FREEDOM

By Jimmie von Tungeln

 

He was thinking that it wasn’t fair and the thought pricked at him like a bad memory on a restless night. The whole damned thing wasn’t fair. He sniffed. Even the smell wasn’t fair. He slapped at a mosquito and heard a voice behind him. He stiffened and raised his rifle.

“Livingstone,” it said, “curly pubic hair. It’s me, Shaeffer. I’m coming up behind you.”

The rifle came to rest. The man spoke back, without moving his head or taking his eyes off the rice paddy spread before him, a growth-quilted blanket, reminding him of the blankets the old women once sewed, their wrists nipping and drawing, conversing with soft voices, while the men played dominos and spoke of politics. Back home.

“Come ahead,” Livingstone said. He felt, more than heard, a body sliding along the grass behind him. When a head appeared beside him, he asked, low, without looking, “Curly pubic hair? Who the hell thinks up these passwords?” He spoke slightly above a whisper.

“The El Tee,” Shaeffer said. “He thinks they’re cute.”

“And if he thinks they are, who can say they aren’t?” Livingstone said. “What’s up?”

“Just checking on the outposts. How’s everything?”

“How the fuck do you think everything is?”

Shaeffer scanned the view before them. Far away, the rice fields, visible in the full-moon, rose near the base of a mountain some 3,000 feet in height. He listened, then spoke. “Let me take a guess,” he said. “Crappy?”

“It’s not fair.”

“What?”

“All of it.”

“Ain’t you happy with the food? We’ll get all the milk we want to eat when we get back to base.”

Livingston didn’t answer. Instead, he pointed to the bulge where the jungle greens

covered the bandages around his shoulder. “I should have gone out on the last chopper. You know that,” he said.

“Yeah well,” Shaeffer said. “There just wasn’t room.” He touched the hard metal end of Livingston’s rifle. “Besides,” he said, “you can still shoot.”

“Why did we leave there and come down here?” Livingston asked, pointing toward the mountain. “after the shit-storm we went through taking it.”

“I’ll ask General Westmorland next time we have cocktails,” Shaeffer said. “Other than that, may I report back to him that all is well with your soul?”

“It stinks here,” Livingstone said. “Why this spot? Wasn’t there a place to camp upwind?”

“Question is,” Shaeffer said, “Why all the dead bodies that are causing the stink?”

“Ask the godammed Americal Division boys. Way I heard it, they told the gooks in the village to choose sides, and when they came back, lo and behold.”

“Lo and behold what?”

“They were hiding some rice,” Livingstone said, “so rat-a-tat-tat. No more VC sympathizers in the vil’ and the VC are going hungry. The gook kids ain’t though. Mama-sans. Papa-sons. I heard they wasted them all.”

“Tough break,” Shaeffer said. “Why didn’t they didi mau? They know what we do to villages that choose the wrong side.”

“Where would they go? They’ve lived in the same spot forever.”

“Sin Loy,” Shaeffer said. “Too fucking bad.”

“I wasn’t even supposed be drafted,” Livingston said. “I had been accepted into grad school.”

“Sin fucking loy,” Scaeffer said. “The rain falls on the just and the unjust. I was going to be a preacher and make some real fucking money.”

“I have friends who got exempted for grad school.”

“It all depends on your draft board. I can’t imagine that you would have pissed them off or anything like that.”

“Up yours,” Livingston said. “Don’t you have something to do?”

“My job is to bring comfort,” he said. “Here’s something for you.” He reached into a front pocket and retried a piece of paper folded into a packet. He put it to his nose, sniffed, and handed it to Livingstone. “Here,” he said.

“What’s is it?”

“A bit of muscle rub,” he said. Put a dab in each nostril and it will keep out the smell of the dead gooks for a while.”

Livingstone smelled the paper. “Okay,” he said. “Do you know when we pull out from here?”

“When we’ve killed all the gooks.”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh,” Shaeffer said, “I’m supposed to remind you.”

“Remind me of what?”

“The Brass thinks we need to spend some money tonight. Budget talks are stalled.”

“Not my fault.”

“We all must bear the burden of guilt,” Shaeffer said, “but you will may yet be cleansed of your transgressions.”

“How?”

“Shooting gooks, or at least shooting at them.”

“Weren’t you supposed to tell me something?”

