Carry Me Home (3 page)

“Captain,” an apathetic technician told him, “your ear tests indicate a loss of hearing in both ears to very low frequency sound and in your right ear a diminished capacity to hear midfrequency tones at relatively high volume.”

“So what’s that mean?” Wapinski asked.

“Sir”—the enlisted man stared him in the eyes, shook his head, shrugged—“it means if you sign these papers sayin it’s okay, you’re outa here. You’re outa the Green Machine tonight. If you don’t sign, we keep you here for a few weeks. Run some tests. Shit like that.”

“A few weeks, Specialist?” Wapinski asked. He did not like the boy’s attitude.

“Yes Sir. Then they put you before a review panel and offer you a disability. For this, maybe ten percent.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Well, Sir,” the technician groaned, irritated, “it means they send you maybe thirty bucks in the mail every month for the rest of your life. It means you gotta keep havin yer ears rechecked to make sure they’re still bad. Look, what it comes down to is cigarette money. You can stay here for the next couple of weeks to guarantee you’re in cigarette money for the rest of yer life, or you can sign these papers waiving any claims about yer ears and you’re home free.”

“Um.” Snot-nosed Spec. 4, Wapinski thought.

“Sir, this is the only thing keepin you from bein discharged, isn’t it?” Wapinski didn’t answer. The technician repeated the question, a bit louder, aiming his voice toward Wapinski’s left ear. Still Wapinski didn’t answer. “Come on, Sir,” the technician pleaded.

“Sign em for me,” Wapinski said.

“What?” The technician was astounded.

“Is
your
hearing bad, Specialist?”

“No Sir.”

“Then sign the papers for me and tell me where I get a ticket to Philadelphia.”

At eight o’clock in the morning, Pacific Daylight Saving Time, Friday 13 June, Robert Wapinski called home. He had called the day he arrived, had spoken briefly with his mother. “Hi. I’m in Seattle,” he had said. “Oh,” his mother answered. “That’s good.” He had sighed. Talking to his mother was never satisfying. “I’m going to be here a few days,” he told her. “I’ll call when I know my discharge date. When I’m coming back.” “You do that,” she had said. “Mom, ah, don’t call Stacy, okay? I want to surprise her.” “I won’t,” she had answered.

Their conversation on the 13th was no more rewarding, and after having spent nearly an hour waiting for a phone that wasn’t so jammed with coins that it could operate, he was angry.

“Three one five four,” his mother answered with the ending digits of her phone number.

“Hi,” he said. “It’s me. I’ve got a ten-fifteen flight out of here that gets me into Philly at 7:05, your time.”

“Rob,” his mother said, “see if you can get a flight to Williamsport, okay?”

“I thought maybe Brian could pick me up in Philly. Have you talked to Stacy?”

“You know I never see that girl,” she said. Then she added, “My stomach’s been acting up.”

At the gate to the flight to Philadelphia Robert Wapinski did a curious thing. He was dressed in summer-weight class-A greens, bedecked with ribbons, pants bloused, jump boots spitshined. He believed it would be the last time he would ever wear a military uniform and he wanted to wear it properly, proudly, this one last time. And yet, perhaps because he was alone amongst civilians preparing to board the flight and he wished to hide, perhaps because he had just been discharged from an institution that had owned him for the past thirty-four months and the freedom was producing an identity crisis, or perhaps because he just wished to be left alone with his own thoughts, shortly before boarding he went to the airport shop and purchased a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He had never owned sunglasses, had resisted buying a pair of aviator glasses while in-country partly because so many rear-echelon officers wore them and he despised their clique. He put the glasses on, adjusted them at the nose and behind the ears, boarded.

He took a window seat. The plane was nearly full yet both seats beside him remained vacant. The plane taxied, waited, taxied, thundered down and was airborne.

In the aisle seat one row up from him a man, perhaps in his early fifties, turned and looked back. Wapinski tensed. He turned his head as if looking out the window but cocked his eyes toward the stranger. The man was skimming through a news magazine. Every few pages he stopped, turned around, looked at Wapinski.

