Friendly Fire (16 page)

In mid-December Michael wrote: “Am tired right now—sitting next to my foxhole which is facing into a hedgerow. The stupidity of it all sort of makes me laugh at times.” December 22: “Can't say much more other than Christmas is only a couple of days away—or another way of saying eight months left in this hole.” On January 16 Michael wrote: “All is well, am in second day of stand down—all is bullshit. In fact, made up my mind to apply for an early out, wrote letter to Dr. O'Dell [Michael's faculty adviser] and admissions at Missouri. I hope to get out by May 25th. Am now a platoon sergeant.”

That letter, more than any other, convinced Peg and Gene that their son had become disgusted with his participation in the war, an impression confirmed as much by his desire for an early release as having written “all is bullshit.” They had never known Michael to swear. Peg wrote Michael an anxious letter about two young men who had reenlisted to get out of combat and, she asked, had he considered doing that himself? Michael's reply startled his family:

February 2:

Let's get one thing straight, Mom. For God's sake, stop the worrying bit. Will you? If you worry, don't write me about it. As for those two chicken shits, it seems if they weren't happy in their jobs they can get out of them if they want to bad enough. I've seen too many too many of these soft, smart kids writing home exaggerated letters, crying and complaining, writing Congressmen and Senators and Mama, too. I have no stomach for their type. The main problem in this mess is nobody wants to do his job and do it the best he can.

Now to try for an early out—should not be hard to do—one E-5 in our company had no trouble in getting one for night school. All it took was a letter of acceptance. Ran into a boy from Waterloo by name of Culpepper.…

What astonished the Mullens was the vehemence with which Michael reacted to the young men who had reenlisted out of combat; surprising, too, was his absolute unwillingness to hear any more on that subject. But most baffling of all was how in the next paragraph he had turned around and expressed the equivalent desire by applying for an early out.

On February 7 Michael wrote, “All is well! Got a letter from Dr. O'Dell. All is okay! Also got a letter from University of Missouri admissions office. Have sent in my enrollment card—should, in about three weeks, get an acceptance.”

Michael wrote again on the eleventh and thirteenth of that month, but of course, by the time Peg and Gene received his last letter he was dead.

Rereading Michael's letters only exacerbated Peg's anguish. Not only had his correspondence failed to provide any clues whatsoever to how he might have died, but worse, each time she had come upon some thought, some word or phrase that was unmistakably his own, Michael would spring back to life for one joyous instant. Then the pain of her loss would rush back, and she would have to catch her breath to bear the ache. Nevertheless, even as she would be finishing one, her hand would be reaching for the next. And as the stack of un-reread letters diminished, Peg found herself reading more slowly, as if to retard the inevitable.

But the end came: “So 'til later, hang loose.” Reading Michael's last line, Peg recalled Gene's bemused “‘Hang loose'?” and all the optimism of that moment, for Michael was clearly determined to get an early release. Almost immediately that bright image was replaced by Gene's raw, wounded face, his eyes gutted by the sergeant's awful message and Michael's distant electronic voice saying, “Good-bye, Mom, it's so sticky here.…”

“Sticky here?
Peg thought to herself,
Was that really what he said? Or, was it, “Good-bye, Mom, it's so bad here …”?
It was suddenly terribly important to remember exactly what he had said, to get it right. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Only then did Peg realize she could no longer be positive she recalled even the sound of Michael's voice.

When Gene returned around midnight from John Deere, Peg was still answering letters of sympathy from complete strangers who had read of Michael's loss in the papers or heard it on the news and felt compelled to write that they shared her grief. Peg dreaded having to speak with Gene. He would want to talk about Michael's death, and each letter she had answered had forced her to try to articulate why her son had died. She didn't know why. She didn't even know
how
. General William C. Westmoreland, the Army Chief of Staff, had written Michael died, “defending the rights of men to choose their own destiny and to live in dignity and freedom.” The only appropriate response to that, she felt, was Michael's comment: bullshit. Michael himself hadn't had the right to choose his own destiny; he had been drafted. Killed.

