“Can you say your name for the record please?”
I cleared my throat, “It’s Matt, Matthew Lewis.”
“Thanks for deciding to speak to us Matt,” the young reporter said quietly, “Your story will be a treasure for the Historical Society. As you know from our emails, everyone at the Historical Society values hearing firsthand accounts from our veterans. Our government, as well as governments across the world often distort perspectives as they are clouded by values and ethos’s of the people at the very top.”
I shifted in my recliner and heard the suede leather squeak as I moved to a more upright position. “Where do want me to start?”
Her sweet meek smile widened, “From the beginning would be great.”
I cleared my throat and began.
—
It started with two young boys, me, and my friend Jim McCarthy. We grew up in Huntsville, Alabama on the same street- we were neighbors. I was a shy kid and didn’t realize at the time that there was a boy about the same age as me living next door, until one day, an errant baseball flew into the parlor, glass scattering everywhere. I can still hear my mother’s gasp of surprise as a young raggedy looking boy poked his head into where there used to be beautiful, frosted glass. At the time, Jim had wild black hair that bordered on being long enough to look feminine. His sea green eyes danced and dared me to jump out the window to join him on adventures only boys aged ten and under spend their time going on. I didn’t expect how I would react next. Without taking a second look at my horrified mother, I jumped to my feet and ran, pumping my arms to get up enough speed to make it through the space where the window glass used to be. I still don’t know how I made it through! One moment I was in the parlor, and the next, I was in a heap under the window, the breath knocked from my lungs.The first thing that Jim did before I had a chance to speak was disappear into the tall hedges that separated his and my parents’ property.
“Wait,” I tried to get back to my feet.
The hedges parted, and Jim emerged. “Want to come with me to the creek to catch toads? I can show you the ones I like the best- the green ones. They have warts that are funny to touch.”
“Sure, let’s go.”
—
Eight years flew by. Jim and I went from catching toads in the creek behind our elementary school to daring each other to kiss the girls in our middle school class. We were there for each other from the awkward first dates to some of life’s most scary moments- when I crashed my dad’s Mustang head on into a tree, totaling it. Jim was in the passenger seat and escaped with a small scar running parallel above his left eyebrow, while I was less lucky- biting my tongue flat in half and knocked dead unconscious. Jim was the brave one that day and went for help. I didn’t remember a thing until I woke up on the ambulance stretcher to my father’s furious chocolate brown eyes looking down at me.
“You two boys are so damned stupid,” he huffed under his breath, “You both need a woman to straighten you out.”
“No woman would want us. Like you said old man, we are both too stupid.”
Vietnam would prove to be a cruel cursed madame in our lives. My old man cursed me and Jim unintentionally forever on the day of that accident.
On December 1st, 1969, Jim and my lives changed forever. It was a normal early winter day, no different from any other winter day we had experienced growing up. I had decided to go to Jims’s house to watch television after dinner since my own parents were too poor to have one of our own at home.
“Please remember your coat, Matt!”
“I’m just going over to Jim’s ma!”
“It’s December Matt! Put on a coat!”
Like the idiot I was, I stole out the door before my ma had a chance to appear with her disapproving face to tell me that I was going to catch a cold. I skipped down the rickety steps to my childhood house and made a left towards Jims. Since the first day I had met Jim, we traversed the distance between us through a gap in the rotting, once white picket fence on his parents’ yard’s side. The hundreds of times crossing here only increased the decay. I made sure to skip over Margie’s fruit garden planted on the fence line and barely missed trampling a newly planted rose bush. Jim came to the open front door of his house as I was catching my balance.
“You made it dude,” Jim ran up to me and gave me a quick embrace.
He had grown since his high school graduation in June and could almost look me in the eye.
“Are you and Marlene still going steady?”
Marlene was the only thing that had kept me in Huntsville after my own graduation in ’66. She had begged and cried for me to not apply to colleges states away that would take me away from her. What was the funniest, is that is exactly what she had done when she graduated the following year in ’67. She claimed that becoming college educated would help her become a mother better suited to teach her own kids from home. As if!
“Women don’t suit me, as they don’t suit you Jimmy boy. Let’s go inside and watch some television. I’ve been waiting ages!”
Jims’s shyness had never fully evaporated from childhood. He simply nodded his head and turned towards the formal sitting area. Why Jims old man had decided to put a television in a formal sitting area was beyond me.
