Reluctant Warriors (47 page)

Dad died on a Wednesday in March. The funeral was on Saturday afternoon, with visitation
after the interment.

While family and friends gathered in the house in Heathwood, the old veterans gathered
in the backyard. There were eight of them. Being the only one of Dad's children to
be a veteran, I sat with them. Some of these men we'd seen before as they came through
town and spent the night in long conversations with Dad, always in the backyard with
its chairs surrounding our circular brick patio. Some I'd never seen before. In the
early spring evening, the temperature perfect, I surveyed the group.

They were old men, gray-headed or balding. As the light dimmed, they appeared almost
like ghosts. They had come, despite distance and the added expense of booking flights
only a day or two in advance. Some hadn't been able to make the funeral and had just
appeared at the house. But there they were, from six different states, retired men
whose occupations had varied from janitor to millionaire businessman. Three were
left from World War II, the rest from service in Korea.

Some had retained their martial bearing and looked like old soldiers. Others were
just paunchy old men. While from different social classes, their clothing failed
to give them away. They looked like, and were, one. Once young men, their bodies
hard, time had taken its toll. But the bond forged in combat, stronger than love,
stronger than hate, had never weakened. The trumpet had sounded once again, and they
had answered the call. A part of each had died with my father's death, and no hardship
could keep them away. Dad had been part of this. Many a time he'd left us on scant
notice after a call and disappeared for a day or so. The process had been mysterious
to our family, until now.

They sat for three hours. Some talked openly. Some, perhaps exhausted by the trip,
said little. The conversation went around, and each man had his chance.

A man named Lester spoke first.

“I saw him in Sicily, just after the invasion when the division jumped from Africa.
I was eighteen. Hell, I think
he
was eighteen. He was a buck sergeant in those days.
We had this goddamn
stupid
captain named Conover. We were in the middle of some town
near the coast. I never did understand what the hell towns we were in. I'd like to
see what they look like now. Torn-apart buildings, blood, that's what I saw.

“Well, we were behind the corner of a hotel, I think, some big brick building. Conover
came over and told Chip, ‘Sergeant, take ten men and set up an observation post in
the steeple of that church.' He pointed at a church maybe a hundred yards off, a
big, tall place. I'm telling you this job would have taken a reinforced company.
To think the enemy would just let us walk into that church and set up an OP was stupid.
It commanded the whole damn town.

“But it was orders. Chip picked ten of us, and we got a .30 machine gun. We had this
guy, Rudy Blasingame, who was as good with that gun as anyone I saw. Chip tells Rudy
and two ammo carriers to cover our advance from a garage roof directly to our right.
They take off lugging that stuff across forty yards of open space, and a sniper starts
nipping at them. Ping . . . Ping . . . I can still see those bullets hitting the
rubble as the guys ran. Between the corner where we were and the church was mostly
open ground, with two buildings in it, a big two-story frame house directly in front
of us but farther back, and a little house off to the right but closer than the two-story.
So, who was first around the corner? Chip! ‘Gimme supportin' fire,' he says, and
he goes.

“Now, the sniper starts in on Chip, who jumps behind some rubble. He was in the two-story
house maybe 150 yards off. We can't see the guy, so Blasingame just shot that damn
building apart, putting slugs around every window, and the sniper stopped firing.
Several of us went around the corner and Chip also moved up. He got just enough forward
that he could see the backside of the little house off to the right. Jesus Christ,
there was a
Mark IV tank
there with about forty infantry! They were just waiting
for some poor slobs to come across that ground.

“There was no time to do anything by the book. Chip jumped up and ran back toward
us.
‘Get back!'
he yells, ‘Y 'all get outta here.
Rudy!
' he hollers at Glasingame
for him to get out. The tank advanced to get a shot at us. We all started running
like hell for the corner we'd just come from. The first shell came in, blew out the
side of the building, and knocked Chip down. But he was up and just got around the
corner. Then the second shell came in, blew the corner off, and knocked him down
again, this time unconscious. We picked him up and ran the hell out of there. Can't
recall if we ever took that damn church or bypassed it. He was a good combat leader,
as good as I saw.” Several of the others nodded. “He wouldn't ask anything of you
he wouldn't do himself.”

Others spoke of Dad's talent as a leader. One man said: “I was with him in Korea
as we retreated from the north, after the Chinese attacked in the winter of '50.
A bunch of us had come into the line maybe only a week before. I was only eighteen
and had graduated from high school that June. The Chinese got ahead of us and ambushed
us. Plenty of us were near panic. I looked up. There Chip was, standing over me.

“‘Soldier, take this rifle. It's mine. See this chip out of the stock? A German bullet
did that and almost took my hand with it. I like that rifle, and I'm gonna want it
back real bad, so you take good care of it for me.'

“He just stood there in the middle of that road and never really sought cover. It
buoyed us up a lot. I guess his .45 was out of ammo. So, he pulled out his little
.25. Everyone who ever served with him knows about that little Colt he always carried.”
The men all smiled. “I saw him shoot two Chinese with it. He saved my life, so I
had to come to say ‘thanks' this last time.”

Another man who'd served with Dad in both wars added: “We all thought the Huertgen
Forest in Germany was bad, but those temperatures in the Iron Triangle in North Korea
were
really
terrible.”

