For
a moment a man who wasn’t even sure there was a God prayed. Then he raised his
right arm. It moved like an arm should move, so he wiggled the fingers, all
five of them. He lowered the arm and raised the left one. It too obeyed the
telegraphed message from his brain, so he wiggled his fingers, and, once again,
all five of them responded. He lowered the arm and waited. He slowly raised his
right leg and carried out the same exercise with the toes.
He
lowered the leg before raising the other one, and that’s when he felt the pain.
He
turned his head from side to side, and then placed the palms of his hands on
the ground. He prayed again and pressed down on his hands to push himself
giddily up. He waited for a few moments in the hope that the trees would stop
spinning, and then tried to stand. Once he was on his feet he tentatively
placed one foot in front of the other, as a child would do, and as he didn’t
fall over, he tried to move the other one in the same direction. Yes, yes, yes,
thank you, yes, and then he felt the pain again, almost as if until that moment
he had been anesthetized.
He
fell to his knees, and examined the calf of his left leg where the bullet had
torn straight through. Ants were crawling in and out of the wound, oblivious to
the fact that this human thought he was still alive. It took Nat some time to
remove them one by one, before binding his leg with a sleeve of his shirt.
He
looked up to see the sun retreating toward the hills. He only had a short time
to discover if any of his colleagues had survived.
He
stood and turned a complete circle, only stopping when he spotted smoke coming
from the forest. He began to limp toward it, vomiting when he stumbled across
the charred body of the young pilot, whose name he didn’t know, the jacket of
his uniform hanging from a branch. Only the lieutenant’s bars on his epaulet
indicated who it had been. Nat would bury him later, but for now he had a race
with the sun. It was then that he heard the groan.
“Where
are you?” shouted Nat. The groan went up a decibel. Nat swung around to see the
massive frame of Staff Sergeant Foreman lodged in the trees, only a few feet
above the wreckage.
As
he reached the man, the groan
rose
yet another
decibel. “Can you hear me?” asked Nat. The man opened and closed his eyes as
Nat lowered him onto the ground.
He
heard himself saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you home,” like some schoolboy
hero from the pages of a comic book. Nat removed the compass from the staff
sergeant’s belt, looked up at the sun, and then he spotted an object in the
trees. He would have cheered if only he could have thought of some way of
retrieving it. Nat dragged himself over to the base of the tree. He somehow
jumped up and down on one foot as he grabbed at a branch and shook it, hoping
to dislodge its load. He was about to give up when it shifted an inch. He
tugged at the branch even more vigorously, and then it moved again and
suddenly, without warning, came crashing down. It would have landed on Nat’s
head if he hadn’t quickly fallen to one side. He couldn’t jump.
Nat
rested for a moment, before slowly lifting the staff sergeant up and gently
placing him on the stretcher. He then sat on the ground and watched the sun
disappear behind the highest tree, having completed its duty for the day in
that particular land.
He
had read somewhere about a mother who had kept her child alive after a car
crash by talking to him all through the night. Nat talked to the staff sergeant
all night.
Fletcher
read in sheer disbelief how, with the help of local peasants, Lieutenant Nat
Cartwright had dragged that stretcher from village to village for two hundred
and eleven miles, and seen the sun rise and fall seventeen times before he
reached the outskirts of the city of Saigon, where both men were rushed to the
nearest field hospital.
Staff
Sergeant Speck Foreman died three days later, never discovering the name of the
lieutenant who had rescued him and who was now fighting for his own life.
Fletcher
followed every snippet of news he could find about Lieutenant Cartwright, never
doubting he would live.
A
week later they flew Nat to Camp Zama in Japan, where they operated on him to
save his leg. The following month, he was allowed to return home to the Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington,
D.c
.
,
to complete his recuperation.
The
next time Fletcher saw Nat Cartwright was on the front page of the New York
Times, shaking hands with President Johnson in the Rose Garden at the White
House.
He
was receiving the Medal of Honor.
Michael
and Susan Cartwright were “bowled over” by their visit to the White House to
witness their only son being decorated with the Medal of Honor in the Rose
Garden. After the ceremony, President Johnson listened attentively to Nat’s
father as he explained the problems Americans would be facing if they all lived
to the age of ninety and were not properly covered by life insurance. “In the
next century, Americans will spend as long in retirement as they do in work,”
were the words LBJ repeated to his cabinet the following morning.
On
their journey back to Cromwell, Nat’s mother asked him what plans he had for
the future.
“I
can’t be sure, because it’s not in my hands,” he replied. “I’ve received orders
to report to Fort
Benning
on Monday, when I’ll find
out what Colonel
Tremlett
has in mind for me.”
“Another
wasted year,” said his mother.
“Character
building,” said his father, who was still glowing from his long chat with the
president.
“I
hardly think Nat’s in need of much more of that,” was his mother’s response.
Nat
smiled as he glanced out of the window and took in the Connecticut landscape.
While pulling a stretcher for seventeen days and seventeen nights with snatches
of sleep and little food, he had wondered if he would ever see his homeland
again. He thought about his mother’s words, and had to agree with her. The idea
of a wasted year of form-filling, making and returning salutes before training
someone else to take his place angered him. The top brass had made it clear
that they weren’t going to let him return to Vietnam and thereby risk the life
of one of America’s few recognized heroes.
Over
dinner that night, after his father had repeated the conversation he’d had with
the president several times, he asked Nat to tell them more about ‘
nam
.
