Wag the Dog (58 page)

It was a bureaucratic response, the needs of the members of the organization superseding the ostensible mission of the organization. The organization never really considered the consequences to the war, that they would lose it; or to the men, that more of them would die due to always being led by inexperienced officers; or even to itself, that being responsible for their own short term instead of for the duration, any sensible officer would, almost every time, put the appearance of short-term success ahead of the hard news of what was needed to ultimately win.

Taylor was well connected. His father had died in combat in Korea. He had an uncle still active in the service, a colonel. He instantly got posted to Saigon in a staff position. It was, for a young officer, heaven on earth, gratifying to every sense and to his sense of self-worth. He was bright, attentive, social, kept his uniform perfectly pressed, and very quickly got his captain's bars. Ambition and manliness both cried out for combat. So, at every opportunity, he pressed for combat. His superiors were not annoyed by that. Every young officer was supposed to press for combat. It was part of the shtick.

He finally got sent out to see some action. It was as an observer, but in the thick of things.

It was a weird war. Nobody had bothered to figure out what winning was. There was no bunch of guys in funny green uniforms and hard hats formed up in regiments and battalions that could be thrown back beyond the line of scrimmage. Nor were we going to march into the enemy capital, arrest the bad guys, find good guys, and teach them democracy. We weren't even going to put down insurrection. But if you have people working for you, you need to score and grade them. So they came up with body counts and kill ratios. Which seemed to make some sense, since Westmoreland was operating on his theory of attrition.

Taylor's general, who had been up in I Corps, which was mostly Marine country, had run into some outfits with terrific kill ratios. Just terrific. Better than almost any Army group of similar size and makeup. There was Taylor, screaming combat, combat, combat, all the time. So his general said: “Here's some combat. Your assignment is to find out why they're doing so well.” Then a nod and a wink. “If, of course, it's true.”

The general's opposite number, in the Marine Corps, was hardly stupid in the ways and means of bureaucratic infighting. He put his own captain, who'd been screaming combat, combat, combat on it. And said,
“Get him lots of bodies.”

Guy named Tartabull. A total fuckup.

Taylor relived that day over and over and over again. It was the great
what I shoulda done.
I should have calmly stepped up to Tartabull and pointed out the error of his ways. But of course, Taylor excused himself, Tartabull wouldn't have listened. Well then, I was on the boxing team. One right cross. He goes down, out cold. I save two squads. Then I get court-martialed.

I shoulda stopped Sergeant Joe fucking Broz. Shot him between the eyes. Then told Tartabull he'd lost it and helped him through it.

“Taylor, he seen Joe kill the captain. First thing he wants to do is file charges. Killing a captain, tha's a pretty serious thing. Even in Vietnam.

“Meantime, the LT, Gelb his name was, Lieutenant Nathan Gelb, he puts in for a medal for Joe. Doesn't actually mention that Joe wasted the captain. But all 'bout how Joe called in the right coordinates, took over after the captain died and the lieutenant was wounded. Carried men out of the ambush. Went back and got Joey's body too. Now I know that he didn't do that thinkin' Joey was alive. That happens, guy is carryin' a dead man and he don't know. But I know that Joe knew Joey was dead, 'cause he put him down to pick me up. See what I'm sayin'.”

There was a shit storm to end all shit storms.

Taylor put in his report. How the hell was he to know that Gelb also put in a report. Put in for a medal for Broz. Rumor had it that originally the sorry son of a bitch was so grateful to have his life saved he was going to put in for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Talk about a travesty. Put in for a Silver Star. Gelb's report didn't mention anything about Broz shooting Tartabull. Later on when Taylor had gone to the hospital to confront Gelb about it, Gelb said it didn't matter if Joe shot the captain, Tartabull would've napalmed himself to death in five minutes anyway.

Taylor should have prevailed. He had the rank, he was regular Army, he went to church on Sunday, not Saturday. But above and beyond all that was the principle: The military does not hold with shooting officers. No matter how wrong they are. This is basic to the existence and survival of armies.

But what he hadn't reckoned on was the media. Goddamn media.

His general had explained it to him. They would have to court-martial Sergeant Joe Broz, hero, who saved ten men from being napalmed by our own planes. His own lieutenant's going to wheel himself into the witness stand, in uniform, decorations on his chest, his mother, flown in from Atlanta, sitting there
crying, telling the televisions all over America that Joe Broz did the right thing, sent her boy home alive to her, and the other nine boys home alive to their mothers. Including his accuser. “See, America doesn't like this war, son, and we can't afford this particular court-martial.”

Taylor was certain of his own righteousness. Also, there was his name on a report that said he'd seen an enlisted man kill an officer. If that enlisted man was not prosecuted, it said something was very wrong with Mel Taylor's report. His first time in combat. So he pushed for a court-martial.

They found a place to hide Broz away. Some friend of his in the CIA wanted him. So the Marine Corps let him go. Not even a dishonorable discharge. Just signed him over or something.

Now the Army sort of wanted to hide away its share of the embarrassment, which was Mel Taylor. He never got his combat command. He never got back on the fast track. Or even the steady track. It took him a while to figure it out. No one ever confronted him or told him or even said a word about it. It just was. Then he knew he was never going to be a general. Then he figured out he wasn't even going to make colonel. Major was going to be his dead end.

