Blood: The Eternal

Killed in Action, Burrell Moody, 1967

22

And ye shall hear of wars
and rumors of wars.

Matthew 24:6

1967

Soldiers don’t think about eternity. The eternal is mentioned from time to time, such as in the memorial services they attend or at funerals when they provide the escort and firing squad. But they don’t feel that the preacher is talking to them.

Soldiers live within the moment. The future is a list of things they have to do, steps they need to take, tasks that need to be accomplished. But the actual goal is always a bit hazy and they know that when they’ve finished the list there will be more tasks. Even the strategists never look beyond victory; instead they develop lists of what has to be done to achieve victory. They determine what actions have to be taken against which aspect of the enemy force they are opposing: bomb here, march there. They make lists of what forces they need, supplies to accumulate, intelligence required, ammunition to be delivered. The future is simply the time at which all those things will have been done.

In this sense soldiers create their own future, but it makes bringing the eternal into the light, and what little comfort can be drawn from contemplating the eternal, somewhat awkward. They are inept in the face of death. They, we, never expect, really expect, the consequences of being in a killing profession.

I was in Germany, far away from Vietnam. I was the Staff Duty Officer, the SDO, for the 1st Battalion, 39th Infantry — Paddy’s Gang, Anything, Anytime, Anywhere, Bar None — which was headquartered in Worms, a city most famous for Liebfraumilch wine and as the place where Martin Luther first confronted his Catholic Church. Every battalion in Germany, Alaska, Italy, Japan, Korea, the United States — that is, the entire Army — had a man like me sitting in a room with a couple of radios and a telephone. With me were two other men, a duty NCO and a runner. As with most things military the task had both ritual and purpose. In the room were large 3-ring binders with instructions for almost any contingency. In a locked safe in the room was a set of code books with decoding instructions for the “big one,” since in those days even an infantry battalion had its own nuclear weapons and planned diligently for the day when the Russian hordes would come pouring through the Fulda Gap.

The duty officer’s usual tasks were mundane in the extreme. I walked through the kaserne (the barracks area) and spoke with the Charge of Quarters of each company. At 0030 hours I stopped by the NCO club to supervise closing out of the cash registers. Twice during the night I checked guard posts outside the kaserne. My runner drove the jeep and my job was to make sure the guards were awake and doing their jobs.

It was simply an accident of German geography and U.S. troop stationing policy that the call came to the 1st of the 39th’s duty room telephone at just after 0600. A Staff Sergeant named Atkins had a wife who was German and who was from Worms. She had come home to stay with her parents while her husband did his tour in Vietnam. The 1st of the 39th was the only combat unit garrisoned in Worms.

Six in the morning in Germany was midnight in DC and noon in Vietnam. When the phone rang the Duty NCO had just finished playing reveille over the battalion’s public address system. He logged the time of the call as he picked up the phone and chanted the greeting used by anyone in the battalion who answered an office telephone, “Headquarters, First Battalion, Thirty-ninth Infantry, Triple A-Bar None! Staff Duty NCO speaking, sir. This line is not secure.”

I was drinking a cup of coffee as I listened to the duty NCO answer the call. My eyes were clear if my mind a bit fuzzy. I had just visited the latrine down the hall where I had shaved, brushed my teeth, broken starch on a fresh set of fatigues, and laced up my spit-shined Corcoran boots. I was ready to be relieved of my duty and go home to my quarters and hug my wife and sleep out the rest of the morning.

The SDNCO was listening and making notes on the log sheet. Then he flipped open one of the 3-ring binders. I came fully awake.

An alert?

Every month or so we had a practice “go to war” drill. Officers from the 8th Division headquarters would show up and stand around with clipboards and stopwatches. They watched the battalion assemble, pack up our tracks and start our engines, issue weapons and ammunition — and waited for us to screw up.

I stood behind the sergeant and saw the page he turned to, Casualty Notification, and felt my heart sink. There were hundreds of “additional duties” specified for officers in a line unit. Some were handed out on a semi-rational basis based on an individual officer’s rank, or skill, or special competence. Others were assigned almost randomly, most often simply exchanged between officers leaving and officers arriving. Others were assigned on a “tag, you’re it!” or “hey, you!” principle. That is, if you happened to pick up the phone or be standing in the sight of the CO — if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time —then it was your job. I was standing there. I would be the Casualty Notification Officer.