I thought a Mr. Selton told the most memorable story. “This happened in '52 in Korea
when Chip was a captain of scouts. Five of us, including Reyes and myself, snuck
behind enemy lines to meet a small plane carrying about 150 pounds of explosives
to blow up an important railroad bridge. It was about ten miles behind the lines.
Why the fly-boys couldn't do the
job beats me. Anyhow, almost to the meeting site,
Reyes gets shot through the chest. We never saw the shooter, and we got away along
a ditch. We got to the rendezvous point carrying this good-looking guy next to me.
He was unconscious. When the single-engine plane landed, bringing in the explosives,
we carried him over to there.

“That pilot, a young lieutenant, was real jumpy; boy, did he want to get out of there.
He didn't even shut off the engine.

“Chip yelled, ‘You gotta fly this guy out of here
right now.
'

“The guy says, ‘Captain, I'm not flyin' anybody but myself out of this goddamn dump.
Orders from Major Drummond.'

“Chip stood back, affronted, but then continued. ‘The bullet went right through.
He has a collapsed lung. It's fillin' up with fluid. We can't do anythin' for him
here. If you don't get him out and back ta an aid station, he'll die in a couple
hours.'

“‘I'm not doing it. We don't haul you guys around! We bring in supplies and fly out,
period!' the lieutenant said. It was the same indifference about life that Chip hated,
which endeared him to all of us.” Selton paused and looked around the circle. Many
of the men nodded.

“The look on his face changed. He pulled out his .45, cocked it, and pointed it at
the pilot's head. ‘I'd be happy ta blow your head off right here if you don't do
exactly as I say.'

“It took us all night and most of a day to carefully work our way that many miles
behind the lines. I can imagine our dirty uniforms and sour expressions. The pilot
was just dumbfounded! ‘What are you talking about? If you shoot me, he'll die!'

“‘If you don't take him, he's gonna die anyway,' one of the guys said. Chip and the
rest of us nodded. The pilot still couldn't believe it.

“‘I'll be killed. This thing can get into these spaces with all of these supplies,
but I can't get out with any extra weight!'

“‘We don't care,' I said.

“The pilot realized there was no way out but to do as we said. ‘I'll be killed,'
he said, almost screaming. ‘All right! All right! You assholes. My major'll fix you,
Wiley, all of ya! You'll all be court-martialed!'

“‘That'd be fine,' Mickelson said. Sometimes in combat, you reach the place where
you just don't give a damn.

“We couldn't lie him down in the back with that lung, so we put him upright in the
passenger seat and strapped him in. That was his only chance. Chip grabbed the pilot
by the neck just before he was to take off.

“‘You lookie here. Suppose the sergeant here happens ta fall out on the way back
durin' some rough air. You should know that whatever god-forsaken hole you crawl
into, wherever you go, some day I'll find ya and I'll kill ya.'

“The pilot, obviously rattled, said only, ‘Just let me go!' He surveyed the field,
revved the motor, and actually got off. Damn, I never thought he'd make it. He was
at the aid station in thirty minutes. It saved the sergeant's life, and here he is
sitting next to me with that same ugly face.”

The men chuckled.

“That damn pilot
did
seek revenge. In several weeks word came down to battalion that
charges were being preferred against Chip and he would face a court-martial hearing.
Legal proceedings continued for a long time, until the charges were suddenly dropped.”
Several of the men smiled and nodded. “The rumor's always been that [Lieutenant Louis]
Hubering went to see that pilot.”

Another one of the men in the circle said, “Yeah, that Hubering was a good man too.”

The time slipped by. They took their turns; none seemed to be in a rush. When they
were done, suddenly they stood, almost as one. Each shook my hand warmly. I offered
to put them up in the house or with neighbors, but they politely declined. In what
seemed like less than a minute, they disappeared, much in the same manner as the
old veterans themselves were disappearing.

Now, when I open the drawer of Grandmother's antique desk, there in felt fabric are
the two weapons my father carried with him while in the Army: a Colt .45 automatic
and the little Colt .25. I never saw either fired, and the bullets in the detached
clips were removed long ago. On those occasions when we looked at his Army uniform,
or at pictures of Dad and his friends, sometimes he would take out the pistols.

The .45 he looked at with admiration, as one would an old and valued friend. He dismissed
our questions about it. “Someday, maybe I'll tell you about it. I got him from a
good soldier.” Then his lip stuck out and stiffened, and he would be silent for a
while.

The .25 was even more important to him. He revered it, almost like a living thing.
We asked where he got it too, but he never said.

He would look at the weapon, smiling, marveling at it. Then he would look at us and
say the same words every time: “Children, this plain-lookin' gun was the dearest
friend I ever had in this world! Many a time, he saved my carcass. Without him, none
of you children would be here, and your mama would have married a rich man and had
a sweet life.”

We never quite understood his statement. The idea that our lives might never have
been, that he might have been killed in the war, struck us curiously.

I only saw Dad upset a few times and get emotionally upset twice: once when Mama
was ill, and once near the end of his life during one of the times when we looked
at the little pistol. Why he held it in such regard, I would love to understand.
He always promised that he would tell us about the guns, but he never did.

So I look at them now, a few months after his passing, and carefully place them back
in the fabric where they belong.

–Andy Wiley
Columbia, South Carolina
July 17, 2007

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.

—Sir Walter Scott,
The Lady of the Lake