“So a city is also courageous by a part of itself, thanks to that part’s having in it a power that through everything will preserve the opinion about which things are terrible—that they are the same ones and of the same sort as those the lawgiver transmitted in the education. Or don’t you call that courage?”
“I didn’t quite understand what you said,” he said. “Say it again.”
“I mean,” I said, “that courage is a certain kind of preserving.”
“Just what sort of preserving?”
“The preserving of the opinion produced by law through education about what—and what sort of thing—is terrible …”
PLATO, The Republic
Book IV, 429b-429c
Major Callicles looked like an ex-light-heavy weight champ. He had a head like a flattened 105 round, a thick, brown neck, bristling stalks of hair, bloodshot eyes, a disdain for pansies. He was the battalion executive officer—second in command. He bragged that he’d started out as an NCO, thrived on the discipline, and gone on to become an officer, avoiding West Point and doing it the hard way.
Barrel-chested—staves and beer and all—he was a last but defiant champion of single-minded, hard-boiled militarism. He listed his hates in precise order—moustaches, prostitution, pot, and sideburns. And since all four were either tacitly or explicitly permitted in Vietnam, he harbored a necessarily silent hate for the new, insidious liberality infecting his army.
Moustaches, while authorized by new regulations, were quickly outlawed. It was rumored he carried a dull and bloody razor to be used on even a wisp of overnight hair.
Next was prostitution. It was an all-consuming outrage. A whorehouse flourished at the very foot of LZ Gator, the battalion firebase, and he muttered he would get rid of it.
He pursued pot and sideburns like an FBI agent; he prosecuted violators with inquisitorial zeal.
“Guts,” he would mutter. “This army needs guts. GI Joe’s turned into a pansy. O’Brien, you show me a soldier with guts, and you can have this job.” He hunched his shoulders, stood stiff-legged, held a cigarette like a pencil, and turned to look at me out of one eye, scowling and squinting.
Three months after Major Callicles took charge, Time and Newsweek and every other scrap of paper blowing into Vietnam heralded the My Lai massacre.
The massacre happened in March of 1968. That was one year before I’d arrived in Vietnam; over a year and a half before Callicles took over the executive officer’s job; long before our battalion had taken over the Pinkville—My Lai area of operations from Lieutenant Calley’s Eleventh Brigade. But Major Callicles stuffed the burden of My Lai into his own soul. He lost sleep. He lost interest in pot and prostitutes, and his thick, brown face became lined with red veins hemorrhaging with the pain of My Lai. Like the best defense attorney, he assumed the burden of defending and justifying and denying—all in one broad, contradictory stroke.
At first he blamed the press: “Christ, those rags—you don’t really believe that crap? Jesus, wake up, O’Brien! You got to learn the economics of this thing. These goddamn slick rags got to sell their crap, right? So they just add together the two big things in this hippie culture: People like scandal and people hate the military, not knowing what’s good for them. It’s knee jerk. So they look around and choose My Lai 4—hell, it happened over a year ago, it’s dead—and they crank up their yellow journalism machine; they sell a million Times and Newsweeks and the advertisers kick in and the army’s the loser—everybody else is salivating and collecting dollars.”
But for Callicles it was more than an outrage, it was a direct and personal blow. “Christ, O’Brien, I’m one of hundreds of executive officers in the Nam. This battalion is one of hundreds. And they got to pick on us. There’s a billion stinking My Lai 4s, and they put the finger on us.”
When Reuters, AP, CBS, ABC, UPI, and NBC flew in, Callicles took them into his little office and repeated the same grimacing, one-bloodshot-eye-in-the-face, shotgun argument he perfected with us privately. “Look, I thought the press was supposed to be liberal—liberal. Maybe I’m no liberal, but I know something about it. I never went to college, but I can read, and I know the press isn’t supposed to try a man in print. That’s what we got juries for, you know, they do the trying, it’s the law. That’s liberal, isn’t it? Just be quiet one minute—isn’t that what the liberals say? You don’t insinuate guilt until you’re in the courthouse and everyone’s got evidence ready and there’s a judge and a jury and a court reporter to take it all down.”
A reporter said they were just printing the allegations of other soldiers, former GIs.
“Hell, you don’t believe them? Some pipsqueak squeals, and everyone runs to make a national scandal. We’re trying to win a war here, and, Jesus, what the hell do you think war is? Don’t you think some civilians get killed? You ever been to My Lai? Well, I’ll tell you, those civilians—you call them civilians—they kill American GIs. They plant mines and spy and snipe and kill us. Sure, you all print color pictures of dead little boys, but the live ones—take pictures of the live ones digging holes for mines.”
