Sunday night we ate dinner early enough so that at 7:00 we could watch television. Needless to say, 60 Minutes was delayed almost half an hour by a football game. I tried to pay attention, but I just couldn’t care; Minnesota was at New England and I didn’t particularly like either team.
Stormy was in seventh heaven, however. She had four laps to choose from and eight hands to rub her belly and scratch her head. She began jumping from lap to lap testing us to see which of us was better at spoiling her. You had to brace yourself when she jumped into your lap. She seemed to take more after her St. Bernard father than her Golden Retriever mix mother. She looked like an all brown St. Bernard, only a bit shaggier. And she was big! She was now somewhere around four months old, and weighed between forty and fifty pounds, and was growing at about four pounds a week! She was monstrous! This was, without a doubt, the largest dog I had ever owned, and I could easily foresee her to be growing bigger than Marilyn or the girls.
Eventually the show started, and it looked to be a doozie! Mike Wallace was sitting on the stool in front of a picture of me, with the caption ‘The Buckman Crisis’ overwritten on the photo. He announced that tonight’s entire show was going to be on the Buckman Crisis and my response to it, and further, that the regular show was being expanded to 90 minutes instead of the regular 60. That was news to me. I wasn’t sure what he could scrape up for that much time. A typical 60 Minutes show contains three 13 minute segments and about 3 minutes of Andy Rooney at the end. The numbers only add up to about 42 minutes, with the rest being commercials between the segments.
With that he went directly into the first segment, a discussion of the charges against me followed by excerpts from the interview with me. I was pleasantly surprised in that it wasn’t a hack job, although an awful lot of stuff was left on the cutting room floor. Most of the background material, on why we were there and why we were sent, was reduced to ‘a routine training deployment.’ Still, there are different ways to edit a story, and it wasn’t done anti-Buckman.
After the commercial break, the next segment was introduced by Wallace with the statement “So far all that has been heard on the events in Honduras and Nicaragua has been either the allegations of misconduct by General Anthony Hawkins, his accuser, or by Congressman Carl Buckman. Still, others served with Captain Buckman, and they have their own stories.” The segment opened with Wallace and another man seated in armchairs, much like we had been on Tuesday. Wallace did a voiceover at that, and explained he was talking to Maxwell Fletcher, a project manager for a commercial contractor in Boston, and ‘Executive Officer of Bravo Battery under the command of Captain Carl Buckman.’ He had left the Army after fourteen years, as a major.
I blinked and stared at the image. “Holy shit! It’s Max!” I exclaimed. Marilyn and the girls turned to face me. I looked at my wife and pointed at the screen. “It’s Max!” Marilyn just gave me a blank look, so I waved her off and looked back at the screen. Max was older and heavier, and now had a mustache, but I remembered him. He had been a 2nd Lieutenant when he was first assigned to Bravo Battery, did well, and was promoted to 1st Lieutenant when I made Captain and was given command of the battery.
Wallace: “Major Fletcher, your first assignment in the Army was to Bravo Battery, Captain Buckman’s outfit, isn’t that correct?”
Max: “Pretty much. I was a Second Lieutenant just out of jump school and artillery school and was assigned to the 1st of the 319th. When I got there I was introduced to Carl Buckman, who was a First Lieutenant.”
Wallace: “What was he like?”
Max: “It was actually kind of strange when I first met Carl. I had been told that I was being assigned to the best battery in the battalion, and then was told I was meeting the commanding officer. The next guy I met was this young guy, only about a year older than I was, but he was already the exec of the battery and pretty much its commanding officer.”
Wallace: “Pretty much? What do you mean?”
Max: “We had a captain but he was leaving, and we were on our own for awhile. For the next year or so we would get a new captain every few months, but they wouldn’t work out and leave. Meanwhile Carl Buckman was actually running the best battery in the division. I found out later on that eventually the colonel just left Carl in command and stopped trying to find captains for us.”
Wallace: “Was that unusual?”
Max: “Very unusual. Captains run batteries, not lieutenants, and definitely not lieutenants who have only been out of artillery school for a year or so. Carl Buckman was just one hell of a lieutenant!”
Wallace: “What was he like?”
Max: “He was one of the finest officers I ever served under. After we met, the first thing he told me was that there were no bad troops, only bad officers. He held himself to a very high standard, and he held his officers to that same standard. We were expected to hold our non-coms, the sergeants and corporals, to a high standard and we were expected to make sure they held the rest of the troops to a high standard. He expected us to be the best battery in the unit.”
Wallace: “So he was a martinet?”
Max: “Hardly! Carl had a surprisingly dry sense of humor, and most importantly, the troops respected him. Troops know when an officer knows what he’s doing, and Carl Buckman knew what he was doing. He was tough but fair, kept the [bleeped] to a minimum, and kept battalion and division off their necks.”
Wallace: “Did the men like him?”
Max: “That wasn’t important to him. Doc didn’t care if they liked him or not. What was important was that they respected him and obeyed orders. That was one of the first things he would teach his officers, that they weren’t in the like or dislike business. If they couldn’t hack that, he would give them the address to the dog pound and a transfer out. They could pick up a puppy if they wanted to be liked.”
Wallace: “He was known as Doc?”
Max: “Yeah, well, he was a doctor, right? Everybody knew about the boy genius with the doctorate in math. He hated the nickname, though. You never said it to his face, not unless you outranked him. The majors and colonels all called him Doc.”
Wallace: “You were in Honduras with him, correct?”
At that point Mike Wallace began quizzing Max about the deployment and why we were there. Max verified what I had said, and then Wallace asked why I had made the drop.
Max: “Carl told me that it was going to be his last drop with the battery. We already knew he was transferring out as soon as we got home. He had this plum assignment lined up at Fort Sill, and a stint at command school after that. He figured he’d do one last drop, have a little fun, and go home. Boy, did he get that wrong!”
That pretty much ended Max’s participation in this, and the next scene had Wallace facing three men who were sitting on bar stools and facing him. They were introduced as ‘Alex Briscoe, Raul Gonzalez, and John Thompson.’ As I looked at them, memories came flooding back. I had talked to Briscoe the other day, but not Gonzalez or Thompson. Thompson had been the RTO with us, and Gonzalez had been one of my Spanish speaking scouts on the hike home. Wallace gave a quick bio on each man, specifying that they had all seen action in the Eighties and had all left the Army after twenty or more years of service. He even told what they had done after they left the service. Briscoe worked security for a casino, Gonzalez owned a small used car sales lot, and Thompson was in the telecomm field.