Friendly Fire (46 page)

And that's how Michael Mullen was killed. Just as Colonel Kuprin had told the Mullens, just as had been hinted at in correspondence with members of Charlie Company: someone back at the fire direction center had failed to take into account the height of the trees on Charlie Company's hilltop night defensive perimeter.

Two details remained to be cleared up: Who called in the artillery round? Were the men drinking?

Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf wasn't sure who had requested the artillery. The forward observer team consists of three men: a forward observer, his reconnaissance sergeant and a radio operator. Each of them is qualified to call in artillery and make corrections. Schwarzkopf believed the DTs had been radioed in late that afternoon by Lieutenant Rocamora. It was clear, however, that it didn't matter who had requested the artillery since whoever it was, he had provided the correct target coordinates. That the artillery had not fired its DTs until three that morning had nothing to do with the forward observer team; the delay was solely the responsibility of the artillery. They had fired only when firing time had come available. As for the drinking:

“General Ramsey, the commanding general of the Americal Division, had a policy when I first got to the division that there could be beer on fire bases and in the field,” Schwarzkopf said, “but he had a serious incident in the Hundred and Ninety-sixth Brigade. I think it was in one of their stand-down areas that a man got drunk. General Ramsey then put out the policy that there was no more beer to be in the field period. I assume it was enforced by everyone. I enforced it in my battalion. And on this particular mission the artillery came out and set up in position on Hill Four Ten, and the next morning—not at the time, but the morning following Michael's death—when I went down to the guns to try to conduct my own semiformal investigation into what had happened, I looked down and there was a whole bunch of fresh beer cans. As I told the Mullens, it was obvious that they had been drinking beer. I doubt, however, that this fact is even contained in the investigation. Why?
Because the error was not on the guns
. Again, the error that caused Michael's death was made back at the fire direction center. So it was not a question of anybody on the guns drinking or anything else. The aiming of the guns was in no way a contributing factor to Michael's death. I'll say this again because it's important: everything that was set on the guns was, in fact, exactly what had been relayed to the guns over the radio by the FDC. The target coordinates radioed by the forward observer with Charlie Company were the correct coordinates. Now, I'm sure the reason why there was no mention in the investigation about the drinking was because it wasn't drunkenness. The division commander's policy was no beer in the field, so don't mention the beer and don't make waves. But waves were made. Colonel Clemons was out there, he knew they had been drinking beer, and he raised holy hell with Kuprin about it. Heads were chopped. Corrective action was taken but not through the investigation simply because the beer was in no way a contributing factor to Michael Mullen's death.”

“You mentioned an artillery incident a month before in which artillery fire from an American unit landed on, I believe, Bravo Company?”

“That was in a different place,” Schwarzkopf said. “It was Bravo Company. They were in a place called Dragon Valley, and there had been a great deal of contact out there. I can't recall if DTs were being fired or whether it was an enemy probe, but in any case the rounds fell short—incidently, no one was killed in the Bravo Company incident. There were some wounded. They conducted an investigation and found that on one of the guns there was a faulty elevating mechanism. It's a screw-type device, a bunch of teeth and a screw that turned to raise or lower the tube, and there had been a slippage in the teeth. As a result, the tube had dropped down to a lower angle than it should have been, and this is why the rounds fell short. Frankly, as an infantry battalion commander, I couldn't care less what caused it. My primary concern was to insure that it didn't happen again! And that is why, naturally, when the same guns that had an artillery firing incident on one of my units exactly one month later has another, I'm furious!”

“When you said, just now, ‘the same guns,' did you mean—”

“It wasn't the same gun.” Schwarzkopf quickly corrected me. “What I meant was that they were guns from the same unit, DivArty. Division artillery.”

We spoke for a while about Michael's letters home and the sort of operations he had been involved in, and then Schwarzkopf talked about the Batangan Peninsula, the area his battalion was shifted into following Michael's death.

“The Mullens told me that from Michael's death through the next three months—from February, 1970, through that April—your battalion lost about one hundred twenty out of your nine hundred men. Does that sound right?” I asked.

