Friendly Fire (33 page)

“Martin?” Peg said quietly.

“People don't realize the feelings of people who have been there. What happened to them afterward,” Culpepper was saying. “They don't understand. They can't.”

“Martin?” Peg repeated. “What was it like the night Michael was killed?”

Chapter Eighteen

For the rest of the day the Mullens' kitchen became that jungle hilltop in Vietnam. The more Martin Culpepper spoke, the less he seemed aware of his surroundings. Culpepper wasn't just talking about what had happened that terrible night; he was
there
. As Peg and Gene watched uneasily, Culpepper stormed about the table, hacking and chopping at the imagined dense jungle growth. The Mullens could only try to visualize what the young man still so clearly saw: helicopter swooping down for a combat assault, shark-faced Cobra gunships circling beyond their kitchen window, a white phosphorus artillery marking round exploding with a soft, plushy
foop!
above their stove. Flares popped high in the night sky illuminating the horribly wounded, who lay groaning and bleeding about the Mullens' yard. Vietnam's tight coil within Culpepper had not yet unwound.

The Mullens would, for the most part, wait patiently when Martin Culpepper's narrative would begin to ramble. At other times when he wandered off on some unrelated tangent, they would interrupt, ask a specific question and gently nudge him back on course. Throughout it all Peg was taking notes.

“Did you know about the boy who went berserk?” Culpepper asked.

Gene looked at Peg, who shook her head.

“His name was Polk,” Culpepper said. “He was a black private in the First Platoon. He was asleep between Mike and Leroy Hamilton when they died. Polk wasn't even touched. He went crazy that night.”

“What happened to him?” Peg asked.

“He's in jail at Leavenworth,” Culpepper said. “He was court-martialed.”

“Polk, black private, went berserk,”
Peg wrote in her notebook.
“Court-martialed. Leavenworth.”

“Mike was always looking out for Polk,” Culpepper was saying. “Whenever Polk got in an argument, Mike would try to calm him down, say something like, ‘Man, you're here. We're all here. We can't do anything about it.' Mike and Sergeant Gregory would try to talk to him sensible. But the other guys in the First Platoon wouldn't have much to do with Polk. They said he was a troublemaker.”

“Friend of Mike's,”
Peg added to her notes. And on the line below she wrote, “Sgt. Gregory, 1st Platoon.”

“We need names, Martin,” Gene said. “We want to know who was with our son.”

Peg's list began to grow:

General Lloyd Ramsey, Commanding General. Americal Division

Colonel Joseph Clemons, 198th Infantry Brigade Commander

Lieutenant Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, 1/6th Battalion Commander Captain

(—) Cameron, Company Commander, Charlie Company

Lieutenant (—) Rocamora (sp?), Forward Observer w/Charlie Co.

Lieutenant (—) Joslin, Platoon Leader, 1st Plt. Mike's.

Sgt. Webb, 3rd Platoon, now in Des Moines.

Russell Schumacher, 3rd Plt. Still in Vietnam. Iowa boy.

Albert Gaynor, 3rd Plt. Back in States. Still in Army.

Abe Aikins, Black medic. Probably back in States.

Prince (nickname?), 1st Platoon. Wounded. Lost leg, maybe two.

Polk, Black Private, went berserk. Court-martialed. Leavenworth. Friend of Mike's

Sgt. Gregory, 1st Platoon

“Did you know that our platoon and Mike's platoon traded positions that night?” Culpepper asked. “We were originally supposed to set up on their side of the hill.”

“Whose decision was that?” Gene asked. “Schwarzkopf's?”

“No, it was the lieutenant's,” Culpepper said. He told them how the 3rd Platoon had already dropped their equipment off and begun digging in when the order came to switch positions. The 1st Platoon was emplaced on the south side of the hilltop, and the 3rd Platoon to the north where there was a cliff. “I was set up right on the edge of it,” Culpepper said. “It was about eighty feet straight down.”

“Martin, what was Schwarzkopf really like?” Peg asked.

“He was a real gung-ho sort of man. He just wanted to get promoted.”

“How old a man is he?” Peg asked.