“Oh,” Shaeffer said. “Death from on high tonight.”

“Where?”

“Shaeffer pointed at the mountain. “There.”

“Where we just left from?”

“The very place.”

Livingstone thought. “Do you think the NVA has moved back up there?”

“I doubt it. That ain’t it at all. The Air Force just needs to expend some fireworks so their budget won’t get cut. Spend it or lose it. They have no choice. They are caught in this endless cycle of beg and justify. No way they can quit and let the Navy have their money.”

Livingston stared at the mountain, then said. “I think I understand now why we’re here in this stink hole.”

“Why?”

“If the flyboys chase the gooks off the mountain this time—if there are any gooks there —Brass thinks they will flee this way and we can ‘crocodile’ them as they go by.”

“That would send them straight to Jesus,” Shaeffer said.

“Except for the fact that they are probably back across the DMZ by now. If not, what if they don’t flee, but come right at our little piece of paradise? Have you noticed there’s a jungle directly behind us?”

“Details. Details,” Shaeffer said. Privates ain’t supposed to worry about details. That’s for corporals like me and above. You just respond.”

“I responded by walking point for three straight days,” Livingston said. “It’s not fair.”

“The El Tee trusts you.”

Livingstone ignored him. “The air was a lot nicer up there,” he said, pointing at the mountain again. “I thought that’s why we took it, to have some fresh air. This whole damn country smells like rotten fruit when you’re stuck in the bottoms."

"The air show starts at zero-three-three zero,” Shaeffer said.

“Speak English out here,” Livingston said. “What time?”

“Three-thirty in the morning. Don’t panic when it wakes you up. You might start firing and give our position away.”

“As if there is a person in this fuckin’ country that doesn’t know exactly where we are.”

“Be seeing you,” Shaeffer said. “It’s been nice.” Livingston didn’t look, but felt the other turn on side and look behind them. “By god,” he said, “there is a jungle back there. Don’t you dare let them get past here.” With that, he was gone.

Livingston stared at the top of the mountain. When the order came to move out, his company had only been there two days. The men grumbled, but obeyed. They packed with sullen silence and assembled in tactical formation. In strict order of march, they began their descent. With each step downward, the air grew heavier and as the temporary feeling of relief abandoned them. From above, they could survey the countryside. From that position, it was a beautiful place. Shades of green, some of it checkered, some of it smooth, and some of it stippled by the jungle, combined to offer a peaceful view from the top. It was hard, from there, to imagine the dangers and conflicts waiting for them below.

Halfway down, someone spotted some sort of ape nestled in a tree. It nodded in cadence as they passed, like a sentry taking a count. Someone spread the word. The men began to salute the creature as they passed. It made no sign that their efforts made an impact. He continued to nod, and stared as if they were just the most recent of a forever of intruders. When the last man had passed, the ape picked a leaf and began to chew it, still nodding as if he were digesting facts as well as food.

At the bottom of the mountain, they Lieutenant had turned them toward the noxious smell blowing from the east and ordered them into patrol formation. He placed Livingston on point. They marched into the smell, slowing as they came closer to the jungle. Just as the air became unbearable, orders came to stop. An hour later, they waited, having dug in and consumed a supper of C-rations with sullen and silent comradeship. As night fell, they manned outposts. That was earlier. Now, Livingston scanned the area under his responsibility and thought again, “It’s not fair.”

He remembered the packet Shaeffer had given him. Retrieving it, he opened it and spread half the ointment into each nostril. The scent freed him from the smell of death. He smiled and wished, for a mere second, that he had thought to thank Schaeffer.

Thinking of Shaeffer made him think of the time. He moved his hand below the breastwork he had dug and, shielding his wrist, removed the small flap that covered the dial of his watch. The numbers shone faintly in the night … three twenty-seven. He covered the flap and moved his hand to his ammunition belt. He removed two clips and slapped the business edge of each on the palm of his hand. He blew on their tops and placed them in front of him on the edge of his foxhole, just six inches from the barrel of his rifle. He checked the safety and waited.

Seconds passed and Livingston listened for any sound ahead of him. Behind him, the platoon slept, perhaps unaware of the commotion in store. A faint buzzing filled the night. Livingston looked to the east.

