‘It’s not necessary for you to serve in the Asian sector,’ said his CO. ‘You’ve proved your point, and there are several other postings I can recommend, ranging from Berlin to Washington DC, so that once you’ve completed your two years, you can return to university.’
‘That rather defeats the object, doesn’t it, sir?’
‘But it’s almost unknown to send an enlisted officer to ‘Nam,’ said the CO, ‘especially one of your calibre.’
‘Then perhaps the time has come for someone to break the mould. After all, that’s what you keep reminding us leadership is all about.’
‘What if I asked you to complete your service as my staff officer, then you could assist me here at the academy with the next intake of rookies?’
‘So that they can all go off to Vietnam and get themselves killed?’ Nat stared across the table at his CO. He immediately regretted over-stepping the mark.
‘Do you know who the last person was who sat there and told me he was determined to go to ‘Nam, and nothing I could say would change his mind?’
‘No, sir.’
‘My son, Daniel,’ replied Tremlett, ‘and on that occasion I had no choice but to accept his decision.’ The colonel paused, glancing at a photo on his desk that Nat couldn’t see. ‘He survived for eleven days.’
‘Woman lecturer seduces senator’s son‘, screamed the banner headline in the New Haven Register.
‘That’s a bloody insult,’ said Jimmy.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Fletcher.
‘I seduced her.’
When Fletcher stopped laughing, he continued to read the front page article:
Joanna Palmer, a lecturer in European history at Yale, has had her contract terminated by the University Ethics Committee, after admitting that she was having an affair with James Gates, a freshman she has been teaching for the past six months. Mr Gates is the son of Senator Harry Gates. Last night, from their home in East Hartford...
Fletcher looked up. ‘How has your father taken it?’
‘Tells me he’ll win by a landslide,’ said Jimmy. ‘All the women’s rights groups are backing Joanna, and all the men think I’m the coolest thing since Dustin Hoffman’s Graduate. Dad also believes that the committee will be left with no choice but to reverse their decision long before term ends.’
‘And if they don’t?’ asked Fletcher. ‘What chance is there of Joanna being offered another job?’
‘That’s the least of her problems,’ Jimmy replied, ‘because the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the committee announced their decision. Both Radcliffe, where she did her undergraduate degree, and Columbia, where she completed her PhD, have offered her jobs, and that was before the opinion poll on the Today Show reported that eighty-two per cent of their viewers thought she should be reinstated.’
‘So what does she plan to do next?’
‘Appeal, and my bet is that the committee won’t be able to ignore public opinion.’
‘But where does that leave you?’
‘I still want to marry Joanna, but she won’t hear of it until she knows the result of her arbitration. She refuses to become engaged in case it influences the committee in her favour. She’s determined to win the case on its merits, not on public sentiment.’
‘That’s a remarkable woman you’ve got yourself involved with,’ said Fletcher.
‘I agree,’ said Jimmy. ‘And you only know the half of it.’
14
Lt Nat Cartwright had been stencilled on the door of his little office at MACV headquarters even before he’d arrived in Saigon. It quickly became clear to Nat that he was to be desk-bound for his entire watch, not even allowed to discover where the front fine was. On arrival, he did not join his regiment in the field, but was assigned to Combat Service Support. Colonel Tremlett’s dispatches had obviously landed in Saigon long before he had.
Nat was described on the daily manifest as a quartermaster, which allowed those above him to pile up the paperwork, and those below him to take their time carrying out his orders. They all seemed to be involved in the plot, a plot that resulted in Nat spending every working hour filling in regulation forms for items as varied as baked beans and Chinook helicopters. Seven hundred and twenty-two tons of supplies were flown into the capital every week, and it was Nat’s duty to see they reached the front line. In any one month, he handled over nine thousand items. Everything managed to get there except him. He even resorted to sleeping with the commanding officer’s secretary, but quickly discovered that Mollie had no real influence over her boss, although he did find out about her considerable expertise in unarmed combat.
Nat began leaving the office later and later each evening, and even began to wonder if he was in a foreign country. When you have a Big Mac and Coke for lunch, a Kentucky Fried Chicken with a Budweiser for dinner, and return to the officers’ quarters every evening to watch the ABC News and reruns of 77 Sunset Strip, what proof is there that you ever left home?
Nat made several surreptitious attempts to join his regiment in the front line, but he came to realize that Colonel Tremlett’s influence permeated everywhere; his applications would land back on his desk a month later, rubber-stamped: Refused; re-apply in one month.
Whenever Nat requested an interview to discuss the problem with a field officer, he never managed to see anyone above the rank of staff major. On each occasion, a different officer would spend half an hour trying to convince Nat that he was doing a valuable and worthwhile job in requisition. His combat file was the thinnest in Saigon.
Nat was beginning to realize that his stand on ‘a matter principle’ had served no purpose. In a month’s time Tom would be starting his second year at Yale, and what did he have to show for his efforts other than a crew cut and an inside knowledge of how many paper clips the army required in Vietnam in any one month?
Nat was sitting in his office, preparing for the new intake of rookies due to report the following Monday, when all that changed.
Accommodation, clothing and travel documents had kept him occupied all day and well into the evening. Urgent was stamped on several of them, as the CO always wanted to be fully briefed on the background of any new intake before they landed in Saigon. Nat hadn’t noticed how long the task had taken, and when he had completed the final form, he decided to drop them off in the adjutant’s office before grabbing something to eat in the officers’ mess.
As he strolled past the ops room, he experienced a surge of anger; all the training he had been put through at Fort Dix and Fort Benning had been a complete waste of time. Although it was nearly eight o’clock, there were still a dozen or so operatives, some of whom he recognized, manning the phones and updating a large operational map of North Vietnam.
On his way back from the adjutant’s office, Nat dropped into the ops room to see if anyone was free to join him for dinner. He found himself listening to the troop movements of the Second Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. He would have slipped back out and gone to the mess alone if it hadn’t been his own regiment. The Second Battalion was facing a barrage of mortar fire from the Vietcong and was holed up on the wrong side of the Dyng river, defending itself from a further onslaught. The red phone on the desk in front of Nat began to ring insistently. Nat didn’t move a muscle.
‘Don’t just stand there, lieutenant, pick it up and find out what they want,’ demanded the operations officer. Nat quickly obeyed the order.