I'm not sure, it's just a possibility. I have to check it out.'
'Please. You know how I hate to go back there. I'm over that now. It took a long time.'
'It's a nothing question. A Marine question, that's all.'
'Bob.'
'Please.'
She sighed and said nothing.
'Why was he sent to Vietnam? He had less than thirteen months to serve. But he had just lost his rating. He was a full corporal and he showed up in 'Nam just a lance corporal. So he had to be sent there for punitive reasons.
They did that in those days.'
'It was punitive.'
'I thought it was. But that doesn't sound like Donny.'
'I only caught bits and pieces of it. I was only there at the end. It was some crisis. They wanted him to spy on some other Marines who they thought were slipping information to the peace marchers. There was this big screw up at a demonstration, a girl got killed, it was a mess. He was ordered to spy on these other boys and he got to know them, but in the end, he wouldn't. He refused. They told him they'd ship him to Vietnam, and he said, Go ahead, ship me to Vietnam. So they did. Then he met you, became a hero and got killed on his last day. You didn't know that?'
'I knew there was something. I just didn't know what.'
'Is that a help?'
'Yes, it is. Do you know who sent him?'
'No. Or if I did, I forgot. It was so long ago.'
'Okay. I'm going back to DC.'
'What? Bob--' 'I'll only be gone a few days. I'm flying out there. I've got to find out what happened to Donny. You listen to Sally, you be careful. I'll call you in a few days.'
'Oh, Bob--' 'I've got some money, some cash. Don't worry.'
'Don't get in trouble.'
'I'm not getting in any trouble. I promise. I'll call you soon.'
There it was: WES PAC.
He remembered the first time he had seen it, that magic, frightening phrase, when the orders came through for that first tour in 1965: WES PAC. Western Pacific, which was Marine for Vietnam. He remembered sitting outside the company office at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and thinking, Oh, brother, I am in the shit.
'That's it,' said the sergeant major's aide.
'That's it,' said Bob.
He sat in the anteroom in Henderson Hall, with the tall, thin young man with hair so short it hardly existed and movements so crisp they seemed freshly dry-cleaned.
'We got it this morning from Naval Records Storage Facility, Annandale. Sergeant Major used lots of smoke.
He served with the CO's chief petty officer on the old Iowa City.'
'You'll tell him I appreciate it.'
'Yes, sir. I'm sniper-rated, by the way. Great school, out at Quantico. They still talk about you. Understand you fought a hell of a fight at Kham Due.'
'Long time ago, son. I can hardly remember it.'
'I heard of it a hundred times,' said the young sergeant.
'I won't ever forget it.'
'Well, son, that's kind of you.'
'I'll be in my office next door. You let me know if you need anything else.'
'Thank you, son.'
The jacket was thick, all that remained of FENN, DON NY J.'s almost, but not quite four years in the Marine Corps. It was full of various orders, records of his first tour in the Nam with a line unit, his Bronze Star citation, his Silver Star nomination for Kham Due, travel vouchers, shot records, medical reports, evaluations going back to Parris Island in the far-off land of 1968 when he enlisted, GET results, the paper trail any military career, good, bad or indifferent, inevitably accumulates over the passage of time. There was even a copy of the Death in Battle report, filled out by the long-dead Captain Feamster, who only survived Donny a few weeks until the sappers took out Dodge City. But this one sheet, now faded and fragile, was the one that mattered, this was the one that sent him to the Nam.
HEADQUARTERS, USMC, 1C-MLT: 111
1320.1
15 MAY 1971
SPECIAL ORDER: TRANSFER