A reporter asked if there isn’t a distinction between killing people you know to be the enemy and slaying one hundred people when no one is shooting and when you can’t distinguish the mine-planters from the innocent.
“Now, look here, damn it, the distinction is between war and peace,” Callicles said. “This here is war. You know about war? What you do is kill. The bomber pilot fries some civilians—he doesn’t see it maybe, but he damn well knows it. Sure, so he just flies out and drops his load and flies back, gets a beer, and sees a movie.
“Just answer this: Where’s the war in which civilians come out on top? Show me one. You can’t, and the reason is that war’s brutal—civilians just suffer through it. They’re like unarmed soldiers—they’re dumb and they die; they’re smart, they run, they hide, then they live.” Callicles pushed the words like moist worms through his teeth.
A reporter asked if there isn’t a distinction between the unintentional slaying of civilians from the air, when there’s no way to discriminate, and the willful shooting of individual human beings—one by one, person to person, five yards away, taking aim at a ditch full of unarmed, desperate people.
Callicles snorted and told the reporter to ask the dead people about the distinction.
Maybe the dead people don’t see the difference, the reporter said, but what about the law. Shouldn’t guilt have something to do with intentionality?
“Come on,” Callicles said. “I’ll take you on out there. You judge for yourself. This is a war, and My Lai is where the enemy lives—you can see for yourself.”
Major Callicles herded groups of reporters out to My Lai 4, flying them over the hamlet and giving them a peek at the dank, evil-looking place: white mounds showing the gravesites; a cluster of huts that seem to have been there a thousand years, identical in squalor and with a kind of permanence that makes them just a fixture of the land; utterly lifeless; thick, dark green splotches where the land is low; yellow-brown craters where artillery rounds have hit. Even in stark mid-morning daylight the place looks a monotonous gray from the air. Your eyes can stay on the place for only seconds; then you look away to the east, where the sea is so much more appealing.
The My Lai scandal did not go away. Major Callicles was charged with heading a task force to secure the village and prepare the way for General Peers, Lieutenant Calley, and the investigative team. He attacked the job of blowing mines and marking out safe paths and digging defensive positions. Haunted by what he was doing, he began to drink heavier than ever, his eyes shifted from detail to detail, searching out stability in his world; other times he glared into dead space.
The investigation ended, and Major Callicles was awarded a letter of commendation. But he read it and gave a sly grin and tossed it into a pile of wastepaper. He spent more time than anyone at the officers’ club on LZ Gator, playing poker—winning and losing big pots of military currency—and drinking. Afterward he came down to his office and debated with us.
“What do people want when they send men to fight out there?” he would ask, growling.
“To search out and destroy the enemy.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that. But what do they want when the enemy is ten years old and has big tits—women and children, you know. What then? What if they’re the enemy?”
“Well, you kill them or you capture them. But you only do that when they’re engaged in combat, sir. It’s a civil war, in part, and even if some of them come down from North Vietnam, they look like the South Vietnamese. So you’ve got to assume—”
“Assume, bullshit! When you go into My Lai you assume the worst. When you go into My Lai, shit, you know—you assume—that they’re all VC. Ol’ Charlie with big tits and nice innocent, childlike eyes. Damn it, they’re all VC, you should know that. You might own a diploma, for Christ’s sake, but does that mean you can’t trust your own eyes and not some lousy book? You’ve been there, for Christ’s sake!”
“But, sir, the law says killing civilians is wrong. We’re taught that, even by the army, for God’s sake.”
“Of course killing civilians is wrong. But those so-called civilians are killers. Female warriors. Poppa-san out in the paddy spying.”
“But with that philosophy, you’d have to waste all the civilians in Vietnam, everyone. I mean, how do you know when this Poppa-san or that Poppa-san is VC? They look alike. They all dress in black pajamas and work in the paddies and sell us Cokes. Hell, we might as well go down into Nouc Mau, the little village down by the gate, and just kill them all.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re exaggerating the argument.”
“Reductio ad absurdum. Logical extension, sir.”
“Bullshit! Nouc Mau sure as hell isn’t My Lai 4, you know that. It isn’t a goddamn minefield; kids in Nouc Mau don’t go around setting up booby traps and spying on us.”
“Now, that’s quite an assumption. Who knows? The whole town might be VC. We’d be the last to know it. But the point is, sir, we can’t say that those two-year-old kids were planting mines out at My Lai. Can’t prove that all those dead women were spying on Lieutenant Calley. Go ahead, how do you prove it? Or don’t you have to?”
