Friendly Fire (44 page)

We spoke for quite a while that afternoon about what had happened that night on the hill where Michael died. Had the artillery been firing all night long or not? Why was it senior noncommissioned officers did not go out into the field? Why had a plea of temporary insanity never been entered in Willard Polk's case? Mightn't the explosion that night have been considered “mitigating circumstances” especially since the men on either side of Polk had been killed? But over and over again the conversation would return to Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf, and finally, I asked the Mullens if their own attitude toward him had changed.

They were both silent until Peg, very hesitatingly, said, “Yes, my attitude has changed.… I mean, finding him there in that body cast, I thought, ‘Well, the Lord has taken care of you.…'” She paused again, then blurted, “I guess I really don't know how I feel about him. I'd learned to hate him after hearing the boys talk. But he told us he was hated because he insisted on discipline, on taking the proper precautions. And I couldn't help thinking, if only Michael had had his flak jacket on that night, he wouldn't have died.… Schwarzkopf, you know, repeatedly told us what a fine man Michael was. He said over and over again did we realize what a tremendous soldier our son had been, the rapport he had had with his men and so forth. He kept saying this to me as I was leaving.…”

“And, too, Mother,” Gene said, “the letter he wrote us about Michael's death was very sympathetic. At the time, we thought he was laying it on a bit thick. The only thing he didn't tell us was that Rocamora was asleep. He told us as much as the investigation could have, and well, he didn't think we'd look any further.”

“Who would?” Peg asked.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“We'll find Rocamora. We think now he's in Hawaii,” Gene said. “You see I have an undying faith. Everything we've looked for we've found out. It only takes time. Can you imagine all the information we've picked up? Just two people? And it's all authentic! It can be documented. Where in the world could two people like us do what we've done? It's not only through our efforts. At times, at certain moments we've been led some place and the story opens up. We move somewhere else, and something more opens up. The last thing we need to do is find Rocamora and,” Gene said, slapping his knees, “I think we're going to find him.”

“Say you do find him, Gene,” I said, “what do you hope to learn?”

“How Michael died,” Peg answered.

“Who … killed … our … son!” Gene said.

Why? What good would it do? I like the Mullens very much. I felt terribly sorry for them—it was impossible not to. But no matter how much affection and sympathy I felt for them, I could not accept that their confrontation with Lieutenant Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf had, as recounted by them, really taken place. I did not doubt that they had located the colonel, spoken to him face-to-face, or that he had answered their questions as best he could. I suspected only that Peg and Gene had become, like the United States government which so enraged them, no longer able to listen to what they didn't want to hear.

I was especially disturbed by the realization that their attitude was partly my fault. Gene himself had indicated as much just two days before when he had telephoned and said, “I've got an ending for your book!” That anticipated sweet revenge must have seemed the perfect ending indeed, one which the Mullens could almost set in type themselves:
GOLD STAR PARENTS BRING SON'S MURDERER TO HIS KNEES
.

But of course, Schwarzkopf
hadn't
killed their son. And I worried about to what awful lengths the Mullens might drive themselves to achieve their next “perfect ending” for me. The Mullens had already demonstrated a surprisingly sophisticated awareness of the impact media exposure might have. The enormous attention they had received as a result of their first antiwar advertisement could not help having seemed heady stuff indeed. National prominence once achieved—no matter how momentary and elusive—creates a craving for ever more attention. Inevitably the different media, television especially, not only report news but inspire, influence, feed upon and demand ever more news. The temptation to create “perfect endings” was the corruption I wanted the Mullens spared. The only way I could achieve this was by finding out for them exactly what had happened to their son. I believed I already knew. I believed, also, that they knew, too. Colonel Valentin Kuprin, the artillery battalion commander, had told them. It had not, however, been what they had wanted to hear.

The Mullens left late that afternoon. Peg was on her way up to Boston to be a guest on a radio show. On their way back to Iowa they were to stop at Leroy Hamilton's family in Kentucky and later with the Arthur S. Krause family in Pittsburgh whose daughter, Allison, had been one of the four students killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State. Peg asked me what I was going to do. I told her I would go talk with Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf myself.

