Friendly Fire (42 page)

The march contained many different groups—Clergy for Peace, Doctors for Peace, Lawyers for Peace—and for the first time, organized labor joined the protest, too. Although Peg saw several young men wearing the Vietnam Veterans Against the War Button, she never met up with any of the leaders who had invited her to join them. “I did see some American Legion types, though,” she told me. “One of the men I marched with said he was a dentist and started singing that song, ‘One-Two-Three-Four, we don't want your,' you know. I was so shocked I turned to him and said, ‘How can you sing a song like that?' He was such a handsome man, too!” Peg laughed. “‘It's not so hard,' he said. ‘Try it.' But I didn't. I couldn't. I just—oh! And there was another.…” Peg paused and tried to suppress a yawn. “There was another old man in an American Legion cap. He and his wife. They must have been around seventy-five. And about every block or so they'd sit down on the curb and rest. He looked exactly like Pat O'Brien, really. I was dying to ask him if he was. Anyway, they'd sit on the curb and rest, but the next thing you'd know they'd be right back up there marching with you.”

Many more older people attended this peace march than I'd seen at any other. Of course, the majority of the demonstrators were young. They were, after all, the ones being asked to sacrifice their lives. At least 30 percent of the crowd and perhaps more, however, were in their mid-thirties and older. But that vast sea of blue denim was so deceptive (a hundred different shades of blue in a score of different styles: bib overalls, blue jean shirts, boot-top Levi's, cut-off shorts, skirts) from a distance everyone looked alike. Only when one was within that Levi sea could one discern sport-shirted businessmen, young mothers in cotton dresses with infants strapped to their backs, fathers in turtlenecks and tweeds. And, too, among the ministers and priests one might see an elegant elderly woman in a flowered garden party hat.

“I couldn't even get close to the Capitol,” Peg said, watching the color television set nestled in a corner above the bar. The TV was tuned to the demonstration taking place not more than three blocks away. “Did you hear John Denver?” she asked me. “The wind was blowing just right, and I could hear him sing that song about dreaming there would be no more war. It was so pretty.…” Peg yawned again and apologized.

I asked Peg when she had eaten last.

“I ate a piece of chicken this morning,” she said. “I dropped out of the march at one point and was sitting on the curb when two ladies sat down next to me with the most beautiful food, a real picnic. They were from upper New York State somewhere. They gave me a piece of their chicken. Other than that, the only thing I've eaten was at the last restaurant we stopped at on the turnpike last night.”

I ordered Peg some lunch.

“At one stop on the Ohio Turnpike where we ate,” Peg said, “we were told that eighty-nine buses filled with people going to Washington had all come through that same restaurant in the last three hours. Eighty-nine! I'll tell you another thing: all the restaurants and gas stations coming east had plainclothesmen there.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “How could you tell?”

“I don't know”—Peg shrugged—“but you could tell they were cops of some kind. I think they were counting buses so that Washington could be prepared. Where is Nixon anyway? Is he in Washington today?”

“He's at Camp David.”

“Typical,” Peg said. “He doesn't care one bit what's going on—Oh! And the state police? They were picking up all the hitchhikers and putting them in jail. Before we left Iowa, in fact, the Iowa police pulled our bus onto a weighing station. The sort of harassment you'd expect. When I heard about those eighty-nine buses stopping at that one restaurant in Ohio, though, well, I found that very encouraging. It meant that other people were coming, at least.”

“Did you think other people wouldn't come?”

“I didn't know,” she said. “There've been so many peace marches, so many protests.… I wasn't going to come. When the VVAW asked me, I told them I couldn't. Couldn't afford it. Couldn't take the time. But then I got to thinking. If nobody came, Nixon would feel the people didn't care anymore. That he'd gotten away with it. So I had to come. I wasn't really sure how many others felt the same way.” Peg was watching the television coverage of the demonstration again. The camera was slowly panning across the huge crowds. “I guess there must be a lot, though.” Peg smiled.

The march organizers reported half a million protesters had come to Washington to take part in the demonstration that day. Police and government officials estimated the figure was closer to 200,000. How could anyone tell? I know only that every road leading into the city was clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic and that the bus, train and airline terminals were jammed with people from all over the nation who had felt the need to come to Washington to show their opposition, in spite of the fact that by this time no sizable portion of the country, or even Congress, needed further convincing that the war was wrong. I know, too, that when I entered the line of march at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue about noon, the head of the line had not only reached the Capitol a mile and a half away but was beginning to fan out and curl backward from the Capitol steps. By the time I reached the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania avenues, where the avenues became nine traffic lanes wide, the Capitol was still a half mile beyond me and the crowds had become so thick it was difficult to move. What's more, an enormous mass of people stretched for a mile or so behind me, and thousands upon thousands of others were simultaneously proceeding to the Capitol by different routes.

Peg's hamburger arrived, and her hand trembled when she picked it up. I looked at the exhaustion in Peg's eyes, the way she drooped in the chair, and asked when her bus left for Iowa that night.

“We're supposed to be at the bus around six thirty,” she said, “but I know it won't leave much before eight.”

I looked at my wristwatch. “That's about five hours from now. Wouldn't you like a few hours' sleep? A chance to relax?”

“Well, sure,” she said, “but—” And Peg suddenly gave so huge a yawn it took even her by surprise.

I was able to get Peg a room at the hotel. We said good-bye at the elevator and my heart went out to her, she was so relieved at being able to sleep.