Margie, Jims’s mother sat on a simple orange chaise facing the door with the beginnings of a knitting project in her lap. She looked up as I came in and set her glass of red wine on the side table.
“Matt.”
“Good day Ma’am,” I replied.
Jim was already by the sofa. He patted a spot next to him on the worn green sofa we had grown up on. It was settled comfortably in front of the television. I settled in and smiled.
“Let’s see what’s on Jim!”
The television flickered to life. A silent announcement filled the screen, simply stating, “STAY TUNED FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.”
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the latest from Washington DC, a deep male voice chirped.
The draft lottery, a live report on tonight’s picking of the birth dates for the draft. Here at Selective Service headquarters in Washington is CNS news correspondent, Ralph Pickerton.
The camera panned a room full of older men, that had to have been politicians. They sat in a half circle of chairs facing a blackboard at the front of the room. The camera eventually came to focus on a man with patchy hair. He held a microphone and faced the camera.I knew that where our country was concerned, when men that old took the mic nothing good was set to happen.
For the first time in twenty-seven years, the United States again will be calling a draft of all able bodied men between the ages of eighteen to twenty-six to fight in the Communist War in Vietnam. There will be no exceptions except should the young man be currently enrolled in university or have a lifelong physical disability that would render him useless in active combat scenarios.
The media correspondent went into a spiel about our nation’s history and how we had prevailed in World War Two, so it was logical that we would prevail against our new foe, the Communists.
I looked away from the tv. Jim’s face was ashen. He stared transfixed at the television. We all knew that a draft was likely to happen, but it was something that was thrown around as maybe it will happen, but likely not. There had to have been enough men willing to go overseas to serve, right?
I was going to go overseas to fight in a war. A real war. Not wars that young boys wage, but a real war where people walk away dead.
I felt a wave of something unusual rise in me. I had never felt this way before. I was going to be sick. I frantically looked for a reservoir, anything to contain the sickness coming up. Finding none, I cupped my hands in front of my face and gagged. My dinner came up, filling my cupped palms and then spilling over, soiling the perfect white rug. Perfect no longer.
We will begin to announce the birth dates in ascending order. All numbers between 001 and 100 will be drafted immediately, to leave for training no later than January 1st, 1970.
I looked back up at the flickering television screen in horror to learn of my fate. One of the politicians’ young pages plunged their hand into a fishbowl with round blue pills. He picked one at random and pulled the two sides apart like an Easter egg. It was so methodical, systematic, and emotionless. They seemed to care little that they were sending people to a place of death, a place where most wouldn’t come back.
September 14th, 001. This is the first birthday picked for the countrywide draft.
I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath and gasped. Not me. Not me. My heart thumped in my chest, and I sucked in a quick breath of air. The page continued to pick more of those blue balls, pulling them apart, and passing them to the announcer to read for the camera. Several more birthdays were read to the viewers. Its not my birthday, Its not my birthday.
October 26th, 007. We will now pick the next birthday for the draft.
I stood up, breaking contact with the screen yet again and walked behind the worn sofa to the broad paned window behind it.
“Hey man, that’s you,” I heard someone say.
The voice was muffled like I was swimming underwater. I barely understood that the voice had been addressing me. I was silently drowning by my best friend’s open window, but no one was able to help me.
January 15th, 017.
The front door slammed, and a female voice pleaded in a desperate voice. I came up for air, and my eyes roved around the formal sitting area, focusing on Margie. She had just brought her glass of wine to her lips, but then it was falling, the wine tilting in slow motion until the glass shattered against the wood flooring and the wine spilled like a rogue sneaker wave against the same white rug, I had lost my meal to. I turned, trying to locate Jim to console him. My best friend was gone. I hadn’t even registered where he had gone but heard Margie mumble something.
“Ma’am, what was that?”
“Jim’s a boy, they can’t send him to Vietnam, right? Elodie’s son died there, and they brought him home in a simple pine box. She didn’t get a chance to say goodbye because there weren’t enough pieces of him left to look at! The only thing she has to remember her son by is a folded American flag. A FLAG Matty!”
My mouth was moving before I could stop myself to think about the ridiculous thing that I was about to say. The promise I was about to make, the promise I was not sure I would be able to realistically keep.
