CHAPTER 11 - NO MANS LAND

            The days that followed were a dark blur of grief. While a privileged actress with delusions of political enlightenment was allowing herself to be used as a communist propaganda tool by the North Vietnamese, posing for photo-ops in a combat helmet with an anti-aircraft gun, I was awaiting the homecoming of my dearest friend. I spent most of the time in my room, hiding from the endless procession of friends, neighbors and church folk bringing food and paying condolence calls.

            My mother played the gracious hostess while everyone commended her on her great strength in such a difficult time. She accepted their words of comfort and encouragement with discreetly downcast eyes and an air of appropriately weary sainthood. All in all, it was an Oscar-worthy performance. Afterwards she scolded me for neglecting to make an appearance, but I didn't really care what she thought. I no longer cared what anyone thought. Joey was not coming back to me, and nothing else mattered.

            My father was busy meeting with the Pastor Barlow and Colonel Ryan who would jointly conduct the service. The three of them gathered in the den to compose the eulogy and select appropriate readings and music. No one bothered to consult me, of course. If anyone could have told them who Joey really was, about his capacity for love and the sweetness of his soul, it was me who knew and loved him best. So I retreated to my room and spent my time reading and re-reading Joey's letters and crying myself to sleep at night, hoping against all hope to wake up in the morning and discover that this had all been nothing more than a terrible dream. But no matter how hard I wished and prayed, I continued to awake day after day to the nightmare reality of a world that no longer had my gentle Joey in it.

            My father's brothers arrived with their families the day before the funeral. Uncle Dan was accompanied by his wife, Kay, and their two sons, Larry and Kevin, ages 10 and 8 respectively. Dan reminded me of an older version of Joey with the same bright eyes and ready smile. His wife, Kay, was friendly and personable, with a sweet face and a motherly manner. Their two boys were well behaved and respectful. Why couldn't my parents have been more like that? I wondered.

            I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I took an instant dislike to Gary. One look at him, and I just knew without a doubt that he was cut from the same cloth as my father. He introduced us to his new wife, Candi (With an "I"!), and Jesse, her four-year-old son from a previous marriage. Candi-with-an-i definitely looked like her name. She was too heavily made up to look at home in my father's conservative Baptist household, and her hair was a shade of blonde that couldn't possibly be found in nature. Her clothing made her look cheap - too tight, too gaudy, and too revealing. I'd have been willing to bet my babysitting money that Gary had met her on the infamous Bourbon Street because, quite frankly, she looked like a stripper. Not that I had the vaguest idea of what a stripper really looked like, but she looked the way I imagined that kind of woman would look.

            Candi's son, Jesse, was a prize all by himself. If I had wanted to hazard a guess about his paternity, I'd have sworn his father had to be Beelzebub. That kid was definitely a bad seed if I ever saw one. I'll be the first to admit that I could be somewhat prejudiced, though. I've never been one who is overly fond of children simply by virtue of the fact that they are children. I like children who are quiet and mannerly. Little Jesse was anything but. He was loud and boisterous, demanding to be the center of attention while his parents and mine exclaimed over how precocious he was. I suppose I'm the only one who noticed that evil gleam in his piggy little eyes.

            That night we all had dinner together. I ate in silence, preoccupied with my own misery. Dan was seated across from me, and every so often during the course of the meal, he would catch my eye and offer me a tentative smile of understanding. Jesse, as it so happened, ended up on my left, seated on the telephone book and the dictionary to make him tall enough to reach the table. Most of the meal was uneventful. Jesse's devotion to stuffing his face kept him quiet enough for the grown-ups to carry on a conversation and get acquainted.

            Unfortunately, Jesse finished his main course and was ready for dessert before anyone else. He quickly grew bored and restless, swinging his foot back and forth, kicking against his chair. This was only slightly annoying and garnered him no immediate attention, so he decided to try kicking my chair instead. I was willing to overlook the first time. "Oops!" I exclaimed with a forced smile.

            A reaction! Just what the little monster was looking for. He gave me a sideways look and kicked the chair again. "Careful, sweetie," I said gently, still doing my best to maintain a semblance of good humor.

            This was a wonderful new game with someone different to torment. He kicked the chair again. "Don't do that, honey," I said, my tone of voice losing much of its sweetness.