A stream of fire streaked across the far horizon … a jet. The stream neared the mountain and then rose quickly. Almost at once, a ball of fire erupted below it and ran along the mountain’s rim. Another stream appeared, and another ball of flame. Then another. Livingston froze, transfixed by the sight and ignoring the firing around him. He watched the mountain erupt in bursts of roiling fire. Flames moved to the west as the planes led them along the length of the mountain. After what seemed like an hour of this, but actually only minutes, the jets disappeared.

As the fires blazed, Livingstone heard a distant roar, a sound like an ancient engine might make while struggling to fulfill its duty. Seconds passed before the far away sky began to lighten. Then he could see the heavy transport aircraft dropping massive parachute flares. They descended slowly striving to prolong their moment of glory, drifting with the wind. Soon, they lit the entire surface of the mountain. Again, the illumination moved from east to west, as if a giant hand was moving along the surface flipping light switches. Then Livingstone looked to the east and saw what looked like red hot rivets from flowing in waves from invisible, but massive, buckets … mini guns.

Livingston laid his rifle on the ground and leaned forward. The sky was buzzing now with the sound of helicopter gunships. Their twin guns were each firing nearly 4,000 rounds per minute, each fifth round a tracer, hence the image of rivets. Livingston couldn’t take his eyes away. It was if someone had arranged the light show for his enjoyment. Bleachers from which to enjoy the entertainment would have been appropriate. He folded his arms on the earth and placed his chin on them.

He felt himself lifted by the sight. He no longer felt trapped the unfairness of war as he heard the explosions of rockets adding a staccato under-theme to the majesty of the mountain’s destruction. The universe was telling him how inconsequential he and his yearning for fairness and freedom were. As the tracers flowed back and forth, he felt in rhythm with the night. He shook his head back and forth in the pure wonderment.

The show ended and the night passed. The ointment in Livingstone’s nose faded and the smell brought back the realities of war. No hordes fled from mountain. No waves of NVA troops drove into the encampment. A private relieved him at zero four-hundred hours and he slept until revile. The time came to move out. The men packed their belongings, attended their weapons, and met in formation. The Lieutenant inspected them, nodded, and shared their new orders. They would move west, away from the noxious odor, and toward a landing zone where they would join fresh units for new search and destroy patrols.

This finished, he ordered them into formation and pointed to Livingstone. “Take point,” he said.

The only thing that moved was the smoke still rising from the mountain. Only the smell from the village of death reminded them that life had once existed in that direction. Now, all was dead. The normal jungle sounds even fell in volume. The silence was broken when Livingston spoke. “Fuck you,” he said.

“What did you say, private?”

“I said fuck you.”

“Beg pardon?”

“If you want someone to take point, take it yourself.”

“Are you disobeying a direct order?”

“Goddamn right.”

The jungle sounds stopped completely. From the mountain, an audible explosion announced that the night’s work had not ended. The slow death of the mountain top would continue for days. The eyes of the entire platoon shifted to the Lieutenant. A battle of wills was in the offing, and soldiers take entertainment whenever and wherever they can find it. The Lieutenant glanced at the troops and then at Livingston. “Want to repeat what you just said?”

Livingstone didn’t flinch. “It’s not my turn,” he said. “Get someone else, or take point yourself.”

The wind increased and the smell was making the men nauseated. They could hear the other units moving.

“Baxter,” the Lieutenant yelled. “Take point.”

As the men assumed formation, the rain began to fall. The drops moved along the length of the platoon and then followed the edge of the jungle. The men started walking to somewhere. The rain increased as if trying to cleanse a small part of the world. Far off, the top of the mountain still smoked.

 

A Daughter of the 313^th

By Jimmie von Tungeln

 

            Ask Brenda von Tungeln why she decided, as a middle-aged woman, to attend a World War Two infantry reunion and she will answer that she did it for her dad. As his only child, she had always intended to take him to one of his regimental reunions, but things like growing up, becoming educated, pursuing a professional career, and getting married—to the author in 1972—forced postponement after postponement. The annual invitations piled up.

            “Finally, one year I just decided to do it,” she says. “They held the reunion in Pittsburg and I had never been there. So I signed up.”

            She never imagined the decision would lead her to new friends, a prolonged study of the history of the 313th Regiment of the 79^th Infantry Division, and an encounter with a lost moment of family history.