What’s your story, Jack? Wapinski thought. Still he pretended not to notice the man. What’s he lookin at me for? The man put his magazine down, stared at Wapinski. What the hell’s goin on? Wapinski tried to take in every detail. He was a large man, over six feet, at least two hundred pounds. His suit was well made, looked expensive. His tie was conservatively striped, his shoes were heavy wingtips, good for walking. Wapinski decided he must be a salesman. But his unshaven face was not a salesman’s face. I bet he’s queer, Wapinski thought.

The man stood, crossed the aisle, came back toward Wapinski. Wapinski searched the clouds below looking for a break to the ground.

“Mind if I sit down?” the man asked.

“Go ahead.” Wapinski choked on the words. He cleared his throat, continued to search the clouds. If this guy puts his hand on my leg I’ll kill him.

The man motioned for the stewardess. When she came he ordered two small bottles of scotch. “Bring two glasses,” he said to the stewardess. “With ice, please.”

From behind his sunglasses, out of the corner of his eye, Wapinski watched the man. The flight attendant set the bottles and glasses on the man’s fold-down table. He opened both bottles, poured one into each glass. “You just got back from Vet Naam, huh?”

Vet Naam, Wapinski said to himself. Christ, we’ve been there a decade and Americans still can’t pronounce the name of the country. “Yeah,” he answered. “Why?”

“Naw, naw, naw. Here. How bout a drink?”

“I never drink scotch.”

“Never? An army captain who doesn’t drink scotch!”

“Nope,” Wapinski said. “Beer. A little vodka. I don’t drink much hard stuff. Never scotch straight.”

“Well, you know, you’re a man now, right?”

“I guess I am.”

“Aw, you can drink it. Don’t worry about it. It won’t do nothin to ya. Besides, you look like you need a stiff drink.”

“Okay,” Wapinski said. He took the glass, tasted it, tilted his head back, gulped. The man did the same. Then he ordered two more. They each downed another drink without talking and the man ordered two more. Wapinski downed that one and removed his sunglasses.

The man smiled. He downed his drink, loosened his tie, ordered two more, finally said, “Well, what was it like over there?”

“It was all right,” Wapinski answered. “It was okay.”

“You see a lot of action?”

“I’m infantry,” Wapinski answered.

“So was I,” the man said.

“Hm?”

“World War Two. Europe. Marched north from Anzio all the way to Germany. We were in some nasty places.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

For the next hour he recounted battles all over Europe in which he had participated twenty-five years earlier.

“Wow! That sounds like it was hell!” Wapinski said. He was impressed with the details of the man’s stories, the comparisons he drew to Viet Nam. “Our battles were a lot smaller,” Wapinski said. “At Dong Ap Bia we had fifty percent casualties in one battalion but the overall numbers don’t compare with what you’re talking about.”

“Son,” the man said very respectfully, “every man’s got his own hell. You just finished with yours.”

“Yeah,” Wapinski answered. They were into their fifth or sixth drink.

“Never let em get to your mind,” the man said.

“Um.”

“You know what that means?”

“I guess.”

“It means when everyone else is saying this is the way things were, and you know that is not the way things were, don’t let em convince you that you don’t know your own mind. That happens. Happens all the time. They make you doubt yourself, doubt what you been through, what you know and what you accomplished. They’ll try to make you believe you’re crazy.

“I know what you guys have gone through,” the salesman continued. “Or I think I know. You guys have been terrific. Don’t ever let em make you believe different. And don’t ever let em paint it up like roses either. Never let em get to your mind cause they just don’t understand. How bout one more?”

The plane landed twenty minutes early. Wapinski snapped awake. His sunglasses were on the seat beside him. Most of the passengers had deplaned, the line in the aisle at the door was only five or six people.

“Hey,” Wapinski shouted. He stood up, grabbed his small bag and started for the exit. “Hey, what happened to that guy?” he blurted at a stewardess. She looked at him blankly. “The guy that bought me all those drinks,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” the stewardess answered. “I’ve been in the forward cabin.”

“Damn.” Wapinski gritted his teeth. “I didn’t even get his name.”

“Sir,” a flight attendant addressed him from behind, “you left your glasses on your seat.”

During the hour and a half layover before his departure for Williamsport, Robert Wapinski shuffled about restlessly. He called home. His mother had not asked his brother to pick him up in Philadelphia. “Call when you get to Williamsport,” she said. He bought a coffee. He watched people staring at him in his gung-ho, airborne-all-the-way, ribbon-bedecked class-A uniform, and he felt self-conscious.

