Word of Honor (30 page)

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there they also discovered the first of the mass graves that held the approximately three thousand citizens of Hue massacred by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

Meanwhile, a South Vietnamese ranger battalion had also crossed the river and was making its way south. On 26 February, this unit, with supporting fire from Alpha Company, stormed the last stronghold in Gia Hoi, the Cambodian Pagoda across the street from the high school. It was then that Gia Hoi was considered clear, and the battle of Hue was declared over. But this was premature. Whether by design or circumstances, hundreds of enemy troops remained in Hue's main suburb of Gia Hoi.

On 29 February, Alpha Company was engaged in aiding refugees and searching for Viet Cong hiding among the masses of displaced civilians. Tyson had set up checkpoints on a road that led to the east gate of the Citadel wall. His men examined civilian ID cards, handed out C rations, and set up a medical aid station. Suddenly rockets streaked out of a nearby grove of fruit trees. Several soldiers and civilians were hit by flying shrapnel, and Lieutenant Tyson suffered a wound to the knee. As the refugees scattered, the enemy began firing automatic weapons at the Americans who had taken cover in a drainage ditch and were firing back. After ten or fifteen minutes, the enemy broke contact.

The wounded of Alpha Company, including its last officer, Benjamin Tyson, were medevaced to a hospital ship in the South China Sea.

Another irony of this tale is that Lieutenant Tyson, whose platoon had acted so inhumanely at Misdricorde Hospital, was wounded while on a mission of mercy. Alpha Company itself, now without a single officer and with over half its men killed or wounded, was finally ordered to stand down. They were helicoptered to Camp Evans, the First Air Cavalry Forward Base Camp, and

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given two weeks of relatively safe perimeter guard duty. Replacements of officers, sergeants, and enlisted men filled the ranks of the decimated company, as the original men found increasingly ingenious ways of removing themselves from that ill-fated unit.

Hue, that smoking, burning cauldron where so many had died, was peaceful on the morning of March the first. The birds had returned, and no gunfire could be heard for the first time in over a month. But the proud city, often described as the most precious piece of Vietnam, lay devastated, its inhabitants totally demoralized, their once legendary spirit crushed for all time.

And yet the killing was not quite over. There was still the matter of revenge. This writer personally observed the National Police "Black Squads" rounding up hundreds of men, women, and students accused by their neighbors of having aided the occupying communist invaders. These unfortunate people were taken to various places in and around the city and presumably executed since they were never heard from again.

As a young Marine officer, standing on a tower of the Citadel, I watched the endless funeral processions winding through the rubble-strewn streets. Hue, which had thumbed its nose at the war, would never be the same again, and neither would the American soldiers who fought there.

Vietnam's most celebrated songwriter at the time, a young man named Trihn Cong Son, was living in Hue during the battle. In March, with the Vietnamese spring in full bloom, he wrote a ballad, a stanza of which is translated here:

When I went to the Strawberry Patch I sang on top of corpses I saw, I saw, I saw on the road An old father hugging the corpse of his Frost-cold child.

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When I went to the Strawberry Patch of an afternoon I saw, I saw, I saw pits and trenches filled with The corpses of my brothers and my sisters.

Karen Harper closed the book and looked up at Tyson. The room was still, and neither spoke.

Finally Tyson said, "I just realized that it must have been as unsettling for Picard to write that book as it was for me to read it. He smelled the same evil smell that I did."

Karen Harper nodded. She said, "I'd like to know what happened to you during that ten or fifteen minutes of the firefight."

"I bled."

"Yes, of course you did. And you were in pain. And a medic should have gotten to you. But . . . " She stood, "Well, you said there was no bad blood between you and Brandt, but I strongly suspect there was. "

Tyson sat on the edge of the bed. He said, "If you suspect that Brandt did not tell Picard everything that happened at the Strawberry Patch, why would you believe Brandt's selective perceptions of the events at Mis6ricorde Hospital?"

"I never said I did. What did Brandt do or fail to do at the Strawberry Patch?"

"You find out. Then you tell me. Then I'll tell you if you're right."

