While still in school, Mike paid an important visit to his family, who were then based at the U.S. Army War College at historic Carlisle Barracks about thirty miles west of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It was there, at a social gathering, that he encountered another Army brat, Patricia Balkman. She, too, was visiting her parents on a break from her school, the University of Texas in Austin. A romantic attachment developed and a long-distance relationship began.
After graduation from Duke, Michael Peterson entered law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was an unpleasant and disruptive sojourn. He railed against the university's ban on speakers who had claimed their Fifth Amendment rights as protection in congressional hearings.
He created another flock of enemies when he assisted a law professor in his defense of a gay man charged with sodomy in a highly publicized case in Charlotte. He left school before completing the first year.
For a brief time, he returned to Reno, lived with his Uncle Jimmy Bartalino and earned a living doing roadwork. Then a job offer came from Washington, D.C.
A year earlier, the Pentagon had sent the first ground troops to Vietnam. The incursion provided new and profitable work for defense consultants and they were all in a hiring mode. One company hired Peterson as a systems science analyst.
Before that job started, he headed back east and made wedding arrangements with Patty Balkman. Mike's family was delighted. They had all fallen in love with the sweet girl Mike had chosen to be his wife. In 1966, the couple was married in a ceremony at Fort Belvoir Proving Ground, in Northern Virginia, just minutes from Mount Vernon, Old Town Alexandria and the nation's capital.
Soon after starting his new job with the defense consultant, Michael was sent to Vietnam. There, he was assigned to conduct a study to determine whether or not two or more mechanized divisions could win the war. The catch was that the truth was irrelevant. His superiors made it clear: They wanted him to return with convincing arguments to send in these divisions even if the evidence pointed to the contrary.
Peterson did what he was told, but the experience had added an extra edge of cynicism to his innate combative nature. There were other things about the experience that disgusted him. He witnessed illegal currency dealings by a colleague. He saw first-hand that the daily reports of those killed in action did not match up with the reports delivered to the public by the media back home.
His disgust, however, did not quench his desire to become a writer. Within the shadows of lies, the fever of battle and the corruption so common in this convoluted country, he saw rich fodder for fiction. He decided he wanted to write the great American novel about the war;
but first, like Hemingway before him, he needed to fight in the war.
It took some finesse and deception to make that happen. The Selective Service System had classified him as 4Fâchronic pain in his leg made him unfit to serve. Somehow, Peterson managed to tamper with his records and eliminate that information. In 1968, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. After boot camp, the Marines granted his wishâhe was deployed to Vietnam.
Patty moved in with Mike's family, who were now stationed in Copenhagen. Patty thought she would be able to get a job there, but it was not to be. She did, eventually, find a teaching position at Hahn Air Force Base in Hahn, West Germany, along the Mosel River and close to the border with Luxembourg. It was considered to have the worst weather of any air base in Europe, with long winters, short summers and lots of rain and snow. Hahn played a pivotal role in the cold war with the Soviet Union as the base for a tactical wing, the 50th Air Police K-9 section.
It was here that Patty met Pat Finn. Pat was on her first teaching assignment with the Department of Defense and knew no one. She was taken with Patty from the start because of Patty's friendly, welcoming manner and her very sweet personality.
Ironically, Mike Peterson was against the war and quite vocal about it. Patty was anti-war, too. She was out leading protests against the conflict while her husband submerged himself in the dark forbidding landscape of an alien country that reeked of death.
Early in 1969, Lieutenant Mike Peterson arrived in Vietnam with the eagerness and self-confidence only a man inexperienced in combat could possess. He was assigned to the First Amphibious Tractor Battalion headquartered on the Gulf of Tonkin at the mouth of the Cue Viet River.
In previous military action, these amphibious tractors, “amtracs,” transported men and supplies from ship to shore. Marines in this war used them as patrol vehicles. The leathernecks attached to these vehicles called themselves “amgrunts.”
Peterson headed north from the main headquarters past the small base of C-4, to Oceanview, the northernmost post in South Vietnam. This area of sand dunes circled by concertina wire was perched on the edge of the demilitarized zone and ripe for attacks by the North Vietnamese Army.
The inexperienced fighter was the ranking officer in command of about thirty menâthe amtrac platoon, a mortar crew, spotters who called in missile strikes to the battleships out in the gulf, and a four-man Army team responsible for the dusters, the twin 40mm machine guns.
At first, the men saw Mike Peterson and his gung-ho 110-percent attitude as a joke. Humor was traded for resentment when he volunteered them for extra patrolsâextra patrols meant extra risks. Lieutenant Peterson soon settled down in his command, earning more trust and respect from his subordinates than many other men in his position.