            He drew back his foot again and this time, instead of the chair, he kicked me just as hard as he could. His mother and my Uncle Gary were well-practiced in the art of ignoring these escapades, and gave no notice to either of us. Very well, I could and would handle this myself. I wrapped my fingers around his ankle and held the offending appendage in an uncomfortably tight grip while he began struggling to free it. Looking him straight in the eyes, I said evenly through clenched teeth, "Don't. Do. That. Again." I hoped that my fierce glare would make it unnecessary for me to add, "Or, I'll feed you to the rottweiler next door!"

            His response was a feral grin as he leaned over and pinched my bare arm. It hurt like hell. "OW!" I yelped in painful surprise. The diabolical little fiend was stronger than he looked. Fortunately I was able to overcome my initial impulse to slap him off the chair. Instead of giving the beady-eyed little moppet the smacking he deserved, I lowered my upraised hand and closed it over my throbbing and soon to be freshly bruised arm.

            I was now the center of attention. "Here! Here!" my father demanded in a booming voice, "What's the meaning of this commotion?"

            "The little bastard pinched the crap out of me!" I blurted in language more plain than my father was accustomed to hearing at his dinner table.

            Perhaps my pejorative description of her son's parentage inadvertently hit the mark because Candi swelled up like an indignant toad. "Well, really! He's only a baby!"

            Okay. Dealing with an undomesticated rug-rat on top of everything else was too much to ask, and I'll admit that I snapped. "He is not a baby!" I shouted back, giving her the same glare as I had given Jesse a few minutes earlier. "He's a wild animal, an' he ought to be in a cage. Or on a leash!"

            By this time, Jesse had clambered into his mother's lap, cowering in terror. He realized too late that he had perhaps made a serious error in judgment by trying to provoke me.

            My father was glaring at me for disturbing the serenity of his meal and behaving badly in front of his brothers. "Magdalen," he ordered in an echoing tone that left little room for argument, "apologize at once for this outburst."

            Fortunately, I didn't need much room for an argument. I was, after all, every bit as much the hardheaded Shannon as my father was. "Why should I apologize? The little beast attacked me!"

            "Oh, I'm sure he was only playing!" Gary chimed in, lamely.

            Well that's just great, I thought, another country heard from.

            Dan had been silent until now, watching the entire exchange with ill-concealed amusement. He leaned away from the table, hooking one arm over the back of his chair and regarded his brother, sister-in-law, and the devil spawn. "No, I saw the whole thing and she's right. The little bastard pinched the crap out of her!" He fixed his younger brother with a hard stare. "Are you sure he's not yours, Gary? As I recall, you tried the same thing with me when you were just about his age, and I knocked you on your butt." He laughed at the memory. He was the only one who did.

            Gary and Candi sat gaping in open-mouthed shock at Dan's observation and everything it implied. Come to think of it, the kid did bear more than a passing resemblance to the younger of my two uncles. My cousins were staring down at their plates trying desperately not to laugh. As far as they were concerned, this was better than the Friday night wrestling matches on channel 11. Kay only shook her head. Apparently she was quite used to Dan's pithy observations and irreverent manner. My mother had passed mortification and was undoubtedly having fantasies about a certain bottle of tranquilizers hidden in the back of the medicine cabinet. My tee-totaling father looked as though he could use a strong drink.

            The utter absurdity of the whole scene and the insanity of the past few days collided, and I was caught off balance by the total surrealism of this entire situation. Teetering for so long on the edge of hysteria, I finally took the plunge and started to laugh uncontrollably until my laughter segued into equally uncontrollable sobs.

            I barely heard my father's echoing pronouncement, "Magdalen, you are excused."

            Vision clouded by tears and no longer certain whether I was laughing or crying, I nodded my quietly hiccupping assent. I had committed the unpardonable sin. I had made a scene, and was therefore being banished from the bosom of my family. That absurd mental image caused me to begin alternately laughing and crying even harder. I made my way around the table, stumbling out of the dining room and down the hallway into the living room. As I pushed open the screen door and stepped out onto the front porch, I thought I heard my father say wearily, "Let her go." But the footsteps behind me indicated that my father's words and wishes were being ignored.

            I sat down on the porch swing a second or two before Dan sat down beside me. "You okay?" He asked gently as he leaned over and put his arm around my shoulders, giving me the same tentative smile from dinner.

            "No," I said, sniffling and trying to regain some composure. I looked back in the direction of the front door. "Who are those people?"

            He shook his head with a rueful smile. "That, Sweetheart, is the $64,000 Question." He winked. "It's a good thing we can pick our friends ‘cause we're sure stuck with our relatives!"

            "Ain't that the truth?" I agreed bitterly. "The Addams Family looks normal compared to us!" I cast him a sideways look. "Present company and present company's family excepted, of course."

