While Terry O’Connor finished his last question, Staff Sergeant Derek Pride slipped in the courtroom’s back door and handed a note written on a slip of paper to Captain Michael Carter, who had sat in the gallery throughout the week-long trial.
“Oh, my God!” Captain Carter blurted as O’Connor walked back to the defense table after telling the judge he had no more questions of the witness.
Colonel Swanson rapped his gavel and glared over his half-glasses at the distraught captain seated in the audience, now whispering anxiously at the staff sergeant.
“Captain Carter, is that something for the court?” the presiding judge grumbled.
“Yes and no, sir,” Carter answered, coming to his feet, his face and blond hair emitting a deep red glow.
“Let’s send the jury out of the court and take a fifteen-minute recess so you can tell me all about it,” Swanson said, motioning for Corporal Farmer to move the six jurors outside earshot to the next room while also allowing them the freedom to use the restroom and get drinks of water.
“Sir, I’ve just been given news that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King has been shot and killed in Memphis,” Carter said, announcing the headline to everyone left in the courtroom. “Just before six PM on Thursday, April fourth, Stateside time in Memphis, only about three hours ago, the reverend was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. President Johnson has ordered four thousand National Guardsmen to keep order in Memphis, to avoid rioting. He has also ordered that flags shall fly at half staff until Doctor King’s interment. I might add that Robert Kennedy has made a most passionate speech in Indianapolis. Sir, we have lost a great American this morning.”
Judge Swanson shook his head.
“I fail to see the bearing on the case at hand, Captain Carter, but I appreciate your announcement during our recess. We all share your grief at Doctor King’s loss,” the colonel said, rising to leave the court and noticing Celestine Anderson, who had his forehead laid on the defense table, his shackled hands cupped around his shaved head, and his shoulders trembling as he absorbed the news of Martin Luther King’s death.
As the judge closed the door to his chambers behind him, Terry O’Connor jumped from his chair and dashed at Michael Carter, who looked down at his chair as he postured to return to his seat.
“Outside! Now!” O’Connor growled, snagging the wiry palm tree of a man by the arm and yanking him out the courtroom door.
“What?” Carter gasped, stumbling as the defense lawyer pulled him outside.
“That couldn’t wait a couple of hours?” O’Connor hissed, staring wild-eyed at the bewildered man. “At least until we got out of court?”
“Why? It’s important news!” Carter said, defending his actions.
“Yes, and totally disruptive of what I am trying to accomplish,” O’Connor fumed.
“Which is?” Carter blinked.
“To get the jury to find for a lesser charge of manslaughter, and give my client five years instead of the full-blown second-degree murder term of thirty-five years!” O’Connor snapped. “Did you see Private Anderson’s reaction? I have no idea what he may do now. He’s a hothead! And you, Captain, with your Harvard Law degree? You’re a fucking idiot!”
“I’m sorry!” Carter said and started to cry. “Please, Terry, I didn’t mean to do something bad.”
“Just go away, Michael,” O’Connor said, turning and walking back inside the courtroom. “Why not go and pray for us now.”
RAY GLICKMAN HURRIED back to the witness chair and remained standing while Judge Swanson and the jury returned to their seats. During the fifteen-minute break he had sucked down two cigarettes, the second of which had left him somewhat light-headed, but his nerves felt much more relaxed. He liked the prosecutor, and that helped settle his emotions, too.
When Charlie Heyster stood and approached the witness stand, he left his legal pad lying on the prosecution table. He offered the gunny a warm smile and casually rested his hand on the railing in front of the gaunt, narrow-faced man with the gray and brown flat-top haircut and nicotine-stained fingers. Gunny Glickman could use a shower, Heyster thought; the smell of stale tobacco and rank armpits had a definite repulsion factor that ranged high on the prosecutor’s personal radar, but he smiled anyway and tried to avoid a full nose of the odor.
“Well, I guess you had hoped to see the last of me, but the defense had other plans for you, didn’t they? Instead of trying a man for murder, it seems we have the Marine Corps on trial for its racial policies. So I hope you’ll bear with us and our bleeding-heart defense lawyers,” Heyster said and laughed. The gunny laughed, too, and then coughed a raspy rattle of phlegm from his tar-clogged bronchia and swallowed the glob without an excuse me or even bothering to cover his mouth. He had truly relaxed.