Gene paused at the bottom of the kitchen steps to scrape his muddy workshoes, then continued up. Waving wearily at Peg, he said, “Hello, Mother, what are you doing awake?”

“Couldn't sleep.”

Gene put his lunch bucket by the side of the sink, and Peg asked if he would like a cup of coffee.

“No, I don't think so,” Gene said. “Any mail today?”

“Letter from a Colonel Schwarzkopf. Michael's battalion commander.”

“Oh-h?” Gene crossed to the kitchen table and sat down. “Did he say how Mikey died?”

“You read it. Tell me what you think.” She pushed the letter toward him, then got up and washed his lunch bucket out at the sink. When she turned back around, she saw Gene had put the letter down, removed his glasses and was rubbing his eyes.

“You look tired,” Peg said.

“I am … I am.…” Gene told her about the supervisor who had said he couldn't come to Michael's funeral because he had been “too busy” and what he had told the supervisor in return.

“Oh, Gene”—Peg sighed—“you shouldn't have called him that.”

“He made me mad.”

“I know, but he really doesn't understand.” Peg sat across the table from Gene and moved some papers about. “Did you finish Schwarzkopf's letter?”

Gene nodded. “It was very nice.”

“Nice?”
Peg asked impatiently. “What was
‘nice'
about it?”

“That part about the memorial service with Mikey's friends,” Gene said. “About our being in their thoughts.”

“Oh, Gene that's … that's all just part of the form letter. You don't really think they held a memorial service, do you? What about how he died? Why was the artillery fired at three o'clock in the morning? Who called in that round? How come nothing was ever in the paper about this? Why wasn't there an investigation? Don't you understand?” She looked sharply at Gene. “Schwarzkopf's letter doesn't tell us anything! The Army doesn't believe people should really know how their sons died. That people don't really want to know.”

“We'll find out,” Gene said.

“But how?” Peg asked. “Who can we write? You know the Army won't tell us anything.”

“The
official
Army won't,” Gene said, “but we could write one of Mikey's friends.”

“Who? We don't know any of his friends. The Army won't give us any names. Michael never told us any—no wait! Wait a minute!” Peg said. “There was somebody.” She went to the box containing Michael's letters and began sifting through it. “He mentioned one boy. Someone from Waterloo.… In one of his last letters.… Here! Here it is: ‘Ran into a boy from Waterloo by name of Culpepper.' C-U-L-P-E-P-P-E-R.”

Gene walked over to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls telephone directory and riffled through the pages. “There are four Culpeppers in the book.”

“Call them,” Peg said. “See if one of them has a son in Vietnam.”

Gene looked up at the kitchen clock over the oven. “Peg, it's after midnight.”

The following morning Peg Mullen wrote Martin Culpepper, a young man she had never met, and asked him to help find out what had happened to her son in Vietnam. That same morning a letter arrived from Major General Kenneth G. Wickham, the Army Adjutant General:

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

OFFICE OF THE ADJUTANT GENERAL

WASHINGTON, D.C.
20315

20 Apr 1970

I have the honor to inform you that your son has been awarded posthumously the Bronze Star Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.

Prior to death, Michael had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, and the Marksman Badge with rifle, automatic rifle, and machine gun bars.

Arrangements are being made to have these awards presented to you in the near future by a representative of the Commanding General, Fifth United States Army.

The representative selected will communicate with you in the next few weeks to arrange for presentation. Any inquiry or correspondence concerning presentation should be addressed to the Commanding General, Fifth United States Army, Fort Sheridan, Illinois, 60037.

My continued sympathy is with you.

Sincerely,

S/Kenneth G. Wickham

Major General, USA

The Adjutant General

“What do you think of the Army suddenly offering us medals?” Peg asked Gene. “That Good Conduct Medal, I mean
really!”

“It's only a piece of ribbon.” Gene shrugged. “We used to laugh about getting them during the war.”

“Posthumously?
Why would they award Michael a Good Conduct Medal after he was dead? It's as though they were giving it to him for not—for not complaining about what they did to him!”