“Killed? No.…” He thought for a while. “We could probably have had that many wounded from February through July, during that next six months. But prior to that move south, during that period while Michael was still with us, I'd say we had less casualties than any other battalion in the division. In that second AO, the Batangan Peninsula, our casualties were slightly above average—I don't think we were the highest because some of the battalions of the One Hundred Ninety-sixth brigade were having tremendous battles with North Vietnamese regiments and were taking sustained heavy casualties. The point is, however, that in our first AO, where Michael was, we very rarely had contact with the enemy. We had contact only when the enemy wanted to kill us. But that second AO, the Batangan Peninsula, was, as far as I'm concerned, the worst thing I've ever been through in my life.”

The colonel paused for a moment, then said, “Look, to digress for a moment, the whole reason why I volunteered for Vietnam the second time was because I honestly felt I could be a better battalion commander, could accomplish the mission with less loss of life, than a lot of the people who were going over there. I felt this because of the tremendous experience I had had fighting with the Vietnamese Airborne in 1965 and 1966. After my first tour I came home with probably the greatest feeling of satisfaction I've ever had in anything I've ever done. I slept in the mud, ate rice and Vietnamese food with chopsticks for one solid year. Everywhere the Vietnamese went, I went. I was one of them. And I felt, I really felt, that I was honestly helping people. I met some fantastic people in that outfit, Vietnamese for whom I have the greatest respect in the world. These people were desperate. Many of them were from North Vietnam and had fled the Communists in 1954. They were true patriots fighting for their country, for their lives! I came home from that year feeling I had been fighting for freedom and democracy. Now, wait,” he said, holding up his hand in anticipation of an interruption. “When I volunteered for Vietnam in 1965, it was for ‘God, Country, and Mom's Homemade Apple Pie.' I got to Vietnam, and we were surrounded at Dak To. Well, when you get surrounded and the sun goes down with you sitting there thinking you may not see it come up again the next morning, it takes a helluva lot more than God, Country and Mom's Apple Pie—those words emblazoned across the sky—to keep you going.”

Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf pushed himself up from his chair and stood facing me. “I think we went to Vietnam in the first place for the principle of democracy. I'm not saying that that's what it all turned out to be, and I'm not saying that that was the end result. I'm saying only that this is the principle we went to Vietnam for. Well, what kept me going while we were surrounded was by that time I had honestly met enough truly fine, dedicated South Vietnamese officers in the Vietnamese Airborne Division who sincerely and honestly believed that we were fighting for their country, for their freedom and that I—as an American taught from the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper that one stands up and fights for democracy—that I was over there to help. Look, to go back over this whole business of why I volunteered a second time for Vietnam.… I know Mr. Mullen says the only reason why I went back was to make my colonelcy. Well, that's … that's hogwash! I didn't need to go to Vietnam a second time, you know? I didn't need to get a ticket punched. I didn't need any medals.
*
I'd already been promoted ahead of my contemporaries by about a year. And by being promoted that year, I just happened to fall into the cycle where I would be a lieutenant colonel in Vietnam. Also, I went to Vietnam sooner than most of my classmates. I went first as a captain/major and then again as a lieutenant colonel. Most of them, or many of them, had only been in Vietnam as majors.”

“And majors don't get battalions?” I asked.

Schwarzkopf nodded. “Majors are generally staff positions.” He sat back down at the table. “A captain was a company commander, a lieutenant colonel commanded a battalion. Commanding a battalion for an infantryman, a battalion anywhere, is, uh, ‘career-enhancing.'” He winced at the phrase. “I've also explained that most of my friends didn't get commands at any time, and what is really important is to show that you can command—and not so much where you do the commanding. I would be foolish if I said I was unaware that commanding a battalion in Vietnam would help my career. Of course it would! But there were other things to consider.”