He sat in a lime-green fiberglass seat, stared out the terminal windows at the activity, the seeming random motion of planes, trucks, people scurrying. He winced, grabbed a magazine from the table beside him. Casually he flipped pages, then flipped back to the cover:
Newsweek
, June 9, 1969. In the “Periscope” section he found a short paragraph about the North Viet Namese using Russian-made helicopters to airlift troops and supplies within Cambodia and Laos and “occasionally across the border into Vietnam.” He did not doubt that was true. He looked up. The turmoil irritated him, made him tense. He glanced at the “War in Vietnam” section.

There was
his
last battle! Chills ran up his back, neck. “The Battle of Ap Bia Mountain.” He bit his lip. Couldn’t, he thought, they refer to it as Dong Ap Bia like we did? Under the accompanying photo he read, “Hamburger Hill: Was the slaughter really necessary?”

The Nixon Administration, rattled by Congressional criticism over the battle, sought last week to disclaim responsibility for stepping up the pace of the war
.... To disclaim responsibility! What the
—
?
White House aides insisted to reporters that there had been no escalation of military operations by U.S. forces since President Nixon took office on Jan. 20....

NEW TACTICS: As with many arguments about the Vietnamese war, the truth in this case seemed to be more elusive than was indicated by Washington’s statistics. Undoubtedly, Hanoi’s policy is to maximize U.S. casualties in South Vietnam in hopes of making an impact on American public opinion and improving its bargaining position at the Paris peace talks....
Which is exactly our policy also. To inflict enough hurt on them to make them stop invading the south.
Cautioned by North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh that they must “economize human and material resources,” the Communists this time are avoiding human-wave assaults. Instead it appears they have opted for radically different tactics that combine mortar and rocket attacks with hit-and-run raids by small, elite sapper squads....
What’s radically different about that? That’s been going on for years. What the hell are these guys ...

When he halted the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam last November, President Johnson also approved a policy of exerting “maximum pressure” on the enemy in South Vietnam. The Nixon Administration has never thought fit to alter that policy....
Why the hell should it? What are we supposed to do, exert minimum pressure? They’d simply fill in the voids. They’d be in the population centers. These people don’t understand.

U.S. military men defend this “maximum pressure” strategy as the only one that can prevent large-scale Communist ground attacks on South Vietnam’s major cities. “The idea of pulling back and letting the enemy have the jungles because it would cut down on American casualties is a military fallacy,” said a high-ranking U.S. officer.... “If we let them back in, it would increase casualties, not lower them.” That may be so.
May be?
But in the meantime, as the latest weekly casualty list showed (265 American dead, 1,863 wounded), both sides seem intent on using military force to crystalize their political position.

Wapinski stopped reading. The cacophony of sounds, the buzz of fluorescent lights, the click of high heels on tile floors, the broken and static announcements, the roar of takeoffs, a baby crying, and the asinine perspective of the article tore at him. He closed his eyes, tight, opened them, took a deep breath. If we didn’t, he said to himself, do they think the NVA’d stop? Do you think they’d just go away? It is a war over there. These people don’t understand. They just don’t fuckin understand.

He flipped further into the magazine. There was a lengthy article about the military-industrial complex, a reiteration of President Eisenhower’s 1961 warning that the nation “must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by the MIC, and an assessment of congressional moves to exert control over the Pentagon.

Wapinski flipped back to the Viet Nam section. “Disclaim responsibility,” he read again. He almost threw the magazine across the waiting room. He ground his teeth, lit a cigarette, flipped back to the photo of the 101st Airborne troops on Dong Ap Bia. He searched the faces to see if he knew the men. Sure, he thought, he recognized one. Again the chill. He looked about, checked his watch. Why wasn’t the Williamsport plane at the gate? He flipped to the back of the magazine, to the Stewart Alsop column entitled “No Disguised Defeat?” He could not read it.

“It means—” he heard a voice, glanced left, right, “when everyone is saying this is the way it was—” another takeoff roar, another static announcement, another flyover vibrating his damaged eardrums, no one near him, yet the voice, “don’t let em convince you ...”