            "No offense taken," he assured me.

            "Where did Gary find that woman and that kid?" I asked no one in particular.

            Dan grinned somewhat smugly. "I don't know for sure, but I have a pretty good idea."

            I was beginning to like this man more and more. "Oh, do you think she looks like a stripper, too?"

            He threw back his head and guffawed. "You're pretty sharp, kid," he observed. "Hey, d'ya think they call her Candi ‘cause she's so sweet?" The sarcasm was laid on with a trowel.

            I thought, they probably call her Candi because so many men have already had a piece. But since I didn't really know my uncle well enough to be sure just how much of my usually acerbic self he could accept, what I actually replied was, "I'll bet they call her Candi ‘cause too much of her will make you sick."

            He chuckled some more. "You're right about that kid, too. He's a nasty little terror, isn't he?" He shook his head. "Gary was a monster, but I think that little imp has gone him some better."

            I looked up at my uncle. "It's really hard to believe you and Joey could have come from the same family as my father and Gary."

            "Yeah, I know," he concurred with a sly little smile that accentuated his resemblance to my deceased uncle. "Joey and I got all the good looks and the charm while your dad and Gary got . . . " His voice trailed off as though he were trying hard to think of some assets that my father and uncle possessed. "Well, I don't know exactly what your dad and Gary got, but Joey and I definitely got all the good looks and charm!"

            I managed a weak grin. "Yeah." My eyes began to water again. "You remind me a lot of Joey." I looked up at the evening sky, searching for an answer or a sign, some reason why any of this had happened and found none. "God! I can't believe he's gone," I whispered, as I drew my knees up and hugged them to my chest, suddenly chilled even though it was a balmy summer evening. I felt as though someone had reached into my body and pulled out my soul; leaving nothing but a cold, hollow, echoing emptiness behind.

            Dan's strong right hand kneaded the taut muscles at the base of my neck. "Aw, Maggie," he murmured. "I miss ‘im too." He lapsed into a thoughtful silence then added, "To tell you the truth, I envy you just a little."

            "Why in the world?" I asked, incredulous. At this particular moment, I felt like the least enviable person alive.

            "Well, ‘cause I think you're the only one of us who really got to know Joey. He was just a kid - gosh! only ten - when I left home. I didn't see him again until I came back for Mom and Dad's funeral, and by then he was already a teenager. When he spent his leave with us after boot camp, he was suddenly this grown man that I hardly recognized. I guess I'm a little jealous because you got to spend all those years with him. When I started getting reacquainted with him again after all that time, I found out that I really liked him. And, I realized that I'd missed something by not being around to watch him grow up and be his big brother. You know, I was looking forward to having a second chance to be his friend."

            I closed my eyes. "He was my best friend," I whispered, leaning over and resting my head against Dan's shoulder.

            "Oh gosh, and he adored you too." He put his arms around me and rested his cheek on the top of my head. "He talked about you the whole time he was with us. He went on and on about what a great kid you are, how smart you are, how beautifully you sing." He thought for a moment. "Are you gonna sing for Joey tomorrow?"

            I shook my head. "Wasn't asked." I sighed heavily. "And, I don't know if I'd have the heart for it, anyway."

            "We'll, that's okay, darlin'. Joey will be listenin' whenever you sing."

            We sat together for a while in eloquent silence. I thought about the differences between my father and my uncles. It was amazing how the four of them could have turned out so differently. Dan and Joey were such warm and caring men, while my father and Gary were a couple of cold fish. Finally, I looked up at Dan. "Can I tell you a secret?"

            "Sure, Hon, what is it?"

            "Am I a bad person if I say that I don't really like my father?"

            Dan closed his eyes for a moment, smiled sadly and gave his head a slight shake. He looked down at me again. "No worse than I am," he said with a short laugh, "if I admit that I don't like ‘im much, either!"

            I gazed up at him in open-mouthed wonder. "Really?"

            He laughed again, looking over his shoulder to make sure the object of his observation was not within earshot. "Really. Now, don't get me wrong. I love both of my brothers, and I'd charge hell with a water pistol for either of ‘em, because they're family and that's what families do. To tell you the truth, though, I wouldn't want to live next door to ‘em. Why d'ya think I moved 1,500 miles away?"

            "Wow." I said. That was a revelation. All this time I'd thought it was just me. After giving that idea a little time to sink in, I looked up at Dan and asked, "What makes my Dad and Gary so . . . um . . . unlikable? It can't be heredity. I don't remember a lot about Gramma and Grampa Shannon, but I do know they were nicer than that. Did somebody drop Dad and Gary on their heads when they were babies?"

