Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
He looked down at the desk, thought down through the floor to two stories below where his wrecked Mustang sat on blocks. He sorted pages and magazines, placing them in stacks, chronologically, the oldest on top. “What the hell am I goina do with that car?” he muttered. He turned to look for Josh but Josh had gone with Grandpa. He opened the top magazine, the
Newsweek
he’d begun reading on his journey home. “The Battle of Ap Bia Mountain,” the headline said. And the photo and cutline, “Hamburger Hill: Was the Slaughter Really Necessary?” Immediately his eyes found the line about the Nixon administration, which “sought ... to disclaim responsibility” and immediately Bobby Wapinski tensed. “Fuck em,” he muttered. “They just don’t fuckin—” He sat back. Never let em get to your mind, Wap. Never let em get to your mind, cause they just don’t fuckin understand.
He leafed through the articles he’d read months earlier, turned to an article on South Viet Nam’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu. On a trip to South Korea, the magazine reported, Thieu “was hailed as a great anti-Communist Asian leader.” The article went on about the flap between Nixon and Thieu over diplomatic policies and negotiation strategies.
... Mr. Nixon might just agree to Communist demands for a provisional coalition government.... But in his statement in Seoul, Thieu made it plain that he would have nothing to do with such a proposal”
Agree! Wapinski shook his head. Agree to a coalition government with the communists! It’d be suicide. At the back of the magazine there was a column by Stewart Alsop titled “No ‘Disguised Defeat’?”
... Nixon ..., “A great nation that fails to meet a great challenge ceases to be a great nation.” ... the United States could not and would not accept a “disguised defeat” in Vietnam....
... skeptic was President Thieu ... warning ... against a “false peace”—precisely because he was deathly afraid that President Nixon might elect to settle the war in Vietnam at the expense of the Saigon government....
... The military and political situation in South Vietnam really is much better—the Communist wolf is really further from the door.... The Saigon government now controls more people than since the Diem days; the Communist “infrastructure” shows real signs of unraveling in some areas; the Viet Cong is having severe recruiting and disciplinary problems. But because there had been so much false optimism in the past, officials and reporters are chary of emphasizing these facts, for fear of being laughed at....
They’ll make you doubt your own mind. Hmm, Wapinski thought. Not this guy. He was enjoying this guy Alsop, thought Alsop’s got his shit together, got it rolled in a tight little ball.
... North Vietnamese have hinted, and the Russians have more than hinted, that there should be no great problem about a mutual military withdrawal from South Vietnam, if only the political problem can be sensibly settled, on the basis of point five of the Viet Cong’s ten-point program.
What ten-point program? Was I that immersed in what I was doing there not even to know about the proposal?
Point Five proposes that “the political forces ... that stand for peace ... enter into talks to set up a provisional coalition government ... [then] hold free and democratic general elections....
What the Communist side is proposing, of course, is a Popular Front government, precisely patterned on the popular fronts established under Soviet sponsorship after World War II, as a prelude to total Communist control.
Wapinski skimmed down, thought back to “administration ... sought ... to disclaim responsibility.” “Shit,” he whispered under his breath. “Never let em ...”
... This three stage process, from seemingly genuine coalition to the final ... monolithic Communist control, is unquestionably what Moscow and Hanoi intend for South Vietnam.... But if the Communists are smart enough—which they shows signs of being—to offer a sufficiently thick disguise, President Nixon ... under enormously heavy pressure may accept the defeat, as President Thieu is very well aware....
Senate ... murmurs are being heard to the effect that only the “corrupt and unsavory” Saigon government stands in the way of a settlement and an end to the killing.
Wapinski’s mind buzzed. He was calm and tense simultaneously, pre-combat relaxed. This was a completely different dimension to Southeast Asia than he had dealt with during his year.
He opened the next magazine. There was a Canadian whiskey ad that had, in the backdrop, a beautiful woman with short brunette hair, standing, looking out over a mountain lake. She wore a two-piece bathing suit and a lustrous light blue, three-quarter-length jacket. Her legs were perfect. He tried to flip by but he couldn’t turn the page. Married, he thought. He checked his watch. In a few hours she’ll be married. And Red’ll be there too ... to help cement it.