I scanned down the page my sergeant was looking at and saw the list of tasks, questions, procedures. He was writing out the details on a message pad.

Step One: Verify.

Almost too easy. “She’s a friend of my wife, sir,” the duty NCO told me. “This address sounds right to me.”

Step Two: Call chaplain to accompany.

Which one? Probably Catholic. Didn’t really matter. Call the battalion chaplain, interrupt his breakfast, and let him decide.

Step Three: Wait for official message before delivering notification.

And so on through a list of procedures that ultimately referred to a regulation and another book of procedures that would guide the Survivor’s Assistance Officer.

None of which let me off the hook.

Light was filling the parade ground of the kaserne. A thin fog from the Rhine obscured the units that were falling in for morning formation. My relief would be here in a few minutes and I would no longer be the SDO. That burden would be lifted. I could go home, but only to change into my Class A uniform.

This I did and I then walked back through the German morning in the green woolen coat (blouse) and trousers wearing my polished low-quarter shoes. The sunlight glinted from the jump wings on my chest and the eagle on my hat.

Back at the battalion headquarters the battalion chaplain was waiting alongside our colonel’s sedan. I was given an envelope that had been couriered from Division headquarters that had the official message from the Secretary of the Army in it and the unofficial story I would be allowed to tell. We drove along cobblestone streets through the city.

“Have you done this before?” I asked the chaplain.

The chaplain nodded. “First time in Germany, though. I hope her English is OK.”

“Should we have brought an interpreter?”

“Too late now. But they were married for quite a while. I’m hoping we don’t have a problem. And I’ve called the local parish and let them know.”

The sedan stopped outside a neat, sturdy house near the edge of the city. We got out. I knocked and the dark wooden door swung inward. A young woman stood there. She had her blonde hair in a bun and was wiping her hands on a dishtowel. I saw her eyes go wide at the uniforms. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. She knew.

I am forever grateful to the chaplain. Quick as an infantryman he stepped toward the woman and took her into his arms before she collapsed. His rush took them into the small, perfectly kept living room. I followed, but I left the door open behind me. The chaplain helped the woman to a couch and sat beside her with an arm around her shoulders, murmuring to her. I stood there with the envelope in one hand and my hat with its shining eagle in the other. I listened to her take her breath in and in and in and in, as if she were sucking all the air in the world into her body.

I could not tell you how long I stood there before the small whimpering cry began. Her long mewling sigh like a bereft kitten brought her mother into the room. That woman, her square face lined like someone who worked outdoors, glanced at the green uniforms and looked out the door where she saw the official sedan at the curb. She looked then at her daughter and I would remember that look as being very hard, as if she wanted to say, “I told you so.” But her face then softened. She sat beside her daughter and pulled one of her hands into her lap and began to pat it and stroke it. The daughter turned from the Chaplain’s embrace and curled within her mother’s arms. They sat there, together, for what seemed like a very long time. The Chaplain was very still.

I knew I should read her the letter from the Secretary of the Army, but the moment would not come. I heard a sharp rap on the door behind me and turned to see a priest standing there, accusatory in his black suit and white collar. He acknowledged the crosses on the chaplain’s uniform with a sharp jerk upwards of his eyebrows. The chaplain got up and joined the priest at the door. They spoke in low voices, in English, for a few minutes. Then the chaplain gestured to me. I joined them outside the door, in the open air, in the sunlight.

“You will tell me, please, of the circumstances,” the priest said.

I told the story — a patrol, an ambush, an evacuation, a death — and gave the priest the envelope. I also told him the next few steps in the process: where the body was, where it would be, decisions that needed to be made by the new widow. The priest looked at the chaplain for confirmation. The chaplain nodded.

“Good. I will now take care of things. We will be having more information soon?”

“Yes.” My sentences took on the quick cadences of the German priest. “By this afternoon. An officer will be appointed to help Mrs. Atkins. My task was only to notify her.”

The priest nodded and abruptly turned and went into the house.

“We’re done,” the chaplain said.

On our way back the chaplain told me that the mother was a war widow, too. “It seems that we have brought another war here. I think that upset the priest more than the dying.”