All this happened despite the fact that when she left for the reunion in the summer of 1999, her dad couldn’t even make the trip. He was suffering from the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. Those who have dealt with it know why they call it, "The long goodbye."

            So what happens when a lone woman shows up at a convention filled with veterans, all of whom are old enough to be her father?

            “I knew it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack to find someone who actually knew my dad,” she says. “The 79^th Infantry Division had thousands of men at its peak. It contained battalions, regiments, companies, platoons, and squads. An individual soldier usually only knew the men in his squad. If a man was a replacement, the other squad members might not even remember him at all.”

            “I didn’t care though,” she adds. “I just wanted to meet as many people who might have known him as I could.”

            Robert Julius Cole might have lived out his life without ever venturing far from Lonoke County, Arkansas had not it been for the war. His only dream beyond the world of farming was the occasional thought, when nature proved particularly vicious, that he might someday get a more stable job “working at a filling station.” Arkansas summers have caused more than one farmer to dream of a different career.

Then World War Two happened.

He received his call for service in early 1944 and found himself in Texas training for the infantry. Arriving in Europe in August 1944, he joined A Company, of the 313^th Infantry Regiment as it headed across France.

The 79^th Division became known in the lexicon of World War Two History as “a fine attack division,” an honor among the highly honored.  Its members wore the Cross of Lorraine from service in World War I. Dormant for years thereafter, it was re-mobilized it 1942. After landing in Normandy on D-Day plus eight, it fought almost continually across France, Belgium, and Germany until war’s end.

            Afterwards, most units began annual reunions. By the time Brenda had decided to attend one, she could boast of being a minor historian of the 79th, partly from study and partly from the stories her dad told over the course of more than 50 years.

Thus resolved, she left her husband to look after things at home and her mom to look after her dad. She explained to him as best she could what she was doing. That proved difficult. He was no longer the strapping twenty-one year old that had landed in France in 1944, nor was he the lively story teller who graced every table with a tale or two, or three. He wasn’t even the gentle father who, after the war was over, came home, married, doted on his daughter, and refused ever to fire a gun again.

This time he just looked and nodded as she explained where she was going. Whether he understood or not lingers as a mystery of the cruelest type.

            A plane ride and taxi fare later, she checked into the convention hotel. She didn’t stay in her room long. Instead, she headed for the main lobby and began asking questions. She had things to do.

She had just started introducing herself to anyone standing still long enough when a man startled her with the simple statement: “I knew your dad.” To her further amazement, he added, “I have a Nazi flag at home that your dad and a bunch of us captured in 1944 and signed.” The man was Jim O’Neil, from near Sacramento, California. He waded ashore at Normandy when he was barely 15.

            They have become friends, O’Neil, his wife Dorothy, and Brenda. They exchange news regularly by both regular and e-mail. And they see one another at the reunions.

The next time von Tungeln attended a reunion, she took her mother, Hazel Welch Cole. Jim O’Neil brought the flag that his squad had captured and signed. She has a photograph of her mom with the flag. It occupies a sacred place in her life. It rests beside a heart-wrenching Christmas Card from 1944, pre-printed with the silhouette of a soldier in a fox-hole and the cryptic words: “Somewhere in France.” It is signed in pencil simply: “Julius Cole.”

Each year, in a solemn ceremony, the survivors ring a bell for each of the men of the 313^th who died during the preceding year. The wives of the 313^th watch it through their own dimming eyes. Some men won’t receive the honor, though. Each reunion threatens to be the last, although some of the children and grandchildren are maintaining the tradition. The brave men who crossed the Rhine and stormed the Fatherland are too old to make the trip anymore. Like Brenda von Tungeln’s dad, all that will be left soon are the memories.

            When asked what she remembers most about him, she gives an odd answer.

            “His feet,” she says. “I remember his feet.  They froze in the Ardennes and he had trouble with them all his life.”

            Then she adds, “When I was a little girl I used to rub them on a winter’s evening. They would hurt him so bad.”

The last photograph taken of Julius Cole shows him leaning against a fence at his farm looking out over his pasture. No one will ever know what he was thinking, if anything, through the pitiless fog of Alzheimer’s. In the summer of 2000, they rang the bell for him at the 313^th Infantry reunion. Never a fan for those wearisome end-of-the-year “bragging letters” or overblown obituaries, his daughter simply mentioned, in the local notices, his family, his service with the 79^th, his Purple Heart, and his Combat Infantry Badge—so cherished by those who have earned it. He would have liked that.