His mouth was dry. His head felt as if it were filling with concrete. Again he looked at the picture. The girl was looking out, across the water, her body turned half to the camera, her profile showing just the tip of her nose and the contour of her cheek. He analyzed the photo attempting to determine if indeed the image was Stacy’s. One moment he was certain it was, the next he felt sure the ass was not round enough, then again with the pose, the taut muscles, the shoulders pulled back ... the entire image not two inches high behind an eight-inch bottle of Canadian whiskey ... “Geez, man!” He sat back. “What the hell are you doin?” Again he checked his watch. “What the hell are you doin with Red?”
He pushed on through the magazine, reading article after article—Nixon’s troop withdrawals, reduction in force, Viet Namization, ARVNs taking over in the Delta, defoliants reduce land to moonscape—yet not retaining even a semblance of their content. He rose, walked to Grandpa’s drawing table, looked at the old man’s sketch of a school bus fitted with Grandpa’s design for nylon-plastic “kid-catchers”—two-piece shields that mounted on the frame and body at the rear wheels, enclosing the wheels and curving in under the bus, designed like an old-time train’s cow-catcher, to deflect an animal or a child. Yeah, Bobby thought, why not.
Bobby returned to the magazines. The September 15th
Newsweek
had five pages called “The War in Vietnam,” including a column by Kenneth Crawford entitled “Kindly Uncle Ho.” Crawford concluded:
What effects Ho’s death will have on the tactics and strategy of his successors is unpredictable.... There will be a vacuum. For Uncle Ho, like Uncle Joe (Stalin), was a genius—an evil genius by democratic lights. Both Marxians in their ideology but throwbacks to Genghis Khan in their methodology.
Wapinski placed the magazines in the empty file drawer Grandpa had left him. Faith and patience, he told himself. Faith, patient inquiry and hard work. Keep on, keepin on. For an hour he read, sorted, and filed news clippings, forcing a patience that he did not feel, forcing a focus that would not come. He thought of Red, of her eyes and smile and laugh and of how, at times, she could say exactly the right thing. Still he did not focus on her. He turned to Blackwell’s letter.
Dear Captain Wapinski,
You remember me. I was wounded on Dong Ap Bia when you were in command and now they’re court-martialing me. Sir, you’ve got to remember me and help me. You visited me at the evac hospital at Evans before you left for the World. I was wounded in the buttocks and back by friendly fire on one of the last assaults up that bad motherfuckin hill. I did whatever you ordered. I was a good troop. I was up there when the monsoon hit and we got washed off that bad fucker, and I was the first guy back up there looking for those guys we lost. I know you remember that cause you were right there, too, like you was a regular grunt and not a replacement commander from the rear. I know you remember me because we were from the same area back in the World. I come from just outside Wilkes-Barre, from Coal Hill. The rear is where I got in all my trouble and it’s like nothing I did out in the A Shau means anything cause in the rear they don’t put any merit on what we done in the boonies. I got two Purple Hearts. I got an ARCOM, the Air Medal and my CIB which no one can take from me. And I should have a Bronze or maybe even a Silver Star but these motherfuckers in the rear are holding up the paperwork cause I got charged with possession of dope and insubordination to an officer—Major Krausewitz, the assistant adjutant. That son of a bitch locked’n’loaded on me in the messhall in front of about a hundred guys. I was unarmed. I pulled guard three nights straight and that fucker wanted me back in the boonies that minute. I didn’t even have my ruck packed or any ammo and he wasn’t going to give me time. I said, No Way, Sir! I’m not going. I wasn’t even armed and he stood there with that 16 on his shoulder aiming in on my face and telling me to get up and move or he’d grease me on the spot. My wounds from Hamburger weren’t even fully healed. Sir, he done this because I’m Black and because I was doing some weed when I was con-vo-less-ing but you know I never did any in the boonies or even on guard like some of these white REMFs.
Sir, I need your help. I need you to write them a letter attesting to what kind of soldier I was. Captain Billings was killed on Dong Ap Bia otherwise I know he’d do it because he and I were really close. Sir, if you don’t write, they’re going to send me to LBJ (Long Binh Jail), and make me do hard time. I need your letter right away, Captain Wapinski. Other brothers that served under you said you’d do it because you were “an up front boonie rat” when you were in the bush. Thank you, Sir, for helping me. Anything you send to them, send me a copy too or they’ll say they never got it.
