Friendly Fire (17 page)

The following week's mail brought letters of consolation from the commanding general of Michael's Americal Division, Lloyd B. Ramsey, and from Stanley R. Resor, the Secretary of the Army. The Mullens read them searching for a sign that their son's sacrifice had had some meaning. “We sincerely hope that your burden may be lightened by the knowledge that Michael was a model soldier,” Major General Ramsey wrote, “whose actions and conduct brought credit to himself, the Division and the United States Army.… Michael was an exemplary soldier whose ability, spirit and dedication to the service earned for him the respect of his associates and superiors alike.… We share your burden and we pray that you will find consolation in the sympathy of your friends, your family and your faith.” Peg later sent Major General Ramsey copies of Michael's letters “so that you can see what one of your model, exemplary soldiers thought of you and your war.”

Secretary of the Army Resor wrote, “We are proud of his military accomplishments and grateful to him for his contribution to our Nation's strength.”

Peg tossed both letters onto the kitchen table pile she reserved for “official mail.” The letters landed in such a way that Major General Ramsey's overlapped Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf's just enough to display the date “2 Mar 1970” stamped on both. The rubber stamp infuriated her; it was, to Peg, as if some anonymous Army bureaucrat had simply decided, “Okay, on March 2, send all these letters out.” Suddenly she noticed something even more disturbing: the “1970” on the two rubber stamps printed just a hair lower than the “2 Mar” and both “Mar's” seemed to tilt slightly to the left. Of course, Peg realized, the Army purchased rubber date stamps by the thousands, but was it mere coincidence that the battalion's rubber stamp and the division's contained identical flaws? The more likely explanation, she felt, was that the two letters had originated from the same office. The correspondence had been coordinated for but one reason: the Army had something to hide.

Peg had cause to be skeptical. During the week Michael was killed, seven other Iowans died in Vietnam. If Iowa's eight casualties were about average for the losses from the other forty-nine states, it would indicate that at least 400 Americans died that week in Vietnam. Peg already knew that one planeload of bodies had landed in Oakland on Monday and two more landed Tuesday the week Michael's body arrived. The planes carried 75 bodies each. And yet the official casualty figure released for that entire week listed only 88 Americans killed in Vietnam.

When Peg had contacted the parents of that week's seven other Iowa casualties, she discovered the majority of them, too, had been told their sons were “nonbattle” casualties. But not until she learned that the weekly casualty figure reported on the evening television news was for those killed in action only did Peg begin to suspect why the nonbattle casualties were so high. Nonbattle casualties, such as Michael, weren't counted, and she wondered just how many other so-called nonbattle casualties there might have been. (Correspondents covering the Vietnam War in 1970 were already aware that the Army was classifying as nonbattle casualties any soldiers who died in the hospitals as a result of wounds.) Peg was convinced the Army was deliberately disguising the number of casualties suffered to prevent the American people from learning their true losses in the war.

That evening the Waterloo
Daily Courier
published a letter critical of the poor turnout given a Vietnam veteran who had come to Waterloo to give a booster talk on the war. The lady accused her fellow citizens of lacking patriotism. Peg's furious reply appeared on Sunday, March 15, under the heading “Parents of G.I. Killed in Viet—‘Immoral War'”:

Please get down and pray for the boys in Vietnam and for the boys and girls who are not waving the flag in defiance of this cruel and immoral war.

Our boy was buried on March 3 in a beautiful, Christian, “non-military” funeral. We have been criticized because we did not have a military funeral and our decision was made on the fact that the Army took our boy (who was a chemist and not a soldier), trained him to kill, sent him to Vietnam and on February 21st, they told us, he was killed by friendly forces—accidentally, we will never believe.

Do you realize how many thousands of American boys have been lost in this manner—denied the decency of being killed by the enemy? These boys' deaths are listed as “non-battle”—are they included in the casualty lists? Do we know how many bodies come back to Oakland each week—does the number of deaths tie in with the casualty lists? Think about this. Please.… “Think.” … “Read.” … “Study.” … Evaluate this war.