They found it difficult to sit down and have an ordinary conversation with him, though. He always seemed to have something going on in his head, as if he were analyzing every word they spoke.
On February 21, the amgrunts performed a public relations function with the local populace. They went into the nearest village and distributed toys to the children in honor of the Tet holiday, the annual New Year's celebration in Vietnam.
When darkness fell on February 22, a small patrol unit went across the wire to hunt for NVA sappers, men who attempted to slip inside the base loaded down with explosives. The group Peterson dispatched on that duty included Marlo Kinsey, Vernon Strickland, Winfield Page and his radio operator, Jack Peterson, a 19-year-old boy from Wisconsinâthe two Petersons were not related.
The patrol beyond the wire assumed their positions in an L-shaped ambush position. Marines behind the line stared through starlight scopes, the night vision devices that used moonlight and other ambient illumination to enhance visibility in the dark of the night.
Enemy troops were spotted in the distance. On the radio, Peterson ordered the patrol to maintain their post. Then, ground radar indicated the movement of a larger
number of NVA troops. Peterson ordered the men to retreat to a new position, just one hundred meters from the wire, and sit tight.
At 11 P.M., a Marine on a scope cried out a warning. Peterson peered through the green haze of the lens. What he saw created explosions of anxiety inside his headâtwenty-five soldiers descending on his four-man patrol. “Run, now, as fast as you can. Run back to the wire.”
They tried to retreat but were confused. They did not know which direction they should run. They lay on their backs staring at the sky, looking for a point of reference. When they saw a light on a tank flash, they determined the location of the other men and headed for it.
Sounds of movement encircled themâthey were surrounded by NVA. Fortunately, the enemy soldiers were unaware of the Marines in their midst. Any noise the men made, the NVA attributed to their own troops.
Page and Kinsey paired up and moved toward the wire. Caught between NVA and Marines, they were hit in the crossfire. Kinsey, suffering from a concussion, lacerations and a nosebleed, lost consciousness. When he came to, Page had one arm wrapped around Kinsey's shoulderâbut Page was dead.
Jack Peterson was wounded and moaning. Kinsey and Strickland dragged him through the wire. Jack complained about his legs, but seemed unaware of other more severe injuries. He died within a few minutes.
Kinsey was put on a stretcher and given a couple of shots. The medics wanted to send him to the rear, but a helicopter could not land in the midst of all the fire ringing out on both sides.
Lieutenant Michael Peterson approached Kinsey and asked, “What's going on?”
Kinsey jumped to his feet. “You dumb motherâyou guys shot at us.”
“Where's Page?”
“I'm two hundred percent sure Page is dead,” Kinsey answered, “and your men shot him.”
“I don't believe it.”
“If you don't believe it, then go out there and see for yourself.”
Peterson froze in placeâhis face expressionlessâhis mind numb. He needed to take charge of the situation, but he just stared into space.
“Winters!” Kinsey yelled. “Give Peterson a slap.”
Dale Winters hauled back and delivered two hard hits to the lieutenant. Just like in the cartoons, the punches pulled Peterson back from the abyss. He yelled questions at his men, answered calls from division headquarters, called in air strikes and called for support. He rose to the challenge of leadership under pressure like an orchestra conductor pulling together the sounds of individual instruments into one harmonious whole.
Waves of enemy troops crashed down on the outpost. Between 100 and 300 North Vietnamese soldiers peppered the small contingent with rifle fire and mortar shells. When Kinsey heard the enemy inside the line, he got up from his stretcher for good. He was determined not to die flat on his back.
A sapper set off a trip flare when he slithered into the outpost. He was greeted with a shower of gunfire. Before he died, he heaved a grenade into the command bunker. But it was not Mike Peterson's day to die. The pin had
not been pulled and the weapon fell impotent at his feet.
Peterson shrieked into the radio for reinforcements. His request was denied. At C-4 base, they wanted to help, but without a cessation of protective artillery fire, there was no safe way to get additional forces to the battlefield.
Six hours after it began, just before dawn, the enemy withdrew. Outnumbered and isolated, the men had defended their position throughout a terrifying night. The only American casualties that night were the Marines shot by their own men as they scrambled for the wire.
Kinsey, Strickland, and two others were medevaced out with the bodies of Jack Peterson and Winfield Page. Strickland and Kinsey returned to their platoon that night.
The base at Oceanview had not been singled out for this conflict. All across South Vietnam, bases were attacked on February 22, 1969. The second Tet offensive had begun.
Michael Peterson emerged from that night with a Silver Star for gallantry in battle, a souvenir grenade that failed to end his life and the haunting memory of his radio dispatcher dying before his eyes.
After leaving Vietnam, Mike was stationed at Atsugi Naval Air Base in Japan for his remaining time in the Marines. Patty joined him there. One evening, they invited Mike's friend Sergeant Beverly over for dinner. Afterwards, Mike drove him home.
