice broke him from these memories of the war.
“Morning, Fred. How was your holiday?”
“Great. Everybody was here. Keith was back from basic training, and Jim was here from school. How about you?”
“Good. It was good.”
The lieutenant refocused himself on the timecards in the racks along the wall as Fred passed him by. Good? No, it had not been good. Thanksgiving Day had been all right, a quiet day at home with his daughter and her fiancé, and his youngest son Tommy home from college. His oldest could not make it because it was his turn to be on duty as a first year resident. But then it had gone bad. He and Tommy had gone up to the American Legion on Friday about 5:00 p.m. to have a beer. A lot of the guys were there, off work from the factories on holiday, and the place was lively, some of the guys half shot by evening from sitting at the bar all day.
Dan knew them all, knew the WWII guys and their stories, knew the WWI guys and deferred to their age and their war, the Korean War guys, who had kind of had the shit handed to them, and now the handful of newer guys who had served, or were serving, in Vietnam. He and Tommy had spent a lot of time there together through the years—shooting pool, eating the grilled burgers with onion as thick as the burger itself when Ralph was doing the cooking, hanging out with the regular guys Dan wanted all his kids to get to know, imperfections and all, the men who had fought the wars and risked their lives for the freedom of America.
They were finishing their beers before leaving for home and supper when the news came on the TV at the end of the bar. There were the usual Vietnam scenes, the latest footage of the war, and then came some video from May 4 of that year of the Kent State shootings. After that, some still pictures of that May day on the hill were shown. It didn’t look any different to Tommy than the countless other times he had seen it—kids running or standing, all watching the troops in the distance. Then came the shots. His roommate had wanted him to come along and see what was going on that day, but he didn’t want any part of it. He had a project due the next week and besides, he had a bad feeling about all that was going on. He had been on his way to the library when he saw a large group of the students running up the hill between the library and the dorms and heard the shots. He shook his head and kept on going. It was just unreal to him that the Ohio National Guard was actually firing blanks on a college campus in Ohio on a day in May. Then he heard the screaming.
Now as he watched the still pictures, he noticed one with a girl knelt over one of the dead students. “Should have shot that bitch, too,” Tommy heard from down the bar. “Fifty caliber is what they needed.” “Damn hippies.”
Tommy stood up. “What the hell’s the matter with you? People were killed there,” he shouted. They glared at him. Who the hell did he think he was? Fucking little draft dodger. What did he know about war? But he was Dan’s boy, and they grumbled into their beers as the lieutenant nodded to the bartender and headed for the door. Tommy stood for a few seconds, then turned and followed.
Outside, the lieutenant said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not? They want to cheer on shooting unarmed kids? Fuck them.”
“The soldiers had a job….”
“They shouldn’t have had live ammo.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You and that bunch of burnouts in there are the ones that don’t understand.”
The lieutenant stood staring at his youngest son, putting his thumb on his ring finger as he had so many years before.
The lieutenant and Tommy had never discussed the shooting. They had barely discussed the war, and now they stood squared off 10 feet apart in the gravel parking lot behind the local American Legion Hall, gathering spot of heroes, veterans, and freedom fighters from America’s wars. The lieutenant spat in the gravel. He was secretly glad that neither of his sons had had to go to Vietnam. He had never been the same since he and his men had straggled out of the woods in Germany, and all six of them had been loaded into a truck and moved up to France. They were all treated for battle fatigue and eventually went their separate ways to finish the war. The lieutenant, with the help of plenty of alcohol, spent the remainder of the war in France doing transportation logistics, which he had studied in college. But he had never been right again. Nobody who has been where he was and seen what he saw is ever right again.
He looked at Tommy. He was a good kid. The best of his three children, the most naturally caring, and the one he would most trust with anything. Tommy—he just did what was right.
“Bullshit,” the lieutenant said and got in his car and drove away, leaving Tommy in the gravelly dust behind the American Legion Hall.
The lieutenant was tired as he finished up the time cards before lunch. And his arm was aching from holding the clipboard for so long, a strange, pulsing ache that went up into his neck. He hadn’t talked to Tommy since the prior afternoon. After he had gone home, the lieutenant had looked through his unit book. Seemed like a long time ago, but it was only twenty-five years since he had gotten out of the service. Twenty-five years and America was already in its second major war, first Korea and now Vietnam. Tommy stayed out late, and the lieutenant had gone to sleep thinking that maybe there really was something wrong with this Vietnam War.
Chapter 5.4
Profiteer