“Thirty-two, thirty-three? He was a young man for a lieutenant colonel,” Culpepper said. “The kind who want to make brigadier general by the time he was thirty-five.”

“No matter how many boys he lost?” Peg said.

“We hardly lost none until the night Mike and Leroy died,” Culpepper said. “After that we started losing a lot.”

“We heard Charlie Company had about one hundred twenty casualties in the next three months,” Gene said. “Could that be so?”

“Could be,” Culpepper said. “I don't really know. It was a lot, though.”

“Another thing, Martin,” Gene said. “Why did they fire the artillery so late?”

“They told everybody as soon as we were dug in to put on their steel pots because they were going to fire the DTs. That's when everybody started making smart cracks about the helmets: ‘They aren't any good nohow.' ‘What good do they do? Don't stop nothing.' Things like that. That would have been about five thirty-six o'clock, somewhere in there. It wasn't dark yet, I remember.

“They said Rocamora was going to call them in,” Culpepper continued. “And everybody was to get into their foxholes in case the arty wasn't right. But they didn't fire them. They called the DTs off. We all know the DTs were for our protection. As Schwarzkopf told us, ‘If they want to get to you, let them come through a ring of steel.' …
Ring of steel!
” Culpepper laughed, shaking his head. “All this gung-ho stuff they used to feed us!”

“But, Martin,” Gene asked again, “why did they fire the DTs so late?”

“I don't know,” Culpepper admitted. He explained how the artillery investigators had arrived on the hill the following morning. They had looked at where the shell had hit and asked if the men were sure it hadn't been a Vietcong mortar round. “Everybody just started cussin' at them,” Culpepper told the Mullens. “Someone said, ‘It wasn't no mortar round,' real quietlike. ‘You know what it was! You know who fired it!' finally they ordered us to be quiet, to return to our side of the perimeter. But even as we were walking back, we heard the artillery experts saying things like, ‘Well, it could have been an ARVN round.…'”

“An ARVN round?”
Peg asked, glancing at Gene. Could the original message, the Bien Hoa story, have been true after all?

“We know it wasn't the South Vietnamese,” Culpepper was saying. “Those lifers were going around. ‘Well, we have to examine all the possibilities,' they said. ‘It may not have been an error. It could have been the enemy.' We know it wasn't.”

The moment Culpepper left that evening, Peg threw a quick dinner together for Gene, swept the kitchen table top clean, and sat down to write Russell Schumacher, an Iowa boy, who was still with Charlie Company in Vietnam. He would tell her the truth. Hank Webb, according to Culpepper, was back in Des Moines—Webb had formed a sniper unit along with two other men so that he could move separately from the company. He carried an accurized M-14 with a telescopic sight and, Culpepper told the Mullens, was wounded a third time before being rotated out—Webb would, however, probably know Albert Gaynor's address. So Peg now had the names of three other young men who had been on that hill the night Michael was killed. She had specific questions to ask them and, for the first time, could expect to receive specific answers. Peg heard first from Russell Schumacher:

Yes I remember the night of February 18th when your son was killed. I was on guard talking with Albert Gaynor at his foxhole. I think A1 & I were talking about how close they were firing defensive targets, “DTs.” I was telling A1 how funny it was to fire them at all much less at around 2:30. Then the 5th artillary round came in & hit in the trees near your sons hole. We knew it was in the perimeter and seconds later we heard guys in pain.… Your son died in a few minutes after he was hit. He probably never woke up to feel any pain. Leroy Hamilton died very shortly after being hit, too. It was a bad night that sure none of the guys that were there will ever forget.

The next morning the lifers came out to investigate. I think they said that morning that the officer in charge of the artillary mite have been drunk. Then later a roomer was it was the same gun that killed a guy—maybe two—in another company earlier this year.… Then later we were told that someone mite not have figured out the elevations of the hill the artillary gun was on and the hill we were on right. How ever it happened there was no reason at all to be firing artillery at that time in the morning. There was no fresh signs of enemy around.

When death comes its allmost to much for ones heart. I think your very brave in checking into your sons death. I truly hope you can help
GIS
out by learning the truth.