"All right." She paused, then said, "Picard lives in Sag Harbor on Long Island. Did you know that?"

"That was on the book jacket."

"Yes . . . and it's an odd coincidence that you and your family are summering there."

Tyson rose from the bed and crossed to the cocktail table. He picked up his drink. "Partly coincidence, partly fate. Partly . . . reading that on the jacket reminded me of the place. We used to go out there . . . long ago. "

She said, "You may run into him out there."

"Right." He reflected a moment, then said, "People out there have these neat mailboxes by the side of the road with

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their last names on them." He glanced at her. "I guess you know about rural mailboxes. Anyway, you read all sorts of famous names. But there is an unwritten rule of privacy. Well, I used to see the name Picard, but I never associated it with Andrew Picard the novelist, probably because I never heard of him. Anyway, down the road from a house I rented some years ago was a mailbox with the name Algren. I found out it was Nelson Algren, the guy who wrote The Man with the Golden Arm. I loved that book, and I had a copy of it. I wanted to knock on his door and ask him to autograph it. But I didn't want to violate that rule of privacy. Then some months later I read that he died. So my book is unsigned. But I have this other book, by Andrew Picard, and I think I'd like his autograph, before something happens to him."

She raised her eyebrows. "Don't do anything ... that will get you into trouble."

Tyson sat on the arm of the upholstered chair and stared out the window.

She said abruptly, "Are you separated?"

He was taken aback by the question, but answered, "Yes."

"Is there any chance of a reconciliation?"

"I suppose . . . I don't think it's . . . I mean I think we're just separated for the duration. Not legally. Why?"

"Just curious."

"Are'you?" Tyson lit a cigarette.

Karen Harper said, "I'm sorry. I mean about your marriage. And yourjob."

"Well, that's life though. You can't be suspected of mass murder without there being a few inconveniences attached.

"It's easy to be bitter-"

Tyson suddenly jumped to his feet. He felt tired, angry, sick of the subject of murder. "Oh, Christ, Major, I don't need any more damned sympathy. I've had enough of that today. "

I I Sorry--

"If I'm a mass murderer, then I don't deserve the sympathy. If I'm not, I'll sue the pants off everyone and retire to Switzerland." Tyson continued, "Do you know where else I was today? I went to the memorial....

I could stand here all fucking night and tell you what passed through my mind in ten minutes there. But it's all been said. I mean WORD OF HONOR 0 237

it's all there in that great big black fucking wall. Do me a favor. Go there. Look at yourself in the wall. Take your goddamned list of Alpha Company and find them in the wall. Listen, I don't care about myself. But how in the name of God can the government bring further discredit on those poor bastards? Go there, Major, and talk to the dead and explain your course of action to them."

She nodded slowly. "I will go there."

Tyson suddenly felt fatigued and slumped back into his chair. He closed his eyes.

Karen Harper walked to the window and stared out of it. Finally she turned from the window and said, "Can I make you a drink?"

He looked at her in the dim light and nodded.

She crossed to the bar and made him a Scotch and soda, then carried it back and handed it to him. She said, "I'm not feeling very well. Can we continue this another time?"

"No. Finish it up."

"Are you sure. . . ?"

"Finish it. Tonight."

She nodded and sat on the couch across from him. "I'm not feeling sorry for you. I'm feeling sorry for myself."

"Good. Press on, Major."

Karen Harper looked across the cocktail table at Benjamin Tyson, then drew a typed sheet of paper from her briefcase and glanced at it. She said,

"Based on Picard's book and on Army records and on the statements of Brandt, Farley, Sadowski, and Scorello, I've compiled this list of five additional men who were present at the hospital and who we believe are alive today." Harper read, "Dan Kelly, Hernando Beltran, Lee Walker, Harold Simcox, and Louis Kalane." She handed the list to Tyson and said, "Could you add any names to this list?"

Tyson took the list and scanned the names. "No . . . well, yes. Holzman and Moody."

She replied, "Kurt Holzman was killed in a motorcycle accident fifteen years ago. Robert Moody died of cancer two years ago. That's why they're not on the list."

