The Old Man(96)
The old man’s last name was Kohler, first name Michael, middle name Isaac. He was born in Bay Village, Ohio, on July 10, sixty-one years ago. Julian looked up from the blue folder and thought. Bay Village sounded like a suburb of Cleveland on the shore of Lake Erie. He pictured it as one of those old places that had a park with a white wooden bandstand at its center and a ring of redbrick buildings that held stores and restaurants.
Michael Isaac Kohler graduated with a BA in economics and political science from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. That meant he had won a scholarship or that his parents had been rich, or nearly rich. Julian had never been able to place the old man’s accent because it conveyed only the north-central part of the country, and he used standard grammar. What had Kohler wanted to be, in those days when he came home after college? Whatever it was, he didn’t get to do it. He was drafted that summer, and sent through the machine—basic training, infantry school, advanced infantry with courses in hand-to-hand, sniper training, and survival school, and then off to Vietnam. Two tours, and then home. Why two? Why didn’t he take his discharge after surviving the first tour?
Julian leafed through the pages secured to the right side of the folder. They contained the dates and locations of Kohler’s training and the certifications he’d earned, and copies of the orders to report to various places.
Julian lifted another page and found copies of citations. Two Purple Hearts, a year and a half apart. Bad luck there. He made a good target. But after that: a Bronze Star and, later, a Silver Star. They gave you the last two only for gallantry under fire. The old man was a war hero, somebody who had not only done something but saved people while he was at it.
Julian remembered watching the old man in Chicago, and again in San Francisco. He had seen him burn whatever fear he must have been feeling and convert it into alertness, energy, and motion. There was never a second when he hadn’t known what to do.
Julian leafed through the rest of the thick file to get a quick overview. There was the transfer to military intelligence. He’d spent the next year at the Monterey language school. No, a year and a half. And there were the honorable discharge papers, just like Julian’s. That was where the military part of the record ended.
Julian turned back through the pages of the military record to the recommendation for the Silver Star. There was the usual businesslike description of what Kohler had done, written by Kohler’s company commander, Captain J. W. Marks. Kohler had been one of the men who arrived in Vietnam early in 1972, just before the Easter Offensive. That was the moment when the enemy chose to stop relying on the patient Viet Cong guerrilla campaign that had pecked away at the Americans for years, and began the North Vietnamese Army invasion, complete with tanks and heavy artillery.
At the time of the invasion, Kohler had been out in the jungles north of Quang Tri with ARVN rangers searching for small Viet Cong units. One night, after the rangers had found signs of enemy activity, Kohler and the rangers had blacked their faces and hands and gone out to sneak up on the enemy guerrillas, capture one, and bring him back to be searched and interrogated. They captured four.
What they discovered was that something big was coming. These troops were from far away in the north. They weren’t locals wearing black pajamas and sandals made from tire treads. They were soldiers with full military uniforms and gear.
Julian looked for the next part of the story. It wasn’t in the citation, but he could easily supply what wasn’t said. Kohler must have conveyed his concern to Captain Marks, who had reported it up the chain of command, but the reports had gone unnoticed among the thousands of pieces of intel that a war produced every day.
Kohler went out alone to search for more evidence that a major attack from the north was coming. Two days later, as he came in from one of his solo night recons, he found himself behind several platoons of North Vietnamese troops moving in on three sides of the ARVN camp, preparing to massacre the rangers. Kohler began a one-man attack, firing at the enemy, exhausting his ammunition, throwing his grenades, and taking a North Vietnamese machine gun, which he turned on the attackers. Kohler drew the enemy’s fire, which led his ARVN rangers to the enemy soldiers’ positions and gave them somebody to shoot at. The rangers rallied. They suffered light casualties and retreated successfully, taking their wounded with them.
The North Vietnam Army troops recovered very quickly from their minor, momentary setback in this single action. Tank divisions rolled into the central highlands from several directions, including Cambodia. The North Vietnamese Army advanced, slowed only by fierce and costly resistance from the Americans and the ARVN. They got as far as Kon Tum City on June 9, and were stopped there by hard fighting and devastating American air strikes. The date on Captain Marks’s recommendation for the Silver Star was July 1.
Julian had read about the Easter campaign when he was in Ranger NCO school. It was a long, hard holding action, but stopping the invasion at Kon Tum probably delayed the inevitable loss of South Vietnam by three years. Julian wondered. If Michael Kohler had known the future that day, would he have wanted to prolong the Vietnam War by three years?
Knowing the future wouldn’t have mattered, Julian decided. Given the chance, Kohler could only have done the same thing. He wasn’t trying to preserve a strategy, or hold some worthless land a little while longer. He was trying to save men he knew from dying.
Julian stood up from the small table in the concrete room. He closed the blue folder and left it on the table. He went to the door, knocked, and watched the door open. Waters and Harper came in, took the file, and frisked him again. When they found no paper hidden on him, Waters took the file and locked it in the safe in the corner, and they all left the little room. As Waters locked the steel door, Harper handed back Julian’s phone. “See you tomorrow, Julian.”