She said, “I'll bet you ten dollars he won't even see you.”

*
Although Gene correctly identified “Hill 76” as the hill mentioned in Polk's court-martial, it was not the hill upon which Michael was killed. Michael's hill had no designation other than the six digit coordinates for its peak.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Schwarzkopf was born on August 22, 1934, in Trenton, New Jersey. Two years earlier, his father, Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the quasi-military New Jersey State Police, had directed the Lindbergh kidnapping investigation. Young Norm Schwarzkopf grew up in the Lawrenceville-Princeton area while his father returned to active duty in the Army during World War II. After the war, he joined his father at his postings in Iran (1946), Switzerland (1947), Germany (1948–1949) and Italy (1950–1951). He left Italy in the fall of 1951 to attend Valley Forge Military Academy on a football scholarship and in 1952 won a competitive scholarship to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Schwarzkopf played football at the Academy, was a cadet captain and in June, 1956, was graduated forty-second in his class of 485. He received a Regular Army commission as a Second Lieutenant, Infantry.

Schwarzkopf's early career followed a predictable Army pattern: infantry and airborne schools at Fort Benning, Georgia, followed by two years with the 101st Airborne, the new Strategic Army Corps (STRAC) division formed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He was next assigned to Berlin for two years, then returned to Benning for the career officer course. In 1963 Schwarzkopf was sent to the University of Southern California to pick up a master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and in 1965 he was ordered back to West Point to begin a three-year teaching appointment. However, he remained at the Academy for only one year.

Several of Schwarzkopf's good friends had already died in Vietnam. Eight American advisers had been killed that February in their compound at Pleiku; twenty-three more Americans lost their lives several days later in an attack on their barracks at Qui Nhon. That same month President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained air bombardment of North Vietnam. In March, U.S. Marines waded ashore at Danang and raised the total U.S. troop strength in Vietnam to 27,000 men. In May there were 46,000, by June 75,000

Schwarzkopf was an infantryman. He chafed sitting at West Point and felt obligated to go to Vietnam. The Department of the Army agreed to grant him his transfer request on the condition that upon completion of his one-year duty tour he return to the Military Academy to fulfill the remaining two years of his teaching obligation. Schwarzkopf reached Vietnam early in the summer of 1965 and was assigned to the Vietnamese Airborne Division as a task force adviser. Shortly after his arrival he spent ten days surrounded at the Dak To Special Forces camp. A month later he was promoted to major. In July, 1965, President Johnson authorized the increase of U.S. forces in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000 men.

Schwarzkopf returned to West Point in 1966 as an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics. In August, 1968, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel ahead of the majority of his contemporaries. He had just turned thirty-four years old and was sent to the Command and General Staff College.

In March, 1969, U.S. military forces reached peak strength in Vietnam with 541,500 men. December, that same year, Schwarzkopf returned to Vietnam for his second tour. Ten weeks after he assumed command of the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, 198th Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division, Michael Eugene Mullen, of Schwarzkopf's 1st Battalion's Charlie Company, was dead.

I spent two days with Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf during the first week of October. He had been released from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and was recuperating at his home in Annandale, Virginia, with his wife, Brenda, a former TWA stewardess, and their then two-year-old daughter, Cindy. I had written the colonel asking if I might speak with him, and he had promptly urged me to come. I rang his doorbell, and as I waited, I recalled Gene's description of Schwarzkopf as a “round-faced, blond, overgrown, boyish-looking man.” There was nothing boyish about the man who answered the door. Schwarzkopf is big, solid, over six feet tall, and weighs maybe 220 pounds. He still wore a cast starting at his hips which rode high over his shoulders like football shoulder pads. His brown-blond hair was short, but not crew-cut, and his expression—like his handshake and greeting—was open and friendly.