Gene reread the list of medals. “Well, these others, the National Defense Medal, the Vietnam medals, he got those for just being in the Army, for being in Vietnam. But the Bronze Star”—Gene brushed his hand through his silver hair—“that's supposed to be for bravery.”

“That doesn't make sense either,” Peg said. “Mikey said he'd only ever seen the enemy, what? Three times? I'll tell you why I think they gave him the Bronze Star. It's because he
died!
I'm sure of it.”

The Mullens refused their son's medals.

That same morning friends who had attended the funeral telephoned to ask Peg if, by any chance, she had watched Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on last night's NBC-TV evening news. The caller said that he and his wife both thought a news clip had shown Michael.

“What do you mean?” Peg asked.

“The camera zeroed in on two boys in stretchers, and we were sure one of them was Michael,” the man said. “I'm positive it was.”

“But why would it have been shown last night?”

“I don't know. They explained that the film had been shot around the eighteenth of February, but they hadn't released it until it had been cleared or something.… Peg,” he said. “I
know
it was Michael.”

The caller was an engineer at John Deere, someone Gene described who would “not go off the deep end about anything.”

“But, Gene,” Peg protested, “the only time he ever saw Michael was here in the casket. How could he be so sure?”

“Well, I only know he's a very down-to-earth man,” Gene said. “And if he thinks he saw Michael, then it probably was. We ought to at least try to get a look at the film ourselves.”

KWWL-TV, the Black Hawk Broadcasting Company in Waterloo, was the nearest NBC affiliate. The person Peg spoke with explained that the evening news broadcast originated in New York City and the NBC studios there would be the only ones to have any information on the film. Gene was at John Deere by the time Peg got through to Chet Huntley's secretary in New York. “You're the fifth mother to call us on that film,” the secretary said. “Are you
sure
you want to look at it?”

“Well, no, I don't think I want to see it,” Peg said, “but my husband does. We want to know if it was our son. We don't know what happened to him, and maybe the film.…”

“Well, okay,” the secretary said. “We'll do what we can. We'll have to send back to Vietnam to find out more about it.”

“We'd appreciate it,” Peg said. (About six weeks later NBC-TV contacted the Mullens to say that the newscast film had, in fact, been shot February 17, 18, or 19, but that the two killed and seven wounded had been from the 25th Infantry Division, not Michael's Americal. No enemy had been involved in that incident either.)

That afternoon at work a John Deere supervisor sat down next to Gene during a break and spoke to him about the funeral service and Vietnam, and then the supervisor said, “You know, Oscar, we've got to have this war. We've got to stop the Communists!”

“Joe, are you worried about the North Vietnamese? They're just seventeen million people! You say, ‘Stop the Communists.'” Gene shook his head. “If we ever have any real conflict with the Communist nations it'll all be over in forty-eight hours. This won't be any hand-to-hand conflict!”

“What about Red China?”

“Red China? They couldn't come within a thousand miles of our coast. They don't have the fleet to carry their men. If Red China was going to attack us, they'd use a nuclear bomb and you wouldn't be around to read it in the newspapers.… Why are you so worried about the North Vietnamese? Do you even know what they were called before World War Two?”

The supervisor shook his head, “No-o-o.”

“Joe, what do you do? Why don't you read up on what's going on over there? Don't tell me my boy died for a ‘just cause'—or that any of the forty thousand died for that either because,” Gene said, “because, Joe, you know you're only saying that to protect yourself from feeling guilty about what you've let go on and on.”

On Friday, March 6, Army Finance asked the Mullens to sign a blank pay voucher for Michael's final eighteen days of pay. Gene wrote back: “Never in my life have I signed a blank pay voucher and I am not going to at this sad point in my life. We have no real interest in any money due Michael today, so until you can give us a concrete figure that is due him, we shall not sign this Standard Form 1174.” But no matter how angry Gene was at the Army for having killed his son, he was still too polite to forget it was staffed by ordinary men. Gene closed his letter, “We look forward to hearing from you again at your convenience,” signed it, “Oscar E. Mullen, Father of Michael, Killed in Vietnam on February 18th,” and added: “P.S., No need now for top priority in this matter.”