Mrs. and Mrs. Gene Mullen

Rt. 3

On Wednesday, March 18, three days after their letter appeared, Nick Lamberto, a feature writer for the Des Moines
Register
, telephoned wanting to know why Peg had questioned the casualty lists. She explained how Michael had been on a search and destroy mission, was at a night defensive position when the artillery shell had killed him and “wasn't considered a battle casualty, so he wasn't counted.” Peg told Lamberto about the other area families who had been informed their sons were nonbattle casualties, too.

Because of Peg's letter, a
Register
researcher had gone through the newspaper files and compared the Pentagon's casualty count against the newspaper's own. As of March 1, Lamberto told Peg, the Pentagon listed 532 Iowans killed in Vietnam. According to the researcher, the
Register
files indicated the Pentagon figure was 129 casualties short.

Chapter Eleven

The morning after Nick Lamberto's telephone call, Peg Mullen returned from the mailbox with a letter from Martin Culpepper in Vietnam. Culpepper's letter was the first the Mullens had received from anyone who had served in Charlie Company with their son. Michael had been dead a month, and they still had not heard from any members of Michael's platoon or from the ROTC lieutenant he had mentioned in his letter or his company commander. Peg had written the Pentagon complaining, “It's just too damned bad that we can't find out who lived and died with our son. There's simply no communication and I firmly believe my son had at least
one
friend in Vietnam.” The Pentagon never answered.

Through Culpepper Peg discovered for the first time that six or seven other soldiers had been wounded and one other young man had been killed:

It was an air burst, it hit in between your son's bunker and another bunker. The round burst in the air when it hit a tree in between the fox holes. This was about 2:15 AM on Feb 18 before daylight. It was a short round that killed him. Meaning the round didn't travel the distance it was supposed to travel. He was not killed by enemy forces, but an accident.

Culpepper explained that DTs (defensive targets) were set up in advance in “an area or place where they call in artillery for support in case you are attack. From this area they can direct it to any place they want.” One line of Culpepper's particularly intrigued Peg: “They normal shot about 200 to 300 meters away from you, they use to do this almost every night until that accident.” They
used
to, but they stopped. Two killed, six or seven wounded, never anything in the newspaper about it, no investigation, no communication with anyone but Culpepper—whom Peg had discovered only by chance—and after that accident the Army didn't fire DTs again. Why not?

The obvious reason, Peg believed, was that what had happened was so wrong, so inexcusable the Army didn't want anybody to find out about it. That is why no one had been permitted to write, why the newspaper stories had been blacked out, and why the letters from the battalion and division commander had been coordinated. In a postscript to his three-page handwritten letter Culpepper added, “If the army's story is different please let me know.” Clearly Culpepper would not be surprised to learn that the Army had lied. His letter closed:

Even though the Lord has taken him away from you, we both will carry the memory of him in our hearts. The loss is great and nothing can replace him, but I hope the Lord will find peace in your heart. I would appreciate it if you would read in the New Testament, I Thessalonians, Chapter 4. The sixteenth through the eighteen verse and may it comfort your heart.

Love,

Martin L. Culpepper

Peg wondered whether Culpepper had found some passage in the Bible which would provide her with even more information, something which he dared not write openly but instead could only hint at.

Peg located the section in their family Bible:

16. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the arch angel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first;

17. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

18. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

She studied the three verses for a few minutes, then gave up. Except for the “descend from heaven with a shout,” which
might
have referred to the artillery shell, there didn't seem to be anything interpretable as a code.

On Tuesday, March 17, the death certificate demanded by the Mullens arrived. The document, a standard DA form 10–249, forwarded from the U.S. Army Mortuary at Danang, was dated 18 February 1970, and below the statement “I have viewed the remains of the deceased and death occurred at the time indicated and from the causes as stated above” was the signature of John S. Schechter, MD, Captain, Co D. 23D Medical Bn. The certificate listed Mr. and Mrs. Oscar
T
. Mullen as next of kin, the mode of death, “accident,” the interval between onset and death, “unknown,” and the cause of death (“enter only one cause per line”), “missile wound of chest.” The space reserved for “circumstances surrounding death due to external causes” was blank, as was the space indicating whether or not an autopsy had been performed. Although the date and hour of death,
0250 hrs 18 Feb 70
, and the map coordinates for the place of death,
BT 366015
(the hillside overlooking the village of Tu Chanh), confirmed the information given them in Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf's letter, the death certificate did nothing to allay the Mullens' suspicions.