A weekly newsmagazine later described the April 24 Peace March as “the kind that the cops could have brought their children to.” People everywhere were smiling and talking, making room for others to sit or pass through. Bottles of wine and Coke and beer were handed back and forth along with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs. The speeches continued, interrupted by an occasional entertainer; the protesters listened, or didn't listen, their expressions gentle and kind. Even the elderly had the faces of children. Gone was that anger one had seen at all those marches of the years before—the anguish, tenseness and frustration felt at defying a government that wouldn't respond. Gone, too, was that curious sense of unself, the deliberate submergence of one's entire being into the symbolic, the presentation of oneself as one less hole in the crowd. The mood of this day's march resembled not so much the protest marches of the late sixties and early seventies as it did the “love-ins” of the mid-sixties. Families were enjoying private jokes; friends were smiling. Members of a bakers' union were laughing at a troop of young Maoists curled up beside a large red flag. There were smiles on the young women, the young men perched atop statues or on branches of trees. An old man was laughing with a little boy whose shoelaces had come undone. A young woman passed her boyfriend a Coke bottle, and when he wiped the top, she playfully punched him in the ribs.

I thought a lot about those faces. Their expressions reflected more than the reassurance and comfort gained from one another's company. If this many people cared this much to travel that far to Washington, then we Americans were not so selfish and indifferent after all. And the people's faces expressed a pride in an America they had loved all along, but which they feared might have been lost: an America of the people. The government would have to end the war.

It didn't, of course. Not for another year. At that, the government ended only the overt participation of American troops.

“Look, I don't like what's happening any more than you do,” one of my Senators said. “But we've got over seven and a half percent unemployment in our state. We depend heavily upon defense contracts. How can you expect me to vote against the war?” His attitude was typical. One year after that peace march, twelve states, of which mine was but one, each received prime military contract awards totaling more than $1 billion, twenty-four states received between $100 million and one billion, only fourteen states received less than $100 million.

Three days after the Washington march Peg wrote thanking me for putting her up at the hotel. She had slept, the trip back had been uneventful, Gene and the children were well, and bit by bit the farm seemed to be returning to normal. That would have been around the end of April.

On Sunday, June 13, the New York
Times
printed the first installment of the “Pentagon Papers” containing narrative history, appended memoranda, classified cables, and position papers excerpted from the forty-seven-volume highly classified study ordered by then-Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara on American involvement in Indochina from World War II through May, 1968, the date on which the Paris peace talks began. One of the most telling documents was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John T. McNaughton's first draft of “Annex—Plan for Action for South Vietnam,” written March 24, 1965, which articulated the priorities of the United States' aims:

Publication of these records provided the American people with a rare and disquieting glimpse into the decision-making processes of high government officials, decisions which affected the lives of millions of Americans and the lives of the people of a dozen other nations as well. What was so troubling about the Pentagon Papers was not so much the disclosures of deceitful and ill-chosen policies, but the obvious contempt with which one presidential administration after another viewed Congress and the American people. As one newsmagazine wrote concerning these papers: “The most instructive revelation may be how little faith the leaders had in those they led—a classic case of the arrogance of the powerful.”

In early July the Senate rejected (55 to 42) the Hatfield-McGovern 609 amendment calling for the withdrawal of all American troops by the end of the year, and two days later I received a long letter from Peg in response to a large list of questions I had sent. I did not hear again from the Mullens until one afternoon in late July, when Gene telephoned me and excitedly said, “Listen, I've got an ending for your book!”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“We're in Washington again. At the American Friends Office. We're driving up your way tomorrow. May we stop by and see you?”

“Of course,” I said, “but what's up?”

“I've gotta run. Peg's got us a cab so I can't say much yet except that I've found him! I've found the man who killed my boy! I located Schwarzkopf,” Gene crowed. “We're going to see him this afternoon!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Two mornings later I met the Mullens at their motel, then drove them out to my house. Several times at breakfast and during the drive they had started to tell me about their meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Schwarzkopf, and each time I begged them to hold off until we could be isolated from interruptions and I could take proper notes. When we finally did begin, I discovered that by having made them wait I had unwittingly created an artificial atmosphere in which they seemed to feel themselves “testifying” before some judge. Peg took notes from her pocketbook and spread them out on the low table before her as if she were playing solitaire. Gene, his hands clasped together, fingers intertwined, sat across from her and leaned forward, eager to speak.

Colonel Alan Thompson, the Pentagon officer who had helped the Mullens get Larry Phelps out of Vietnam, had located Schwarzkopf for the family, too. Peg had returned to the Pentagon on June 14 to see if she could obtain a copy of Charlie Company's morning report for the day Michael was killed. The report would have listed every man in Michael's platoon. Colonel Thompson found Schwarzkopf was assigned to Fort Myer, Virginia. The Mullens had not had time to visit Schwarzkopf then, but when they had returned to Washington in late July, they went directly to Fort Myer. There they learned Schwarzkopf had been transferred to Fort McNair, and at Fort McNair they were told Schwarzkopf was at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on a year's convalescent leave.

“I called the hospital,” Gene said, “and they told me that Colonel Schwarzkopf had been moved to Ward One, Orthopedic. I called there, and Colonel Schwarzkopf answered the phone. I said, ‘This is Mr. Mullen. I'm calling about an incident that happened to your battalion, the One-over-Sixth of the Hundred and Ninety-eighth in Corps One on February 18 at two thirty in the morning.'