            Dan chuckled. "No, as far as I know, nobody dropped either of ‘em. But, you're right about them not getting their attitude from Mom and Dad, too. I think we're gonna have to lay some of the blame for this on Uncle Edsel."

            I sat up and looked at him in disbelief. "Edsel?! Like that car? You've gotta be kiddin' me!"

            Dan raised his right hand. "I swear to God, that was his name. It wasn't an uncommon name in that generation. Now, everybody hears the name Edsel and thinks of the car, but you gotta remember the funny-lookin' car was named after a real person. I think it was Henry Ford's son."

            I was still suspicious, but I decided to go along for the sake of argument. "Okay then, how is all this old Great Uncle Eddy's fault?"

            "Well, Uncle Ed was your Grandpa Shannon's oldest brother, and he was real successful. He even had his own business. It was a printing company, and he made lots of money. So, he had all the stuff that goes along with that. He had a big house, a brand-new car every couple of years, and all the other luxuries that money can provide. Only problem was he was usually too busy to enjoy any of it. Our cousins always had the newest and best of everything, but Uncle Ed was never around. He was always working hard to keep up their fine lifestyle.

            "Your Grandpa Shannon, on the other hand, was not quite as ambitious as his brother. He didn't see any shame in working for someone else, and he didn't think it was necessary to run out and by a new car as long as the old one was still runnin'. We didn't have everything money could buy, but we had a roof over our heads and we certainly never missed a meal. We didn't have everything we wanted handed to us on a silver platter like our cousins, but we had parents who loved us were there when we needed ‘em.

            "You have to understand something about your Dad, Maggie. With him, just like with Uncle Ed, it's all about appearances. He's more worried about how things look to the neighbors than how things really are. Uncle Ed had lots of money, and our cousins had lots of stuff, so they must be happy. Never mind that one our cousins ended up in the pen for killin' a man and the other one is an alcoholic. And, it doesn't matter that Uncle Ed was such a sour old goat that he had to spend all that hard-earned money just to pay someone to take care of him when he got old and feeble because none of the rest of the family could stand him!

            "Somehow, your dad got the crazy idea that Uncle Ed and his family were better than we were. Our cousins did tend to look down their noses at us. Rick started to resent your Grandpa for not being as successful as Uncle Ed, and he decided that he wanted to be more like him. Trouble is, I'm afraid he's gonna succeed if he's not careful. It seems like he gets a little more bitter every time I see him - which is probably why I don't see him any more often than I do!"

            I thought about all that for a minute. "Okay. I think I can understand why Dad's like he is. I don't like him any better, but at least I know why. Is that Uncle Gary's excuse, too?"

            Dan shook his head with another sly grin. "No, Gary's just always been a little shit!"

            We laughed, and I hugged Dan. "Thanks for being nothing like my father."

            He hugged me back. "My pleasure, Sweetie."

***

            The day of the funeral, I went to the mailbox and my heart almost stopped when I came across an envelope addressed to me with the word Free in the upper right-hand corner in place of the stamp. In the split-second before I recognized that the handwriting was definitely not Joey's, I thought that I had received a letter from beyond the grave. Then, I saw the return address: Lt. Sam Wesley. It was from Joey's platoon commander.

            I sat down on the front porch steps and opened the envelope with shaking hands. Unfolding the letter, I read:

23 July 1972
Dear Miss Shannon,
            Please accept my sincere condolences. Sergeant Shannon was a good man and a good soldier, but more than that, he was a good friend, and I am deeply honored to have served with him. You can be proud of him, as I know he was proud of you. He spoke of you so often that I almost feel I know you and that you're a part of my family because Joe was a part of my family. All Marines are brothers in arms, but Joe was as close to me as any true blood brother.
            I pray you'll never learn the horrors of war first hand. War changes men. It can take an otherwise good man and turn him into something hard, cold and mean. Joe never changed, though. No matter the circumstances, he retained his humanity and compassion, his friendliness, his humor and his warmth. He remained the same good man that it was my privilege to call brother.
            Joe was always in the center of crowd, whether it was the men in the squad or the children at the orphanage, everyone seemed to flock around him Joe was always smiling and cheerful, ready with a joke or a word of encouragement. He was always willing to listen or lend a helping hand.
            Sergeant Shannon was the heart and soul of the Hellhound Squadron, and the Marines of HMM-169 share your sorrow. He was a good man who should not have had to die so young in a place so far from home. We are all better men for having known him, and the world is a poorer place for his passing.
            Joe lived bravely and he died bravely, serving his country and his fellow man. To his brother soldiers, he was a guardian angel with a blazing M-60 instead of a flaming sword, standing between them and harm. But to the enemy, he was an angel of death. I know it may be hard for you to read and understand, but the simple truth of the matter is that a solider in war must sometimes kill the enemy. Sergeant Shannon did the job he had to do, but he never enjoyed killing the way some other men seemed to. He regretted the necessity of killing, but he did what had to be done with honor and courage.
            I wanted to tell you what happened Friday morning, to give you some of the details that might not make it into the official report. The after-action report will tell you the straight facts of the events that occurred, but it won't let you know how deeply those events affected us all. A report can't explain the overwhelming loss we all feel or express how any one of us would have cheerfully died in his place.
            We were completing a re-supply mission in the early morning hours of 21 July, when we happened to pick up a radio transmission from an Army reconnaissance team. They were stranded up in the mountains, northwest of Khe Sanh and had stumbled upon an NVA base camp. Since their five-man team was no match for a regiment of the enemy, they broke radio silence and called for an emergency extract. Unfortunately they were told that the Army slicks couldn't reach them due to the heavy fog. Mountains, fog, and helicopters are a deadly mix, but that didn't change the fact that there were still five men surrounded by enemy soldiers who needed help. And they couldn't wait for clear weather to get it.
            We've logged plenty of flight time, day and night, in all kinds of weather, so I made the decision to help them. I radioed back for them to try and make it to the LZ, and we'd do our best to get them picked up. Visibility was just about zero when we reached their coordinates. It was a clearing on a ridge with a tree-line about 50 feet beyond. There was really no place to land, so I hovered as near as I could with the right wheel just touching the ridge.
            I heard Joe shout when he saw the men break through the tree-line at a dead run with a platoon of NVA right on their tails. Apparently they had made contact while waiting for us. I heard Joe laying down cover fire to give the men a chance to dive on board. Because we were hovering over a sheer drop, the men literally had to leap the last few feet to make it into the chopper.
            The wind currents were very strong, and I was having trouble holding the bird steady. Just as the last man, the platoon leader, was about to jump on board, a gust of wind caught the tail rotor. If Joe hadn't grabbed the soldier's arm, pulling him on board, he would have fallen to his death. Corporal Evans said he hit the deck just as the NVA opened fire, and all he could see was a line of muzzle flashes. I thought I heard Joe cry out as he gave the word to go.
            We were taking plenty of hits, so I banked left away from the ridge, dropping down over the edge to escape their kill zone and make a beeline back to Marble Mountain. I was calling in an air strike on the enemy's position when Cpl. Evans broke in. He said that Joe was hit, and from the sound of his voice, I could tell that it was pretty bad.
            Unfortunately, with the way this particular helicopter, the UH-34, is designed, there was no way I could get to Joe. I couldn't even see what was happening because the cockpit is separate, up above the cabin. All I could do was listen over the radio and pray as Cpl. Evens and the recon team's medic worked on Joe. They put a pressure bandage on his wound and tried to stop the bleeding. The top speed of this chopper is 101 mph, and I pushed the old bird to her limit all the way back to base.
            As soon as we touched down, I cut the engines and dived out of the chopper to get to Joe, but he was already gone. I was surprised by how peaceful he looked. If he hadn't been so pale from the loss of blood, I might have thought that he was only sleeping. As nearly as we could figure, an AK-47 round ricocheted off the gun mount and caught him in the abdomen. The doc told me afterwards that the bullet had nicked a major artery before lodging next to Joe's spine and that he'd been bleeding internally on the way back to camp.
            Those five men he'd helped to save and I carried him off the chopper while the rest of the squadron stood at attention. I'm not ashamed to say that we were all weeping. Last night, we held a memorial service for him in the chapel. We celebrated his life and shared the ways his friendship had blessed us all.
            Saint Augustine said, "The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering." Sergeant Joe Shannon will certainly be guaranteed immortality because he will live forever in the memories of those who loved and served with him.
            Miss Shannon, the men of HMM-169 salute you.
                                    Lt. Samuel P. Wesley, USMC
Saepe Expertus, Semper Fidelis, Fratres Aeterni
(Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever)

            By this time, I had thought that I had no more tears left to cry, but I leaned my head against the wrought-iron porch railing and wept again. This time I wept in sympathy and kinship with those men 10,000 miles away who seemed to be the only others in the world who really understood and shared my grief.