Schwarzkopf's two-bedroom apartment was in a new brick building identical to a row of other new brick apartment buildings in the development. Annandale is one of those rapidly expanding bedroom communities that lie within the Belt Parkway around suburban Washington, D.C. An expensive stereo-phonograph set was mounted in a bookcase against the right-hand wall; a couch and pair of Danish modern chairs were by the back wall to the left. Beyond the stereo and to the right of the living room was the small efficiency kitchen, and beyond that the master bedroom, bath and small bedroom for their daughter, Cindy. Some brass, mother-of-pearl and ebony souvenirs of the Orient were placed about, but on the whole, the apartment reflected the transient status of the Schwarzkopfs. The colonel gestured toward the dining-room table and suggested we might be more comfortable if we sat there.

I asked him if he would mind my using a tape recorder, and he replied he wouldn't mind at all; in fact, he added, he intended to use one himself. He explained he had called the Pentagon to make sure the interview would be all right, and the Pentagon had placed no restrictions on him whatsoever. They had suggested, however, he use his own tape recorder to ensure that his answers would not be distorted or lifted out of context.

As we took our places on opposite sides of the dining-room table, I explained that I had heard the Mullens' version of their conversation, and I was interested in hearing his. I asked, to begin with, how Gene Mullen had introduced himself on the telephone.

“Okay,” Schwarzkopf said, tilting back in his chair, “I'll recite it to you exactly: I was notified I had a phone call, and they had to bring the phone to my bed. I was then in a body cast that went all the way down to my knees, so I couldn't move. I picked up the telephone, and this voice at the other end said, ‘Is this Colonel Schwarzkopf?'

“I said, ‘Yes.'

“He said, ‘Were you the commanding officer of the First Battalion of the Sixth Infantry in February, 1970?'

“I said, ‘Yes, I was.'

“The voice on the other end said, ‘Does the name Michael Mullen mean anything to you?'

“‘I recall the name,' I said, ‘but right now I can't specifically place it.…' See,” Schwarzkopf explained, “it had been almost two years since the occurrence of this thing. Mr. Mullen then said, ‘Does an incident that took place on the eighteenth of February—'and he went into so many miles north of Quang Ni at such-and-such—‘mean anything to you?'

“I said, ‘No, I'm sorry, but based on what you've given me I can't recall exactly—wait, are you talking about an incident where some men were killed by friendly artillery fire?'

“He said, ‘Yes, I am.'

“I said, ‘Yes, I recall that.'

“And he said, ‘Well, I want to inform you that we are bringing charges against you in federal district court for suppressing the facts of the investigation into the death of my son.'”

The colonel's chair legs banged forward on the floor. “‘Mr. Mullen,' I said, ‘look, I think there's a misunderstanding here. I was in no way responsible for the investigation into the death of your son.' Mr. Mullen was very emotional, and I said, ‘But I don't think we're going to get anything accomplished talking to each other over the phone. Can you come out to Walter Reed and see me?' He said he could, and I said, ‘Fine. Come on out. Let's sit down and talk about this thing. You look at me, and I'll look at you and we'll talk this thing through.'”

“Colonel Schwarzkopf,” I said, “did Gene Mullen ever accuse you of having killed his son? Did he say, ‘I've been looking for you for a year and a half. I consider you the man who killed my son, and I'm taking you to federal court.'?”

“No.” Colonel Schwarzkopf shook his head. “Nothing like that. What I told you is almost verbatim. I remember it because it came as such a shot out of the blue: ‘I want to tell you that we are taking you to federal court—' He didn't say ‘for killing my son.' He said, ‘for covering up the facts of the investigation.' First of all, let me tell you a couple of things.” Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf spoke for a while about the Americal Division's reputation, the incidents involving Lieutenant Calley, Captain Medina, Colonel Henderson and My Lai. General Donaldson was at that time under investigation for allegedly shooting civilians from his helicopter. Several of Schwarzkopf's friends, knowing he had served in the Americal Division, had made the bad joke “It looks like everybody in the division at one time or another is going to be investigated, when is your time coming?” Schwarzkopf's first reaction after Gene's phone call had been: “Here it is. It's my turn now.”