For
over an hour, Nat described the city of Saigon, the countryside and its people,
rarely referring to his job as a warrant officer. “The Vietnamese are
hard-working and friendly,” he told his parents, “and they seem genuinely
pleased that we’re there, but no one, on either side, believes that we can stay
forever. I fear history will regard the whole episode as pointless, and once
it’s over it will be quickly erased from the national psyche.” He turned to his
father. “At least your war had a purpose.” His mother nodded her agreement, and
Nat was surprised to see that his father didn’t immediately offer a contrary
view.
“Did
you come away with any particular abiding memory?” asked his mother, hoping
that her son might talk about his experience at the front.
“Yes,
I did.
The inequality of man.”
“But
we’re doing everything we can to assist the people of South Vietnam,” said his
father.
“I’m
not referring to the Vietnamese, father,”
Nat
replied, “I’m talking about what Kennedy described as ‘my fellow Americans.”“
“Fellow
Americans?” his mother repeated.
“Yes,
because my abiding memory will be our treatment of the poor minorities, in
particular the blacks. They were on the battlefield in great numbers for no
other reason than that they couldn’t afford a smart lawyer who could show them
how to avoid the draft.”
“But
your closest friend
. .”
“I
know,” said Nat, “and I’m glad Tom didn’t sign up, because he might well have
suffered the same fate as Dick Tyler.”
“So
do you regret your decision?” asked his mother quietly.
Nat
took some time before he responded. “No, but I often think of Speck Foreman,
his wife and three children in Alabama, and wonder what purpose his death
served.”
Nat
rose early the next morning to catch the first train bound for Fort
Benning
. When the locomotive pulled into Columbus station,
he checked his watch.
There
was still another hour before his meeting with the colonel, so he decided to
walk the two miles up to the academy. On the way, he was continually reminded
that he was on a military base, by how regularly he had to return salutes from
everyone below the rank of captain. Some even smiled in recognition when they
spotted the Medal of Honor, as they might with a college football hero.
He
was standing outside Colonel
Tremlett’s
office a full
fifteen minutes before his appointment.
“Good
morning, Captain Cartwright. The colonel told me to take you straight through
to his office the moment you arrived,” said an even younger aide.
Nat
marched into the colonel’s office, stood to attention, and saluted.
Tremlett
came around from behind his desk, and threw his
arms around Nat. The aide was unable to hide his surprise, as he thought only
the French greeted their fellow officers in that way. The colonel motioned Nat
to a seat on the other side of his desk. After returning to his chair,
Tremlett
opened a thick file and began studying its
contents. “Do you have any idea what you want to do for the next year, Nat?”
“No,
I don’t, sir, but as I’m not being allowed to return to Vietnam, I’d be happy
to take up your earlier offer, and remain at the academy to assist you with any
new recruits.”
“That
job has already been taken,” said
Tremlett
, “and I’m
no longer sure if that’s what’s best for you in the long term.”
“Do
you have something else in mind?” asked Nat.
“Now
you mention it, I do,” admitted the colonel. “Once I knew you were coming home,
I called in the academy’s top lawyers to advise me. Normally, I despise
lawyers-a breed who only fight their battles in a courtroom-but I have to admit
on this occasion one of them has come up with a most ingenious scheme.” Nat
didn’t comment, as he was keen to learn what the colonel had in mind. “Rules
and regulations can be interpreted in so many ways. How else would lawyers keep
their jobs?” asked the colonel. “A year ago, you signed up for the draft
without question, and having been commissioned, you were sent to Vietnam, where
you proved me wrong, thank God.”
Nat
wanted to say, get on with it, Colonel, but restrained himself.
“By
the way, Nat, I forgot to ask if you’d like a coffee.”
“No
thank you, sir,” said Nat, trying not to sound impatient.
The
colonel smiled, “I think I’ll have one.”
He
picked up his phone. “Fix me up with a coffee, will you, Dan,” he said, “and
perhaps even some doughnuts.” He looked across at Nat. “Are you sure you won’t
change your mind?”
“You’re
enjoying yourself, aren’t you, sir?” said Nat with a smile.
“To
be honest, I am,” said the colonel. “You see, it’s taken me several weeks to
get Washington to fall in line with my proposal, so I hope you’ll forgive me if
I indulge myself for a few more minutes.”
Nat
smiled wryly, and settled back in his chair.
“It
appears that there are several avenues left open to you, and most of them in my
view are a complete waste of time. You could, for example, apply for a
discharge on the grounds of an injury sustained in action. If we went down that
path you would end up with a small pension, and be out of here in about six
months-after your spell as a warrant officer you don’t need to be told how long
the paperwork would take. You could, of course, as you suggested, complete your
service here at the academy, but do I really want a cripple on my staff?” the
colonel asked with a grin, as his aide entered the room with a tray of piping
hot coffee and two cups. “You could on the other hand take up some other
posting, in a
more friendly
environment, like
Honolulu, but I don’t expect you need to go that far to find yourself a dancing
girl. But whatever I have to offer,”
he
once again
glanced down at Nat’s file, “you would still only end up clicking your heels
for another year. So now I need to ask you a question, Nat. What had you
planned to do, once you’d completed your two years?”
“Return
to college, sir, and continue with my studies.”
“Exactly
what I thought you’d say,” said the colonel, “so that’s exactly what you’re
going to do.”
“But
the new term starts next week,” said Nat, “and as you pointed out, the
paperwork alone...”
“Unless
you were to sign up for another six years, then you might find that the
paperwork moves surprisingly quickly.”
“Sign
up for another six years?” repeated Nat in disbelief. “I was hoping to get out
of the army, not stay in it.”