“Look here,” Callicles said, “can’t you see we’re over here trying to win a war? Is that so goddamn hard to understand, just trying to win a war and go home? I want to go home, you want to go home, General Abrams wants to get his ass back to the world. But, Jesus, with the communists doing things like at Hue—killing and doing extortion, stealing rice and taxing the shit out of everyone, when they’re living in Pinkville—really living there, eating and sleeping and making mines—Christ, then you got to go after them. Show me a war …”
With the My Lai investigation complete, Major Callicles turned back to whores and dope smokers and malingerers, apparently with the hope of turning the army back toward World War II professionalism. “Professionalism,” at least, was the word he used most. But what he wanted and what he furiously went after was a return to the old order. Callicles’s suspicion and assumption, in the end, was that the massacre at My Lai may have in fact happened just as Newsweek reported it, but that dope and whores and long hair—all suggesting the collapse of discipline—were responsible. It conflicted with his other arguments, of course, but it was his belief. So he crusaded.
He assigned officers and NCOs to the firebase’s gates, and every jeep entering LZ Gator was searched for marihuana. Sometimes he stood out in the rain, spending hours peering into gas tanks and under seat cushions. “You don’t smoke dope, do you, troop?”
“No, sir!”
“You’d tell me if there’s dope in this vehicle, right?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Okay. But I’ll check, just to make sure some goddamn VC didn’t sneak some dope onto this vehicle. Get out.”
Long lines, sometimes stretching out fifty yards, waited while Major Callicles did his duty.
At night he would roam the firebase. He would check the perimeter bunkers and the barracks, go to the officers’ club and drink and gamble, and make another round.
One evening a medic shot himself in the foot. He’d been scheduled to go to the field the next day, and it was fair to guess it had been intentional. His friends carried him into the medic’s hootch and laid him out, and in thirty seconds Major Callicles was there.
“You bastard, Tully, you goddamn coward, you shot your ass, didn’t you, you dirty, sneaky little shit. You’re a coward. Well, goddamn it, you little shit, I’m reading your goddamn rights to you right now while you’re busy bleeding the pus and shit out, and you’d better tell me you understand what’s going on.” He snapped out a book and read Tully’s rights to silence and attorney and jammed the book back into his pocket and leaned over the table and glared into Tully’s face. “All right, you fuckin’ coward, you understand? I’m gonna question you while you’re bleedin’ an’ you don’t have to answer, but you sure as hell better answer, understand?”
“I understand,” Tully whined. The medics were cutting off his boot.
“Goddamn it, Tully, you know who the hell you’re talkin’ to, goddamn it, you little shit? This is Major Callicles, an’ you call Major Callicles ‘Sir,’ you understand?”
“Yes, sir, Jesus, it hurts, sir!”
“Shit, I’d like to bite the bloody little stump! What the fuck you expect, you little shit? You shoot yourself, you point an M-16 and blow off your toe ’cause you’re afraid to go out there and help guys getting shot up by Charlie, an’ you bitch ’cause it hurts. Aw, it hurts! Shit. Okay, Tully. Now, did you shoot yourself? You shot your goddamn self, didn’t you?”
“God, it hurts! I was just cleaning it. It hurts, Jesus, sir, I’d just—”
“Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, bullcrap!” Callicles put his nose down into Tully’s face, and Tully tried to turn his head to the side, but Callicles leaned more and kept his mouth against Tully’s nose. “You were scared shitless you’d get blown away out there, right? So you thought what the hell’s a toe, an’ you blew it away, an’ now you’re going to the world and sit in a hospital and read some comic books and drink some beer, right? Bullshit! Tully, bullshit! You’re gonna get a court-martial, that’s all you’re getting.”
“Accident, sir.” He moaned, choked.
“Accident?”
“Yes, I don’t—”
“You sneaky little shit! You trying to lie to a major, you little coward asshole?”
Back in his office, Major Callicles talked about courage: “You know, O’Brien, when it comes down to it, people like me are lifers because we’ve got to show that there are still people with courage around in this world.” He smiled and wrinkled his nose, then dropped into a mean stare. “It’s the old story. Guts to stand up for what’s right. Sure, it’s almost futile—like the last man walking around after the bomb, just to show there’s still people around, but it’s still something to be proud about. You kids make me feel like an old man. I’m forty-four, I’m like an old man in the army. But I don’t care what the new culture says, young people like you are wrong when it comes to guts. You know what courage is? I can tell you that. It’s not standing around passively hoping for things to happen right; it’s going out and being tough and sharp-thinkin’ and making things happen right.”