On the way there, a truck slammed into the side of the
car killing Beverly. Mike was pinned in the vehicle, but was still alive. It took thirty minutes to extract him from the car as his friend lay by his side. Mike was rushed to Camp Zama where many Vietnam war injured were treated. He had a collapsed lung and a shattered leg. Despite the experience and expertise of the doctors who put his leg back together, Mike walked with a limp from that day on.
Mike and Patty left Japan and flew to Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. He and Patty looked up Marlo Kinsey. They invited him and another Marine to their house for Thanksgiving dinner.
It was during that visit that Kinsey first learned of Peterson's ambition to be an author. In the mezzanine area of their quarters, Mike had a study dedicated to his writing. On the walls were pictures from Vietnam. Kinsey found the photographs of the bodies of dead Viet Cong very disturbing.
After Mike received an honorable discharge and a permanent medical disability, Patty landed a teaching job at Giessen Elementary School in Germany, enabling the couple to move back overseas. It was a déjà vu time for Patty. She had lived in Giessen as a child when her father was stationed there right after World War II. She was impacted by the senseless destruction she saw first-hand in post-war Germany.
The couple made a trip to Hahn to visit Pat Finn. It was on this trip that Pat met Mike for the first time. Both Pat and Patty were enamored of the idyllic life in the small country villagesâquiet, orderly places that moved at a much slower pace than life in the Statesâso much
so that Pat, who had come to Germany for one year, ended up staying for thirty-two.
Each little village had its own flea market and every Saturday, they could stock up on fresh produce from the fruit and vegetable market.
In addition to a mutual love of the lifestyle small German towns offered, Pat and Patty shared an interest in cultural events and travel. Although Michael accompanied them to concerts and performances, he referred to the two woman as the “camp followers of the arts.”
Mike and Patty then moved to Durham, North Carolina, where Mike enrolled again at Duke University for the 72-73 school yearâthis time under the GI Bill. While Mike prepared to step into the writing life, Patty taught school. They moved back and forth from Durham to Germany. Patty's next teaching position was at Rhein Main Elementary School near Frankfurt; Patty Peterson met the teacher across the hall, Liz McKee. The two became fast friends.
The Petersons had settled in Germany when their first son was born after thirty hours of labor on December 13, 1974. That night, a snowstorm caused an electrical outage. Clayton Sumner Peterson entered the world with the help of a doctor holding a flashlight to guide the way.
In half a year, Patty was pregnant again. This time she was in labor for eighteen hours before giving birth to their second son, Todd, on March 14, 1976. On a trip back to the States to visit Michael's parents, both boys were baptized in one service in Atlanta, Georgia. Richard White Adams, one of Mike's English professors at Duke, served as godfather to both Clayton and Todd. Liz
Ratliff was godmother to Clayton. Pat Finn was Todd's godmother.
Patty often tried Pat's patience. She always put the pre-departure care of her boys off until the last minute. This caused them to stumble in late to many events. After attempts to get her friend to change her habits failed, Pat told the couple that events started a half hour earlier than they actually did, and then they were all able to arrive on time to be seated and ready for the show to begin.
When Pat visited, Pattyâwho liked to go to bed earlyâwould tuck in her children and then turn in herself. Pat sat up for hours talking with Michael. He often spoke of Patty's friend, Liz McKee. He said she was scatter-brained and nervous. He told Pat, “She is not like youâshe has no sense when it comes to managing money.”
Pat thought Michael was a very intellectual and interesting man, whose story-telling skills were extraordinary. Pat enjoyed seeing Michael with his boys. When they were young, he was very gentle with them. He was not, however, always gentle with his wife. As a househusband, Mike had responsibility for a lot of chores around their home. He often neglected them and left the house in a perpetual state of chaos. If Patty spoke of it, he blew up.
Patty often hinted that Mike was not always nice to her. Nonetheless, she made never-ending apologies and excuses for his boorish behavior. Pat also noticed that her friend “walked on eggs” around her husband at all times.
Mike and Patty traveled to an extent that would make a
nomad ache with envy. They vacationed in the Azores, a jewel-like string of islands far off the coast of Portugal. Every Thanksgiving, the Petersons traveled to Copenhagen. Each Christmas, they attended the Christmas Fair in Nuremberg.
Pat Finn traveled with them on many excursions, including trips to Copenhagen, Vienna, Strasbourg, Venice and Lago di Gardaâa beautiful lake area of natural, dramatic beauty, surrounded with medieval architecture and nestled in the Italian Alps. Pat and Patty were very close and enjoyed each other's company. In time, Michael Peterson would shred their relationship into tattered memories.