Maybe when the army & leaders find out that people care about the soldiers safety they will care. Many of the guys who knew Mike and know what you're trying to do believe you're right. Do what you can and may God give you a hand.

Truly,

s/Russell

During the first week in November the Mullens visited Hank Webb in Des Moines. Webb repeated the rumors Culpepper and Schumacher had mentioned: a faulty gun, the men were drunk, or the elevation had been incorrectly figured. But, he added, he didn't think the forward observer, Lieutenant Rocamora, had called in the shots. Webb explained to the Mullens while his parents sat listening that Rocamora wasn't a lifer and had no great loyalty to the Regular Army. Rocamora always alerted the men when the DTs were to be fired. If Rocamora had called in the artillery and not alerted the men, the men would have blamed him. “They would have made it so uncomfortable for Rocamora,” Webb said, “he wouldn't have wanted to remain with the company.”

“Did he stay?” Gene asked.

“Oh, sure,” Webb said. “Everyone liked him. When the shell hit, there wasn't any warning. I thought it was an attack. I can remember sweeping, just throwing the men into their foxholes!”

Like Michael, Webb had been an acting platoon sergeant. He had been in the 3rd Platoon along with Culpepper, Gaynor and Schumacher. Polk, however, had been in Michael's 1st Platoon.

Schumacher wrote that he remembered Polk: “He had been afraid and quite a troublesome guy before. I think he had bad nerves for one thing. On the night your son died, Polk was sleeping right next to him. That really got to his mind. I could see how he cracked up. He was almost in shock that night.”

Webb, that afternoon in Des Moines, told the Mullens Polk had “gone crazy.” Some of the men from Webb's platoon had had to knock Polk out, restrain him, before he could be loaded onto a helicopter and flown out of there.

Gaynor, however, wrote:

As to your question about Pvt. Polk, it seems there's some sort of mix up. As far as I know nothing happened that night with Polk. I'm not sure, but I heard nothing of it. To my knowledge he was sentenced because of incidents a few days following the night of the 18th. Possibly the 20th or 21st. There were charges brought against him for a number of things. Hitting an officer and a non-commissioned officer, firing his weapon at civilians, and some other things which I do not know. Anything related to the night in question, I'm not aware of.

Gaynor had rotated out of Vietnam and was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, when he wrote. His letter was the most explicit the Mullens received:

As I remember that night we were set up in a night defensive perimeter, which was located on a ridge line quite a few miles from Chu Lai. We dug foxholes as usual and set up for the night. Each platoon having its own sector of the perimeter. At about 8:30 PM we were informed over the radio that D.T.'s were going to be shot out in the next five minutes.… Most of the men in the company usually felt quite uneasy about the firing of these because they thought it was possible something could go wrong, and possibly somebody could get hurt. This is one of the reasons we were usually informed shortly before they were fired. So if some of the men wanted to get into their foxholes, they could do so. Some of the men did, but no artillery came. Finally it seemed that they were going to cancel the D.T.'s that night. Then about 3:00 AM, or some time around there, they started firing them. I know, because I was on guard that night. They fired some on our left and right which were a safe distance away. A safe distance is usually about 600 meters away.

They fire two rounds for each D.T. One round is a white phosphorus which explodes in the air and gives off white smoke. This is to make sure of the exact location where the round is to hit because the next round is H.E. (High Explosive) which is an extremely destructive round. The third set of D.T.'s was the one that hit inside the perimeter. A white phosphorus was fired first. It went directly over the middle of the perimeter. I heard it explode and saw the white smoke. It looked to me like it was in the right spot. A bit close possibly. Then the next round came in, this is the H.E. It sounded so close I hit the ground. I heard the explosion and I remember thinking to myself it sounded awfully close. That round hit 50 yards inside our perimeter. You already know the rest. Mike and another man were killed, 6 others were wounded.

In your letter you said you were told Lt. Rocamora called in the artillery at 2:50 AM. Personally, I can't believe that. Of course I never asked him. But looking at it from my point of view it would seem foolish of him to do such a thing. Especially since most of the men like to be warned before it came and at 3:00 AM in the morning everybody would be asleep except for the guards. I was on guard, as I said before, and no for-warning was given.