" I see . . . ... He put the paper on the cocktail table. Picard had mentioned the names of most of the platoon members in his book but had not included the usual appendix

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of "Where They Are Now. " Picard obviously did not know where they were, or he'd have contacted them as he'd contacted Brandt and Farley and had tried to interview Tyson himself. Picard, though, when he'd had his photograph done at the wall, could have taken the trouble to look at the names behind him. Tyson said, " I just learned today that Brontman and Selig were killed in action after I left Vietnam."

"Yes, they were. How did you learn that?"

"I saw their names."

She nodded. "Yes, of course." She inquired, "By the way, did you find your personal journal, or platoon log, or whatever you kept?"

"I didn't keep a log."

Her eyebrows rose to indicate incredulity. "I was told all officers kept some sort of logbook orjournal. How could you remember radio frequencies, platoon rosters, promotions, guard duty, grid coordinates, and all that, without written entries in some sort of book?"

Tyson sat back and stared thoughtfully at a point above Karen Harper's head. In a steamer trunk in his basement, that held much of his war memorabilia, he'd found his tattered, water-stained log, bound in furry gray hide, which according to the itinerant Chinese stationer who'd sold it to him was elephant hide, though Tyson suspected the deceased animal to be a rat. The daily entries were written in GI-issue blue ballpoint pen, now turned light violet. The paper was yellowed and water-stained, and the writing was barely legible. It was, however, legible enough to spark his memory, and as he'd flipped the pages, names, places, and incidents returned to him in a way that Picard's book was not able to conjure up for him.

The entry for 15 February had begun in much the same way as other days: BMNT [Beginning of Morning Nautical Twilight] 0632 hrs. 68 F, rainy, cold, windy. Then followed the platoon roster, people on sick call, notes regarding resupply, a change in a radio frequency, grid coordinate objectives, and other small details of infantry life in the field. He'd made one personal note that morning that read: Morale a wfu 1.

The next entry for that date was written in almost total darkness sometime after sundown, the words scrawled across WORD OF HONOR 0 239

two pages. It read: Platoon on verge of mutiny. Overheard death threats.

Filed false radio report re: hospital battle this A.M. Investigate. God-And there it ended. God what? he thought. Godforgive? God help us? He'd forgotten what he was going to write.

He had slid the book into his waistband as someone drew close in the dark and spoke to him; they might not think to search his body for his logbook.

Investigate. And they were. But not, unfortunately, posthumously. The entry in itself was not revealing, but in light of recent developments it was incriminating enough; incriminating enough to put him behind bars. Yet he could not bring himself to destroy the book and had mailed it to his sister Laurie in Atlanta for safekeeping.

"Lieutenant Tyson? Did you keep a log?"

He looked at her. "Actually I did. But I recall that after I was evacuated to a hospital ship it was lost."

"Lost."

"Yes, along with most of my personal effects. They helicoptered you onto the ship, pretty nurses stripped you and scrubbed you, and injected you, and what personal effects you had were put into a small plastic bag.

Government property was put into another bag. Give back to Caesar that which is Caesar's. You were damaged meat that needed processing and mending. And if you couldn't be mended, then you were put into a plastic bag. Give back to God that which is God's. Get it?"

She seemed to have some trouble following him, then said, "So . . . the logbook was . . ."

"Probably put into the government bag and recycled or burned or whatever they did with bloody clothes and equipment. When my bag of personal effects was returnedwatch, wallet, letters, and cigarette lighter-I noticed my diary was missing."

She nodded, and Tyson had the impression she appreciated a well-constructed lie. She said, "That would have been a nice keepsake, the basis for your memoirs."

"I don't think anyone is interested in my memoirs."

"But they are."

Tyson fit a cigarette. "So, these five-Kelly, Beltran, Walker, Simcox, and Kalane-are unaccounted for?"

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Karen Harper nodded. "But we're looking for them." She drew another piece of paper from her briefcase. "I'll give you a rundown." She glanced at the typed sheet. "There were, we believe, nineteen of you who approached that hospital on the afternoon of 15 February 1968. Does that sound right?"

"I suppose. Except we didn't know it was a hospital."