“I’ll bring Jim home to you Margie. I’ll find some way to end up in the same place as him. I’ll watch over him and make sure he takes as little risks as possible. I’ll bring him back to you alive.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
It was difficult and basically unheard of to be promoted to an officer once on the ground in Vietnam. To honor my promise to Margie, I had to have more control. I had to be in a place of power to watch over Jim. Six months ago, Jim had been drafted as infantry and I had commissioned as a Thud pilot before our trek overseas. Jim had ended up in Southern Vietnam, a statistically safer place for him to be, and I had been sent to Laos, with my mission’s focus being the conflict in Northern Vietnam. Once I was promoted to an officer, the rank came with some perks. I was able to request any similar and lower ranked soldiers stationed across Vietnam or in neighboring countries to join my squad and fly as a team with me. I instantly requested Jim, and I was not denied. Jim shipped in within a week of my request being approved. Jim became the greenest member of my squad with Matthais Rogers following closely after. He was the oldest soldier in the war that had trained and completed certification to fly a Thud. As my right-hand man, I chose Hendrix, a guy with a nonsense attitude and a distinctive swearing problem. He would get the job done and protect Jim should I fall. At our first meeting, I reminded my newly formed team that our only objective was to all be awarded the One Hundred Mission patch and go home in one piece to our families. That was our main goal, not whatever nonsense they were having us do on the mission in Vietnam.
—
Was our mission cursed?
I remember having this thought during brief the morning that I learned that my squad and I would be charting our Birds deep into Northern Vietnam to destroy an important section of the Commies highway, Route 89. They called what we were doing Operation Rolling Thunder- that was the code name at least. Rolling Thunder was serious and important to our overall mission in the country. Without Route 89, the enemy in Hanoi wouldn’t be able to receive fresh troops, military supplies, or food provisions into the city. We could begin to starve the enemy from inside. The success of this mission could turn the tide in our favor.
Name, rank, birthday, serial number. It was the only thing we could tell them if we got captured alive. Central Command told me if anyone on my squad was taken into custody by the Northern Vietnamese, the NVA would drop straight to business and demand to know what base we had taken off from to sabotage operations. Under no circumstances were we allowed to reveal this information. As I had since brief, to calm my inner turmoil, I repeated my phrase, my angel phrase as I called it: My name is Matthew Lewis. I am an officer with the United States Air Force serial number 153-241. I was born on October 26th, 1948. You will not break me. Sleep did not come easily that night.
—
The next morning, I reported to the airfield to ship out in my Thunderbird with my squad.
“Matt!”
The brisk wind pushed against my flight suit as I squinted through the dust flowing across the field. Jim ran through the assembling Thud pilots in other squads to my side.
Jim’s protruding bucktooth ran the show here. His long, flowing black hair had been cut short to fit military regulation. It didn’t suit him. He was so tan compared to when we were back at home. In preparation for this mission, I hadn’t asked him if he had flown a high stakes mission in the past. It was bad luck and bad etiquette around here. It just wasn’t something pilots did. Many of the pilots here weren’t here in true service of their country. Like in my squad, their sole purpose was to get in, get the one hundred mission badge, and then return home in one piece. I needed to get Jim home in one piece. I needed to honor my promise to Margie.
“Hey bud,” I reached out to ruffle Jims’s hair like I had done hundreds of times before, only realizing that it was cut short and that I had no hair to ruffle when my hand brushed his head.
Jim dodged my errant hand and stood up a bit straighter. His sea green eyes sharpened to come off more serious, “Our Thuds are parked next to each other. Let’s walk over together.”
“Course Jim,” I smiled and started to saunter over to where Command had told me my Thud would be, on the South Side of the airfield.
“Officer Lewis, we’re parked on the north side.”
North. Like Northern Vietnam. Commie sabotage.
“Oh, silly me.”
I pivoted and spotted my Crew Chief preparing Jim’s and my bird on the Northern Side of the field. Jim was already on his way over. I felt my stomach drop at the potential shit storm we might have to deal with on Route 89.
—
“Final checks complete.” I muttered into the community comms channel.
“I’m a go Cap,” I heard my crew of three mutter off in succession.
“Now don’t blow up shitheads,” Hendrix shot back.
“Language Cadet,” I lectured.
“Don’t be a dick, Lewis.”
No one came back with a witty response. We were all on edge today. We began the taxi to our runway to take off. I pushed the throttle and took control of the stick, and before I knew it, my squad was airborne hurtling our way towards Northern Vietnam.
The flight from Laos went off without a hitch. No instrument failure, no rogue Commie birds in the sky, nothing. It was too quiet.
“Keep your eyes sharp,” I muttered into my comms mic.
