“Why?”
William sat forward. “Because Vietnam was the only war we had going on, and the military had promised all these guys if they went to officer candidate school, they’d get the chance to lead. So they rotated officers in and out as a way to get them experience, except Vietnam was nothing like the classroom, and the VC were not like any enemy we’d ever faced. This was a guerilla war, and most of the guys rotating in didn’t know shit and wouldn’t until they lived through it. If they lived through it.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
William laughed. “It made no sense. That’s the point. It was idiotic.”
“So, what happened to Todd’s leg?”
“Todd’s platoon was supposed to get time off after they got back, but this twenty-three-year-old pissant firebrand out of West Point thought he was going to win the war on his own and he tells the platoon they’re going back out, that Charlie’s making another big push and he wants to beat Charlie to the punch. Nobody was buying the bullshit anymore. Todd said guys flat out refused to go, and this lieutenant threatened that anybody who refused to go would be sent to the military jail at Long Binh, which was a real shithole.”
I just listened. I didn’t feel it was my place to ask any questions.
“Todd only had three months left. He didn’t want to end up in jail, but he said he had this strong feeling that if he went outside the wire again, he wasn’t coming back. You get that feeling, a sixth sense. Todd said he was sure this ass was going to get him killed. The night before they were to go out, he was in his bunker, drunk and high and tripping. He took out this metal rod he kept in his rucksack and handed it to one of the guys in the bunker. Then he put his boot on a chair and told the guy to break his leg.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
William nodded. “This guy, also messed up, whacks the leg. Todd doesn’t know how many times, because he thinks he passed out. Said he woke up on a stretcher with the lieutenant running beside him, yelling that he’d see to it that Todd received a court-martial and was sent to a military prison.”
I had misjudged the saunter, just as I’d misjudged the toothpick to be an accoutrement of a badass. Far from it.
“What happened to the guys in Todd’s platoon, the ones who went out?”
“They got ambushed. Half the guys died, including the lieutenant.”
“Todd was right. He knew.”
“We all knew,” William said. “Over there, it was just a matter of when.”
August 18, 1968
I was raised Catholic. I learned how to pray the Our Father and Hail Mary and the Glory Be so I could say the rosary. I made my First Confession and my first Holy Communion, and I was confirmed at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Church. I went to a Catholic grammar school and a Catholic high school, and I went to mass Sundays with my family. The marines are the first time I’ve spent significant time with guys who are not Catholic. In my platoon we have Protestants, Lutherans, Baptists, Jews, a few agnostics, Latter-Day Saints, even a Muslim.
When I left for boot camp, my mother gave me a gold cross on a chain to protect me. I’ve worn it every day, and when I first arrived in-country, I prayed every day. I prayed all the time. You can’t help it.
At first you ask God politely. Bless me, God. Keep me safe.
Simple prayers.
Then marines start dying, young men just like you, young men who believed with all their heart in the same God. Young men who prayed to the same God to protect them. I went from the simple prayers and requests to asking God to make sense of it, to make sense of all the young men dying.
I questioned God. Why didn’t you listen to them? Why did they die?
My brothers are stepping on mines and booby traps and mortar rounds. They’re getting shot up and blown up no matter how hard they pray.
I made deals with God.
If I live, I swear, God, I’ll go to church every day when I get home. I’ll become a priest. I’ll quit drinking, quit smoking dope.
But my brothers continue to die, almost every day now. The NVA has resorted to guerilla tactics, and they’re good at them. We can’t even find them. The officers tell us it’s because their numbers are dwindling, that we’re winning. Really? Because every day I wake I see our numbers dwindling.
Then I got angry. I yelled at God.
Where are you? Why aren’t you listening? Why do I even bother to pray if you aren’t going to listen, if you’re going to let guys die?
Still more die—friends you thought would never die are suddenly gone. I’m not any better than them, and worse than some, so I figure it’s just a matter of time before my number’s up. It’s just fate. It’s just bad luck. It has nothing to do with praying. Nothing to do with the guy upstairs. He isn’t even here.