“You’ve got a few years in the Corps under your belt,” the captain began, walking away from the gunny. “When we talked to you the first time, you told us about your first taste of combat. Korea, was it not? Fox Company, Seventh Marines, correct?”
“Yes, sir, I wound up assigned to them,” Glickman said, and coughed again. “I started out with First Marine Division, the Fifth Regimental Combat Team, and got sent over to the Seventh Regiment after we landed at Inchon on September 15, 1950. The Seventh Regiment were mostly reactivated Marine reserves, quite a few World War Two veterans, but lots of others, young guys like me. Some of them never even went to boot camp. Lots of them came from New York and New Jersey, so I got sent to Fox Company, Seventh Marines, since I came from New York, too.”
“You fought at the Chosin Reservoir, and earned your Silver Star Medal during the breakout from the frozen Chosin, fighting the Chinese yard by yard from Hagaru to Koto-ri during the early weeks of December with subzero temperatures so cold that frostbite became as big a risk factor as Chinese bullets, and the snow so thick that our airplanes could not get through to support you,” Charlie Heyster said, walking toward the jury and looking at each of the six men, locking eye contact with them as he spoke. “You fought the Chinese hand-to-hand, didn’t you, gunny?”
“Yes, sir, it was a rough time,” the gunny said, speaking in such a quiet voice that Sergeant Dick Amos, the court reporter, had to look up.
“You said it was a rough time, gunny?” the recorder asked, and the judge nodded with Gunny Glickman.
“I said it was a rough time,” the old veteran repeated.
“A guy in your outfit, a big kid from New Jersey, a Marine reserve, one of those boys who didn’t even go to boot camp, he got the Medal of Honor for his heroism, didn’t he, Gunny Glickman?” Heyster asked, turning back at the witness.
“That was Private Hector Cafferata,” the gunny said with a smile. “There at the Chosin, he held a big gap in the line, single-handed. We fought them for six nights and five days before they backed off of us. When it was done, there were dead Chinese soldiers on the ground for as far as you could see. At one point I saw Hector batting Chinese grenades back at the enemy with his entrenching tool! Swinging that little shovel in one hand and shooting his firing rifle with the other hand. That first night, when the Chinese attacked, he jumped up out of his sleeping bag and fought all night, standing there in his skivvy shorts, barefooted. He got shot several times but still held his position. That inspired everyone. I think he still has a bum wing from those wounds. Grenade or bullet messed up his right arm. What I hear.”
“That’s correct, gunny,” Heyster said, and walked midway between the witness and the jury. “Were you a radioman back then, too?”
“No, sir, I was a grunt,” Glickman said, nodding. “When I reenlisted, I got promoted to corporal, and they gave me a lateral transfer from the infantry to the radio battalion. I wanted to develop a skill so I could make a living when I left the Marine Corps.”
“When did you begin working on communications electronics?” Heyster asked, his arms folded.
“Right after I got home from Korea and reenlisted, ten November 1953,” the gunny said, smiling.
“That’s more than fifteen years,” Heyster said, looking at the jury. “So with all your experience in communications and your time in the infantry, serving in Korea, you have a pretty good fix on the way things are done in the Marine Corps.”
“I think so, Captain,” the gunny said, smiling again.
“Well, correct me if I am wrong, but a noncommissioned officer earns certain privileges, and usually isn’t the guy on the business end of a shovel when it comes to filling sandbags or the fellow dragging the honey bucket when it comes time to burn the dewdrops out of the privy,” Heyster said with a grin at the jury.
“No, sir, a sergeant or a corporal should not be the man filling sandbags or burning the shitters,” Gunny Glickman said and laughed.
“Excuse me, but how many black noncommissioned officers did you say you had in your work section?” the prosecutor said, and then looked at Terry O’Connor, smiling confidently at the defense lawyer.
“None, sir. We have no blacks above the rank of lance corporal in my section,” Glickman said, and looked at O’Connor, too.