Your Brother-in-Arms,
Tyrone Blackwell, Pvt 1
Wapinski reread the letter. He remembered Blackwell, remembered his anger after he was wounded, but he wasn’t certain if he could recall Blackwell in the field. He pinched his lower lip, attempted to force upon an image of Dong Ap Bia the image of a black soldier he’d commanded for so short a period. Blackwell, he thought. “Because I’m black,” he thought. It struck Wapinski as strange, eerie, that of all the men he’d known in Viet Nam, a significant percentage, perhaps one in six, were black. Yet here in Mill Creek Falls, with its equally mixed population, he did not truly know a black man or woman except for Johnnie Johnson, who owned the auto salvage yard behind Lloyd’s Autoland, had not associated with any Mill Creek blacks since high school. He seldom even saw any black men or women or children, as if they were physically or legally segregated to the one section of town in which he himself had no business.
Blackwell ... Bro Black from the Sugar-shack. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe that was Tyrone. He looked at the desk. There was an entire file of clippings on the 101st Airborne from ’68 to ’69; there was the old file with clippings from ’42 to ’45, and there was the envelope.
He checked his watch. She’s married, he thought. Again his thoughts scattered. Again he forced himself to concentrate. He jotted a few notes on his own experiences in Viet Nam that he thought he might use in the letters he intended to send about Blackwell. It felt good. He thought of L-T Thompson telling him it had gotten into his blood and he realized that Thompson was probably right.
The notes became pages. For hours Bobby Wapinski lost himself in this writing, this cryptic memoir. Finally he sat back, his pen having outraced his thoughts and drained his mind. Yet he knew, felt, that it was only the beginning.
Grandpa returned. Bobby heard the old Chevy roll slowly into the yard. Josh yipped in search of him but he did not move. The thermal curtain remained closed. Wapinski shifted. He skimmed the file Grandpa had collected on the 101st. There were several stories on him, Robert J. Wapinski; award for heroism in ground combat, promotion to captain, award for ... Bobby did not read the stories. He turned to the file from World War II, leafing gently through the old, fragile clippings looking for pictures of his father. There was one, a clean and happy-looking young man, from the time Paul Wapinski shipped out. Another was a one-column story from the now defunct
Mill Creek Telegram
headed
WAPINSKI GETS
HEROISM AWARD
Bobby ached to read the words but his eyes filled and his mind clouded. Somehow, to read the two files, to juxtapose father and self, would be a competition. A foreboding hit him. He was afraid ... afraid of what? He shoved the file away. Mechanically he grabbed the large manila envelope. His hands operated beyond his mind’s control. Robotically they dumped the contents before him. Bobby pinched his lower lip, pulled it. He glanced at the pages he’d just written as if they were foreign. The thought of Blackwell flashed like heat lightning, then died in the storm clouds that rose from the desk. Immediately he realized there were more letters than he’d seen ten years earlier.
For two weeks Bobby Wapinski dared not set foot in the big barn. And he barely talked to Red. They dated, they made love, but they had little to exchange. Red moaned constantly about paperwork, about “Daddy dumping all this typing on me so I can’t get ready. I can’t wait to go.” At times he thought, I can’t wait for you to go. Other times he felt he was being abandoned, left behind not simply by Red but by his own inability to find a direction. And he was angry, angry at Red, for not telling him about Stacy’s wedding even though he did not ask—for not even mentioning it except to say once, quickly, “That guy Jerry, he’s a real wimp.”
The October day was clear, cool. Bobby was in the yard throwing a stick for Josh, who reluctantly retrieved it twice but on the third toss grabbed it, plopped down six steps from Bobby, and gnawed as if to say that game’s for dumb dogs. Bobby was laughing at him when he heard the motorcycle. The bike was loud, coming fast up Mill Creek Road, racing, shifting, recklessly speeding. He stepped closer to the barn, felt the hairs on his neck rise, shook it off, stared down toward the road. Josh bounded up, tossed the stick into the air, caught it as it hit the ground, stared at Bobby as if to say, Hey, play with me. I’m ready again.