Joe Broz, who had violated the most fundamental law of the military and of humanity and got away with it, was responsible.

The phone rang. It was Hartman in D.C. Taylor switched the scrambler on. He reported what he knew: That everything at Beagle's house was quiet. That the tapes went on a shuttle flight from Sacramento to L.A. by ten-thirty every day and were being transcribed there. Broz had some people with him. He wasn't sure what it meant. There was no audio surveillance. But all the roads were being watched. “Plus,” Taylor said, “I have an ace in the hole.”

“What's that?” Hartman asked.

“Ace of spades,” Taylor said.

“Tell you somethin' funny,” Steve said to Maggie. “Joe, he says Taylor was right. He says you cain't have no army with officers getting fragged. That's the end of the army. Of course,
it's up to the upper ranks to make sure that the lower-ranking officers are competent and remove the assholes. But it don't matter if they don't—man frags his commanding officer, they should fry his ass. That's what Joe says.”

Steve laughed when he said that. A big knee-slapping kind of laugh.

His son grimaced. He was embarrassed around his father. The man tried hard, but he was hopelessly country. Twenty years of living in L.A. hadn't helped him at all. He should've stayed down in the cotton fields.

Another thing he hated about his father was his twenty years on the line at GM. Had a union. Big fucking deal. Because when GM shut down, that made his father a sucker, a patsy.

But at the same time, he envied his father's war. The
bloods
with M-16s! Fraggin' white fuckin' officers. Fightin' in the jungle. Now that was manhood. Come back from that no gangbanger gonna dis you, not with no M-16 in your hands and maybe some
souvenir
grenades.

People were casual in the country. A ground-floor window was left open. Joe put his gear through, men followed it.

Hawk and Dennis stayed outside, waiting, watching, ready to call Joe if anyone seemed to be coming.

Inside, Joe stood still. He waited and he listened. He took a directional mike out of his bag. He plugged it into an amplifier and from there to a headset, a high-tech, high-price version of a Walkman. With it he was able to pick up sounds down to about one-twentieth of what the human ear could hear. He swept it in an arc, listening for any human presence. He heard nothing except small scurrying feet. Mice in the wall or squirrels on the roof.

The room he was in was a reading room. Feminine, with a window seat, lots of books and magazines.

He took a CMS-3 out of the kit.

There was a microphone in the overhead light.

The reading room opened into the living room. It too was wired. That was good. It meant that Joe didn't have to put in mics, he could parasite, just find wherever U. Sec. was making
its recordings and hook in ahead or behind. The question was where. Hidden well enough that no one would stumble over them by accident, but with easy access for changing the tapes and servicing. Most of the time that defined the attic or the basement.

 

 

 

¹⁰⁸
Capra's most significant project was the seven-part
Why We Fight
series. He discusses obtaining Axis footage in an interview in the “Propaganda” segment of Bill Moyers's
A Walk Through the 20th Century.

¹⁰⁹
This does
not
suggest that Joe Broz is some sort of superhero. Others report exactly the same experience, including H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

In his autobiography,
It Doesn't Take a Hero
(Bantam, 1992), Schwarzkopf discusses what happened when he finally got “his” battalion in Vietnam. They were in terrible shape, incapable of inflicting damage on the enemy and constantly taking casualties from vastly inferior forces. Schwarzkopf got them “in shape” by making them do what the book said they should do: patrol properly, wear helmets, dig holes, etc. He turned things around and the VC began to avoid his sector. He writes: “Our intelligence people sent us a captured enemy report that warned Vietcong units to stay away from LZ Bayonet. The report said a strong new American battalion [it was the same force retrained by Schwarzkopf] had moved in. The enemy had paid me the greatest compliment I ever received as commander of the 1/6.”

At the time he was interviewed for Harry Maurer's oral history
Strange Ground: Americans in Vietnam,
Walter Mack was the head of the organized-crime division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District, New York. He had been the commander of a rifle company: “Little by little you learned how to fight the war. The test is small-unit leaders—the sergeants, corporals, lieutenants, captains. Can they learn the lessons and train their troops so they'll survive? Because it's not the popular thing to do. Americans are lazy, unless they have somebody kicking their ass. . . . They don't like to put greasy paint all over themselves in the hot sweaty daytime. They don't like to wear flak jackets. They don't like to wear helmets. They don't like to take care of their rifles. . . . They don't like to use fire discipline, which is essential. They don't like to take care of their feet.

“. . . a large percentage of the people who were wounded and killed in Vietnam were hurt because of mistakes made by small-unit leaders. . . .

“I'm talking about professionalism, the willingness to stay up that extra hour the night before the patrol to do your homework. Like taking the time when you're extremely tired to do your map study and plot out where you're likely to be ambushed. To have the discipline not to walk along a treeline, or a trail, or a road, at a time when you're likely to get ambushed. To check with your intelligence officer. . . . To check with the person responsible the next day for air operations. . . .

“After a while, the company got a reputation, and we stopped getting hit.

“. . .
You should never be ambushed. . . . being ambushed is always the result of not thinking or being rushed,
[emphasis added).”