During his final days, along with her mother, she hardly left his bedside, often rubbing his hands the way she used to rub his feet. Sometimes they would have to help restrain him when he would choose to “not go gently.” Sometimes they had to help clean up the messy side of advanced dementia. Above all, though, they had to watch this good man waste away. Unpleasant? Maybe, but they feel no regret.

That’s simply what the women of the 313^th do.

Hazel and Jim O'Neil with the flag
Julius signed in 1944.

Postscript: The Army disbanded the 79th Division when Germany surrendered. They transferred Julius to the First Infantry Division, The Big Red One. Had events forced the invasion of Japan, anyone who has studied World War II knows what unit would have constituted the first wave and this story would likely never had been written.

Sometimes visiting places from where your roots grew is like taking a calming dip in a pool of warm memories. It was for my sister, brother, and me yesterday.

 We started out from our home place, a site much altered from our youth. It once contained a small country grocery store with a home attached to it. Our parents bought it and opened for business on January 1, 1940. They reared the three of us there. It disappeared long ago with all the other country stores. To date, no politician is promising to bring them back along with the employment they provided.

 Driving south into what is lovingly referred to as “L.A.,” or Lower Arkansas, we passed a site where, in a small shack in 1918, a frail woman was struggling for her life after giving birth, somewhat prematurely, to her eighth child, a girl. The woman was so near death that the doctor laid the infant aside to die, and concentrated on saving the woman with, among another tools, Vick’s Salve, the WD-40 of the medical world at that time. It worked, lucky for us.

 The woman was our grandmother and the infant was our mother. This, and much of our family history, was provided by her oldest sister, Hallie Harris Harden, the matriarch of our clan, and a character of great enjoyment until her death at near 100 years of age. I thought of her as we passed a small country church, for I remembered the time I was driving her around and she pointed at it and announced, “There’s where Jesus saved me from going to hell, and your Uncle Carl saved me from being an old maid.” I’m not sure about the timing of the first event but the second occurred when she was 15 years old.

 Three years after my mother survived childbirth, her father died. My grandmother was left alone in a harsh rural environment with no means of support, and three young children in hand. Mother never talked much about those awful days except to relate the story of when the local church members acquired new curtains for its windows. My grandmother begged the castoffs from them and made underpants for the girls. My mother never forgot the day she fell on the playground and that embarrassing secret was revealed to a group of cruel schoolchildren. The horrible mask of poverty forms many faces.

 Life goes on. Not long after, the kids' older brother married the daughter of a widower whose wife had given birth to 13 children, and then died. The couple carried messages back and forth, and my grandmother ended up marrying the widower and caring for his children that were still at home. The son of one of those children is now Mayor of Mansfield, Arkansas and I see him from time to time. He never fails to say, almost with tears in his eyes, that my grandmother was the only grandmother he ever knew.

 We visited the gravesites where our grandparents are buried, near their fathers, one a veteran of the Confederacy and the other a veteran of the Union. The unit of the latter saved my hometown, Pine Bluff, from a Rebel assault and the city erected a small monument to it. The obituary of the former stated that he was a “good man who never took part in any of the neighborhood brawls.”

Don’t ask.

 It was a good day. One final surprise caused me to chuckle. Now first understand, my sister started out in her professional life punching data cards for the state’s electrical utility in the basement of a building in Pine Bluff. She ended it in an office near the top of a high-rise office building in Little Rock running a major department for that same company. She is a serious person, and highly respected as a professional by her former colleagues. She is considered a good person by all, and I doubt she would ever take part in a neighborhood brawl, if they have those where she lives. Did I mention that she is a serious person? We lovingly call her “The General.”

 Imagine my amusement when, as we passed over a railroad track near our old neighborhood, she began telling me how she and her girlfriends used to put bags on sticks, walk down those tracks, and pretend they were hoboes. What an image. Times reserved for memories are full of surprises like that.

 Overall, the day ended on a happy note to be filed in the “Ps” under “pleasant.”

 But … my sister a hobo? That still cracks me up. It really does.

 July 12, 2017

The Old Homeplace, gone forever.