He mentioned that following his first tour he returned to West Point and a year later was assigned to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Schwarzkopf had been scheduled next for an Army staff level job in the Office of the Chief of Research and Development at the Pentagon. He would more than likely be sent back to Vietnam after that. He and Brenda had, at that time, been married only one year and had no children. “Frankly I had to face the fact that if I got killed in Vietnam this time,” he said, “Brenda was still young and beautiful and had a good job. She wouldn't be hurting for money or anything of that sort. However, if after three years at the Pentagon they sent me to Vietnam, by then we might well have a family, Brenda would have lost her job, and if I got killed then, it would be so much harder for her to adjust. So naturally I considered this. But my first and foremost reason, as I have said, was that based upon my experience, that first tour with the Vietnamese Airborne, I felt I definitely had something I could contribute as a battalion commander. I felt I could accomplish the mission with the minimum loss of life—none, if possible, which is what it's all about really. After all, this is what I had been trained for, what the Army kept me around to do and I felt it was my obligation to do so … and all right,
yes
, commanding a battalion successfully in Vietnam has enhanced my career. But if I turn around and make a mistake in my next assignment or get a bad efficiency report, my career will suffer just as much as it would have otherwise. The only difference between an officer and anybody else is that that officer has got the responsibility and you get into terrifying situations because you flat have got that responsibility.…”

Schwarzkopf sat looking down at his mug of coffee. “You know,” he said after a while, “out at Walter Reed when the Mullens came to see me, and he's still there right now, is my former artillery liaison officer. Bob Trabbert. He's just had another operation on his head. He's missing his left arm above the elbow. His left leg above the knee. He's got a great big hole in his head. Bob always went with me. Everywhere a battalion commander went his artillery liaison officer had to go. The day this happened to Bob was the day Bravo Company got trapped in a minefield.…”

Schwarzkopf told me the story about the men of Bravo Company on the edge of panic, feeling their way out, his own terror at having to cross the minefield to quiet the young private whose leg had broken when a mine exploded beneath him and how Trabbert had been horribly wounded when a man beside him had, at Schwarzkopf's request, moved to cut a limb from a small tree to use as a splint.

“When I threw Bob on that helicopter, I didn't think he'd live. But he did. And the only reason why I wasn't killed or maimed was that I was over taking care of this other kid. And for that they gave me my third Silver Star. But as far as I'm concerned, I had no other choice. It was my responsibility. I had to do it. By being there where I was taking care of that kid, it saved my life. But you live with these things. You become terribly fatalistic in combat.”

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“It was the twenty-eighth of May, 1970. Almost a year and a half ago.”

“And Trabbert's still in the hospital?”

Schwarzkopf nodded. “And his wife has divorced him.”

“Jesus.”

“She was nineteen when they married and, well, I guess.…” Schwarzkopf shook his head sadly. “But to go back to the point I was making when you asked about the casualties after Michael's death, I want to emphasize that this Bravo minefield incident was in the Batangan Peninsula, an entirely different area of operations from where Michael Mullen got it. The mines and booby traps there were unbelievable. It was terrifying to me, and I know it was terrifying to the men. It wasn't easy being a battalion commander in Vietnam. It was hard going into the hospitals and looking at those kids that were wounded—terrible wounds from mines and booby traps. It's hard even to convey to you what an awful thing it was to go into a young man who had lost a leg or two legs and has just woken up. What do you say to that kid? You have to say something.”

“What did you say?”

“Normally not much,” Schwarzkopf answered. “Ninety-nine percent of the time these kids would carry the conversation, start talking first. The first thing they'd say—or close to the first thing—would be, ‘Sir, I'm sorry.…'” Schwarzkopf looked up at me. “Here's this kid in bed who's lost his legs and he wakes up and apologizes to you!” He shook his head in wonder. “Generally they would ask, ‘Did I hurt anybody else? Was anyone hurt?' The kid who had stepped on the mine felt guilty that he'd tripped it, because he thought he should have picked up the trip wire and avoided it. But here would be this kid lying there terribly maimed, and his first words are, ‘Sir, I'm sorry.…'