Here is a tale from “Sidelong Glances”:
One night while I was a Third Class Petty Officer in the Naval Security Group, stationed on Guam at Anderson Air Base, doing courier duty during the Vietnamese War, we briefed the usual officer – a lieutenant jg (junior grade, USN) to carry the manifest for the security messages in their canvas bag; and chose a First Class Petty Officer (USN) who was 8 hours out of the Mekong Delta to carry the .45-caliber Army Colt automatic to guard the materials. It all went bing-bang-boom. Routine stuff.
It was the mid-watch: midnight to 8 a.m., my least favorite. I was on duty with Lieutenant J.G. Hardman, a Rear Admiral’s son in a concrete cinderblock building with a great big, massive steel vault to hold the security material, when suddenly, there came a banging on our door.
I looked through the peephole to see a Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Air Force and six APs (Air Force Police) armed with M-16’s. The Lt. Colonel looked pissed and the APs looked grim. I told Hardman what was out there.
“For God’s sake, open up!” he said.
I did so. The Lt. Colonel glanced at me and said to Hardman,
“I’m the Duty Officer tonight. I have nine aircraft to get in and out. You people have a man on an aircraft with a .45. He’s threatening to kill anyone who comes close to the plane. If you people don’t take him out, I will.”
Hardman gulped and said,
“Legry, handle that.”
I gulped. My mind was going a mile a minute. We had just been issued .38 “Police Special” Smith & Wesson revolvers – the enlisted got long barrels, because we were supposed to hit something, and the officers got Jack Webb Dragnet stubbies because – I figure – they were just supposed to look cool. But stubbies now had an advantage over the long barrel.
“Mr. Hardman, can I borrow your .38 stubby?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, “Sure.” He practically shoved the piece at me. I had the hit he wanted me to go do the job as fast as possible so the Lt. Colonel wouldn’t yell at him anymore – echoes of Admiral Daddy?
I stuffed the stubby into the right pocket of my work jacket, my finger an instant away from the trigger, and (I hope to tell you) the cylinder fully loaded, and went down to the flight line.
I was the center of interest as the Lt. Colonel, APs, and Hardman watched with bemused excitement (maybe somebody would get shot!), but I wasn’t interested. I was focused on not getting shot.
You have to make an effort to see this scene.
It’s dead black on a warm tropical Pacific night – the heart of the graveyard watch, maybe three in the morning. The only illumination is electric spots on the airfield. Inside a circle of light is the aircraft with the First Class poised in front of the cargo hatch, alert as a spooked cat, the .45 held in ready position. Outside the circle of light are the baggage carts (there are a lot of fellows going home on this flight, lots of baggage), half-circled like a wagon train awaiting Indian attack, and behind all of those vehicles are crouching, cringing Guamanian baggage handlers, praying to god that they are not tall enough to be the outstanding target for the first round.
What to do? I sauntered – yes, literally sauntered – out into the circle of light to reveal myself. Inside, I’m ready to hit the deck.
“Do you remember me?” I asked the First Class. “I’m one of the guys who just briefed you.”
“Yeah,” he says, and I can tell he’s relieved. I think, he thinks, the Guamanians are Vietnamese – Asians, yellow-brown men are all suspect. This guy just came out of the hottest zone in the Delta nine hours ago; he’s still in combat. These baggage guys could be Cong.
“Can I come over and talk?” I ask like a friend. All this time, and all throughout, I’ve got my finger on the trigger of that stubby .38 in my right coat pocket. It’s pointed straight at his heart. I’m thinking if I get close enough, I will put this guy’s lights out, if he makes a fraction of a hostile move.
“Please!” he says, and I can tell he’s truly scared. My sympathy for him charges. I walk straight toward him –slow and measured – I don’t want to spook him. I get close. I say,
“Hey, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I guess they forgot to tell you something when they briefed you.”
“Oh?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m supposed to come down here and relieve you and you’re supposed to go back to the shack and do whatever.”
“Oh?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll take the piece and stand the guard until you get back.” He looks incredibly relieved. He surrenders the piece gratefully and I resist a heartfelt sigh. That damned big-barrel .45 has been in the middle of my chest since I started this walk.
He walks away to get whatever he “missed” at the briefing. I watch the APs close around him like bears around raw meat.
I signal to the baggage handlers. Come do your thing and they come, relieved, happy.
It nags me. I think, the poor SOB. He just got out of hell, he’s trying to do his duty, he’s scared out of his mind, and now his countrymen are arresting him.
I feel sorry for him to this day. I hope he got in and out of the bear’s mouth fast and clean, but I will never know. I hope he got home okay. I did give my own back to Hardman later, but that’s another story.
So, many years later, waiting in Coos Bay for a snowbound bus to arrive from Bend, Oregon, I struck up conversation with a young veteran who was working in a Veteran’s Hospital. He was an Iraq War vet – a mortar man with two tours behind him and a discharge for medical reasons. His nerves were shot. He was helping other vets struggling to recover some semblance of normalcy after shocking physical injuries. He told me that he did not go to therapy. He’d gone through a tough time and he had nightmares and that was just the way of it, wasn’t it? So, I told him about that night on the airfield so many years ago. Told him about my own trauma. Told him about the genuine relief it was to share those things with others who had endured similar or worse – definitely worse, for those people knew things that made my own experience dim in comparison. I told him about wondering if that young sailor had ever made it home from the Mekong. It touched this young Iraq War vet in ways I could not feel. I saw it in his eyes, and later, when I stood in line waiting to board my bus, I saw him looking at me, and our eyes met, and he smiled, and I saw the same relief that had been in that First Class Petty Officer’s eyes so many years before when I took the .45 from his hands, and sent him to his fate.
I guess that’s what inspires me to recall this today: my own responsibility, my own need to lay down the spear and come home.
It really is time to end the war. All war. Jl: 7-09
ONE LINK:
Sen. Russ Feingold: White House Is Whistling Past Afghan Graveyard By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation. Posted July 30, 2009. In 2001, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., famously and courageously stood up as the lone senator to vote against the Patriot Act. On July 21, 2009, he did it again, casting the lone vote opposing Sen. Joe Lieberman’s, I-Conn., amendment to the 2010 Defense Authorization bill that immediately authorizes an expansion of the military by 30,000 troops. In an exclusive interview with The Nation, Feingold says he “did not believe it was in the best interest of our troops or our national security.” The measure passed 93-1.
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