Chapter 4 - The Order to Burn
Jesse Vance didn't move a muscle, but his jaw clenched so hard a corded vein rose along his neck like an electrical cable.
"General Raymond Vance," the Sergeant Major repeated, his voice dangerously low. "The brigade commander."
"Your namesake," I said, glancing at Jesse. "No kin, I know. But he cast a long shadow over this division for forty years. Three stars, two tours, four terms on the Senate Armed Services Committee. A great hero in the newspapers. A great patron of the post."
Colonel Harrison pulled off the dry, crumbling rubber bands. He eased open the flap of the yellowed envelope, using the tip of a silver letter opener.
Inside were six sheets of onion-skin paper, their edges singed dark brown, covered in the purple carbon-ink typing of an old mechanical typewriter. Attached to them with a rusted paper clip was a three-inch spool of magnetic recording tape, housed in a cracked plastic cassette case.
Harrison began to read. His eyes scanned the first page, jumped to the second, and then stopped. His breath caught in his throat.
"This is impossible," Harrison murmured. "The official record states that Firebase Ripcord was evacuated under heavy mortar fire after all personnel were cleared from the perimeter. It states that the forward aid station was destroyed by enemy direct fire."
"The official record was written by Raymond Vance’s adjutant in a hotel room in Da Nang three weeks later," I said, leaning forward, resting both hands on my cane. "On the morning of July twenty-second, the North Vietnamese had three battalions dug into the ravine below the helipad. They had two heavy machine guns sighted directly on the red cross painted on our roof. We had forty wounded men inside that timber bunker. Fourteen of them couldn't walk. Five of them were on manual respirators."
Reese’s hands gripped his knees. He didn't blink.
"The radio crackled at zero-eight-forty," I continued, the memory as vivid as if the smoke were still burning my eyes. "It was Vance himself, circling overhead in his command-and-control chopper at three thousand feet. He looked down through his binoculars, saw the north wire had been breached by sappers, and decided the hill was lost. He radioed down to our bunker and told us the gunships were coming in with white phosphorus to sanitize the cryptographic gear in the comms tent next door."
"Sanitize," Reese whispered, the word tasting like poison.
"I took the handset from the radioman," I said. "I told the Colonel that we had fourteen non-ambulatory casualties who couldn't be loaded into slicks before the run. I asked for ten minutes. Just ten minutes for two birds to touch down on the lower skid-pad."
"And what did Vance say?" Harrison asked, his face white.
"He said, 'Negative, Captain. The crypto gear is priority one. If the enemy captures the codebooks, the entire corps tactical zone is compromised. Clear your people if you can. The Phantoms are on their final approach.'"
I pointed to the cassette on the desk.
"That tape is the direct recording from the brigade switchboard," I said. "Mercer plugged a portable recorder into the patch panel when he heard the Colonel’s call-sign. You can hear Vance’s voice as clear as a bell. He gave the coordinates for our bunker to the lead pilot of the flight. He told them to saturate the grid square."
"My God," Harrison breathed, leaning his head into his hands.
"Thomas Reese was nineteen," I said, turning my gaze to the young sergeant beside me. "He was sitting on a wooden bench with an open abdominal wound, holding a bloody field dressing against his guts with his left hand. When he heard that radio call, he didn't run for the trenches. He didn't look for a hole to hide in. He stood up, picked up an M60 machine gun off a dead corporal, and walked out into the middle of the red clay dust."
Reese was crying now. The tears were running silently down his cheeks, dropping onto the fabric of his trousers.
"He laid down behind an overturned fuel bladder," I whispered, "and he fired four belts of ammunition into the tree line to keep the enemy snipers from hitting the drainage culvert behind the hospital. He stayed there while the Phantoms came down out of the clouds. He stayed there while the white smoke started blooming across the wire. He bought me the forty minutes I needed to drag those fourteen boys through the ditch, one by one, into the rear trench where the medevac pilots could lift them off."
I looked at the desk.
"When I came back for Thomas, he was lying in the dirt with two more bullet holes in his shoulder. The machine gun was smoking. He looked up at me through the grit, unhooked that little brass pin from his shirt, and put it in my hand. He said, 'Hold this for me, Doc. I don't want the dirt to ruin it.'"
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The office was dead silent, save for the ticking of the brass clock on the wall and the ragged breathing of a grandson learning the weight of his own name.
"And tomorrow," I said, looking Harrison in the eye, "this division is scheduled to cut the ribbon on a brand-new five-million-dollar tactical training center named the General Raymond Vance Leadership Hall. Funded by his family foundation. With his picture in the lobby."