“So seven black Marines in a section of twenty men, including the three fellows on legal hold, leaves thirteen white Marines, correct?” the prosecutor said, and walked back to his table and picked up the sheets of statistics and personnel listed per individual, showing each man’s rank, GCT score, and highest level of education.
“Yes, sir, that sounds about right,” Glickman said, nodding and watching the captain as he scanned the personnel data.
“One staff sergeant, your assistant NCO in charge, I gather,” Heyster said, looking at the top sheet.
“Yes, sir,” Glickman said. “That’s Staff Sergeant Kenneth Dunn.”
“You have three buck sergeants and four corporals, too,” Heyster said, and looked at the defense team and Celestine Anderson, who now sat slumped in his seat, staring at his hands. “Eight men out of fourteen who are noncommissioned officers, including one staff noncommissioned officer besides yourself.”
“That’s correct, sir.” The gunny smiled, seeing the direction the prosecutor had taken. “That leaves six, and three of them are lance corporals.”
“So three lance corporals and three privates first class?” Heyster answered and looked at the jury. “You have no slick sleeve privates.”
“No, sir, no buck privates,” Glickman said, nodding. “Most of the boys get private first class when they graduate basic repair school.”
“Ever hear the term ‘rank hath its privileges’?” Heyster asked, shrugging at the jury.
“Yes, sir,” the gunny answered.
“Care to explain that, just so we have it on the record, because I know that the four officers and two staff noncommissioned officers serving on the jury know its meaning quite well,” Heyster said, smiling at the six men.
“As a Marine rises in rank, he gains privileges,” Glickman said, looking at the jury.
“One big privilege an enlisted Marine gains is that he no longer has to burn the honey pot from the privy, nor does he have to fill sandbags,” Heyster said, walking back to the center of the court.
“Correct, sir,” Glickman said, following the captain with his eyes. “Staff Sergeant Dunn and myself, we stand staff duty NCO once or twice a month, at the group. The sergeants and the corporals stand duty NCO at the squadron a couple or three times a month, but the working details, fire watch, security details, guard duty and so forth, that falls to the nonrated Marines. Once in a while I have to supply a corporal or a sergeant for guard duty, but mostly nonrates.”
“So would you say that the lion’s share, probably even more than seventy-six percent of the extra duty falls to the lance corporals and below?” Heyster said, tossing the statistical sheets on the prosecution table.
“That’s about right, sir,” Glickman said, nodding.
“You’ve already said you do not assign duty based on race,” Heyster said, walking back to the witness. “You do assign the working details to Marines whose technical quality lacks, and to troublemakers. Correct?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I said,” Glickman nodded.
“I’ll bet you’re the only work section in the Marine Corps who does that or ever has done that, aren’t you!” Heyster said, and laughed.
“No, sir,” Glickman said with a smile. “I’d be surprised to run across a work section that doesn’t operate that way.”
“Attitudes toward black Marines, gunny. Are your concepts toward these men out of line with everyone else in the Marine Corps today?” Heyster asked, looking at Terry O’Connor and daring him to object.
“Not from my experience, sir,” Glickman said, and shook his head, and then looked at the defense team and Private Anderson, who still stared into his lap.
“What about quality assurance and your record-keeping? Does the Marine Corps require you keep these kinds of statistics?” Heyster asked, picking up the data sheets.
“No, sir,” Glickman answered, and cleared his throat. “I know when a man fixes equipment right and when a man keeps making mistakes with the gear. The stuff that doesn’t work goes back to the bench, and he gets one of the more experienced technicians to show him where he messed up. I don’t need a bunch of numbers on a page to tell me who gets it right most of the time and who needs help most of the time.”
“Kind of a commonsense thing, when you think about it,” Heyster said, walking toward the jury. “How about education levels in your shop?”
“I never really looked that close at them, but Staff Sergeant Dunn has an associate’s degree, and some of the others have a year or two of college, too,” Glickman said, looking at the jury.
“Helps get a guy promoted, doesn’t it?” Heyster added, looking at the witness from the jury box.
“Yes, sir,” Glickman said, nodding. “Off-duty education helps, as well as military education, such as NCO school and correspondence courses from the Marine Corps Institute.”
“So let’s talk promotions. Any problems there?” Heyster asked, folding his arms and looking at the gunny. “Bias problems?”