Something was going to happen. Something always happens.
Jim’s panicked voice scared the shit out of me as he screamed that the Commies were here. I saw planes designed to down our Thuds fly out of nowhere. As Jim was at the back of our formation, he had no time to evade them.
“Mayday, mayday, I’m hit!”
Jims frantic voice came over the community comms. I watched in horror as his plane broke from our tight formation, lost its thrust, and began to glide towards the jungle below. A raging fireball exploded in the bottom of my vision. I knew deep down that his plane hadn’t really exploded, but my mind was playing tricks on me and creating something that would help me understand that my best friend had died in front of me in a slow-motion plane crash. I was able to do nothing at all to save him from breaking apart in the trees. I prayed to God that his end had been swift, and that God had been merciful. We couldn’t stop to make sure he was ok. I wanted to eject, but I had to help the rest of my squad take the Commies out of the sky. I’m sorry Jim.
—
I came home to Huntsville in the fall of 1970. Something unexplainable inside of me had changed, but Huntsville appeared to be the same as when I had left. My father had picked me up in a brand-new Toyota Corolla from the base where we had shipped in. The new car was unlike him. When I was at home, he hadn’t wanted to fork out money for a television, but now was buying the newest version of a car? We didn’t speak on the ride home. When my childhood home came into view through the car window, I noticed the McCarthys yard. The once vibrant fruit garden was visibly rotting on the surface of the soil. It looked like various fruits had just died without being enjoyed, and then just left there for nature and the birds to pillage. The rotting fence I had grown accustomed to passing through was gone. There was no evidence of it even being there in the first place. It had just rotted away. Just like me in a way. Jim’s funeral had happened just before I was released from duty. I hadn’t heard much about the funeral or asked about how his family was doing. I dreaded seeing Margie when it came down to it. As Jim’s commanding officer, I was responsible for presenting his family with an honorary flag at the annual Veterans Day Gold Star family dinner.
I got out of the car, walked up the stairs of my parents’ home, and up the stairs to my old bedroom. I got straight to business unpacking my dress uniform. I pulled the standard issue uniform off my body, not registering the fabric hitting the ground. The buttons on the white dress shirt were difficult to button. The fabric was too crisp. I tied the midnight blue tie with ease and slipped the jacket onto my shoulder. No matter what happened at the dinner I needed to remember that no one could break me, not myself, not Margie, not the memory of Jim. I had to do this to honor him.
—
After the National Anthem finished playing over the speakers of the small multipurpose gymnasium, the senior officer over our unit rose to announce the Gold Star families in attendance. I sat on a plastic chair by the door of the gym. I had to be near the exit door, just in case, even though this was not Vietnam. I was safe, they told me.
“Airman Jim McCarthy, parents Margie and Tom McCarthy in attendance.”
There was a brief lapse in the ceremony, and I rose from my chair on the wall of the gym, a folded American flag encased in a triangle of glass tucked under my arm. I walked to where Jim’s parents sat at the tables in the center of the room, my focus on Margie. Visible tears poured down her face interspersed with sobs. The room was silent apart from her and the clapping of my shoes against the linoleum. She clenched a tissue to her chest in vain. It was starting to come apart, flakes of the tissue falling into her lap.
“Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy, I present to you the flag of the United States, in honor of your son, Airman McCarthy for the ultimate sacrifice given in Vietnam. Rescue ops recovered his tags that we enclosed so that you can always remember your son. I give you my most heartfelt condolences.”
My words only made Margie’s sobs grow in volume. She couldn’t even look at me.
She hated me. Good riddance. I was a failure. Jim’s remains hadn’t been recovered. All she got of him was the memorial flag and his dog tags. Just like Elodie’s son.
Jims’s father reached his hand out to receive the monument flag.
“Thank you, son.”
I dipped my head in acknowledgement, heart racing with the simple comment, and turned to return to my chair on the wall. What I saw at this point, I can’t logically explain. Everyone I tell says that I am crazy, but I know what I saw. A man in standard Air Force issue dress blues stood at attention in front of the doors of the gymnasium. No one seemed to notice that he was there. The black head of hair gave him away. It was long, like it had been in childhood. It was out of place with the military uniform. I stopped dead in my tracks.
Jim.
He seemed to see me at this point and waved. The wave wasn’t childlike, but was dignified, almost like he was telling me that it was ok and bidding me goodbye. As quickly as he had come, he was gone.