Why was the space reserved for “circumstances surrounding death” blank? Michael, the Mullens had been told, was killed when an artillery round fell short. Why, if Michael had not been “subjected to any prolonged suffering” was the “interval between onset and death” unknown? Most disturbing of all, however, was the question why, if Michael's only wound according to Tom Loomis, the funeral director, had been that small hole in his back near his right kidney, did Captain Schechter list Michael's cause of death a “missile wound of
chest?
” The Mullens wrote back requesting a complete medical report on their son's death.

Two days later the Mullens received notification from First Lieutenant Arthur A. Belefonte of the U.S. Army Personal Property Depot in Saigon that Michael's possessions had been collected and sent and would reach them soon. Enclosed was a USARV form 438 inventory of Michael's belongings. Nowhere on the list was the $200 dollar camera sent Michael by his uncle Howard Goodyear. Although the inventory did list a “watch, Seiko without band,” neither the wristwatch nor the camera was ever returned.

The simple cardboard carton reached Waterloo on Saturday morning, March 21. A friend who worked in the post office voluntarily drove the package to the farm himself. He refused Peg's offer of a cup of coffee, explaining that he had to return to work, but Gene and Peg knew he understood they would want to be alone.

The carton lay on the kitchen table between Michael's parents. Neither moved toward it until finally Peg pushed it over to Gene and said, “You do it. Go on.”

Gene carefully untied the package's knotted strings, then slowly, almost reverently, removed the top. They began to sift through the empty, folded
clothing, 2 Shirts, khaki; 1 cap, Garrison; 1 Necktie; 1 Pair of gloves
. They found the fingernail file and clippers they had joked about (Michael had always kept himself so immaculate that his parents had speculated he would even clean his fingernails in the jungle); Michael's shaving kit with his worn, soft-bristled toothbrush inside; a pair of sunglasses;
1 belt, web with buckle; 1 Coin purse with 2 souvenir U.S. pennies: 1 Insignia, U.S. brass; 1 Nameplate, plastic;
a hairbrush which someone had cleaned; Michael's prayerbook, sweat-stained and bent to the contours of his hip. There were three rosaries; one was simply string tied in knots for each of the ten prayers. Gene decided he would give that one to Johnny; the other two to Patricia and Mary.

Peg was silently sorting through the papers, and the driver's licenses, addresses, receipts, the two photographs of Caroline Roby. She pulled out the
1 Pair of shoes, dress oxfords
and put them aside, and then she lifted up a small bronze-colored religious medallion hanging from a chain. “Oh-h, Gene.…”

It was the medal Gene had given Michael at the airport. He took it from Peg and gently, tenderly, sadly lowered it around his neck again.

A letter from Creighton W. Abrams, the commanding general of the United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, arrived the following week. Peg sat holding it in both hands: “It is my hope that you will find a measure of solace in knowing your son gave his life for a noble cause, the defense of liberty in the free world. Rest assured that we who remain here in Vietnam will continue our efforts to bring peace to this troubled land so that your son's sacrifice will not have been in vain.” Peg crumpled the paper in a rage; then, because she thought Gene might like to read it, she carefully smoothed out the page again.

Peg was still disturbed that with the exception of Culpepper none of Michael's friends had written. She was now certain that at least half the casualties in Vietnam were due to mysterious circumstances, “accidents,” because maps were wrong, because someone high on drugs was shooting off his gun or because men were being killed by their own artillery. That was why no communication was permitted. What was it that Waverly mother said, the one whose son was missing in the burned-out tank? “We've been told by the Army that we can't discuss this with anyone because it might ‘aid and abet' the enemy.”