Newark to Phoenix

“ Colonel, I got a call last night--- actually this morning--- from a Sgt. 1^st Class Wyman from Fort Meade.  He told me to see you at 0800.  It was my hope that you might give me the green light to report back to Ham Thuan.”

The Colonel locked on Scott’s eyes and remained stoic. Scott continued. “We both know what happened there – what I did there – but I think that Major Rheingold would be willing to clear channels for me to go back and finish my tour.”

Scott couldn’t read the deep glare of Larson and felt edgy.   He pushed on, “Sir, I mean – I’m sure that Major Rheingold told you that we’re really starting to make inroads into the VC infrastructure in our Province.  I know I’m only small potatoes, but I’ve got a good handle on what’s happening in our District.  I really feel when my interpreter was, er, was – neutralized – that we had cracked a main component of terrorism in Binh Thuan Province.  When he died we eliminated a pair of enemy eyes and ears in our midst.”

The older officer listened silently.  Scott saw no gestures of affirmation from him, but still carried on.  “Sir, please understand something, sir.  What I’m saying now comes from my heart.  I know that there’s no course at Benning called ‘emotion,’ but somewhere along the line, I developed an emotional fever about what we’re trying to do for a lot of the innocent people in that country.  For example, there’s a little girl back there named Mary; well, I named her Mary.  She’s about 3 ½ or 4 years old.  She’s an orphan who hangs around our DIOCC.  I didn’t see her for days before the major shipped me up to Cam Ranh.  I think about her a lot.  I worry about her.  She’s nowhere without us watching out for her.

“Sir, please hear me out.  I’ve never been gung ho.  In fact, I chose Military Intelligence because I believed it would be the only branch that would keep me stateside.  That’s as honest as I can be.  But, you know what, sir?  When I first hit my assignment I didn’t understand the big picture of our effort in ‘Nam.  I still don’t.  I just started to see little pictures of daily life and I realized that I couldn’t change the big one.  What I came to believe was that I might be able to help and change the little day- to-day stuff around me.”  He floundered to explain himself more clearly and needed desperately to make his point.

“Sir, Major Rheingold and I should have been wasted from an M-79 round----fired by my interpreter-----that turned out to be a dud.  We also got hammered in an ambush that, I’m convinced, was a set up by the same guy.   And you know what? I dodged a bullet and I’m still alive.  I owe somebody something.  And another thing, sir, there’s a chopper pilot lying in a bed in the EENT wing right here in the 249^th ------ he has half of a face, and he’s still alive!  He plays chess, sir!  I know that I’ll never see him again and that I’ll never speak to him, but if I can go back to my DIOCC and just do my job I might be able, somehow, to prevent some other guy from winding up like him.”  Scott eased back down in his chair. “I’d like to make a request Colonel:  that you don’t assign me elsewhere.”