He grabbed his helmet, leaving the problem of what is right unresolved, and went on up to the officers’ club.
Some of us sat about and talked about Major Callicles. Bates took the position he was outright crazy, and Porter agreed in essence, but he admired the man’s pizzazz. “The way he grimaces, they don’t make them that way anymore! Nazi Germany turned out some good ones, of course. Remember Himmler: Ja wohl, was ist richtich ist richtich! To the fore, to the fore, we’ll not surrender; save the Motherland; sorry—Save der Vaterland! Really, he’s got character, we need men like Callicles.”
“He’s nuts,” Bates muttered, and shined his boots.
“Of course he’s nuts. That’s the beauty of the man. But put him in Himmler’s shoes! Try him out that way. Can’t you see it? Stuff a monocle into one of those eyes. Isn’t it great? Sieg heil!”
“No, he’s pathetic. That man will hurt somebody, wait and see.”
Porter had a way of affecting seriousness. “Oh, no. Hold on for a second. You’ve got to appreciate style, Bates, you’ve got to use some imagination. Now, just think: Major Callicles is now Wehrmeister Hintenberg. Guten Tag, Herr Hintenberg, how goes das war, gut? Ach, ja! Aber die Menschen—pot, die fräulein, das Haar. Going to pot!”
“Cut it out,” Bates said. “Sometimes I like the guy.”
At midnight Major Callicles came down from the officers’ club, eyeballs rolling. “O’Brien! Get your pack and rifle and ammo and a radio. We’re goin’ on down to Tri Binh 4—run a little patrol, just you and me and a Vietnamese scout. Let’s see if you got guts.”
I said I was on duty.
“Duty, shit! Who the hell’s running this battalion? Saddle up, let’s go.”
“You serious, sir? Come on …”
“Damn straight, I’m serious. Good to get out in the field. Scared?”
I said I was plenty scared.
“Good,” he said, winking at one of the other men. “Good soldiers are always scared; that way they don’t get careless and shit in their pants when the action starts. Maybe we’ll get some kills, surprise everybody, huh? Ol’ Major Callicles goes out and gets Charles, and everyone else’s back here puffin’ on the weed an’ lookin’ at skin flicks, an’ old Callicles, the ol’ soldier’s out there messing up Charles. We’ll have people shittin’ in their pants tomorrow, let’s go.”
I laughed and looked at some paperwork. He went into his office, and Bates was saying what a close call that was when Major Callicles came out in his armored vest and told me to get my ass into a helmet.
We drove out of the perimeter and picked up a Vietnamese scout in Nouc Mau. Then we drove down Highway One toward Tri Binh 1.
A squad from Delta Company was there to meet us. Callicles smoked a cigarette and asked for the best route to Tri Binh 4. The squad leader pointed out across a paddy and advised him not to go, that the VC liked the place. But Callicles was spinning around in booze and courage, and he told me to turn on the radio, and we waded out into the paddy.
Callicles took the point. The scout was behind him, then me and the radio, and a man from Delta took the rear.
It was a half-hour hike. We roamed around the outskirts of the village until Callicles found a trail to ambush.
“Okay, put up a Claymore,” he said, much too loudly, teasing. “Let’s see if you really pulled that field duty. Sure you can do it.”
He crawled with me up to the trail and leaned over my shoulder. I put the thing in.
“Shit, O’Brien, you wanna kill groundhogs? We’re after VC, not fuckin’ groundhogs, for Christ’s sake.” He was talking too loud, too much. The scout crawled up and asked what was wrong. “Shit, O’Brien’s on a goddamn groundhog hunt, for Christ’s sake. He’s trying to kill fuckin’ groundhogs.” The scout asked who O’Brien was, and Callicles laughed and clunked me on the rear. “This soldier, right here. College grad. Good man, though, even if he can’t set up a Claymore. You got guts, O’Brien, shit, I knew it anyhow. Here, let me get that thing in, and we’ll get some kills.”
He pointed the Claymore up at the sky, and I asked if he were hunting eagles, but he growled and crawled off the trail and left the thing as it was, useless.
“Okay, now we wait. You have to be quiet, dead quiet. I’ll start any shooting, you just wait and follow my lead. Don’t forget to blow the damn Claymore.”
Major Callicles lay on his belly and was quiet. Rain sprinkled down, but it was a comfortable, gentle rain, reassuring because the VC were no more willing to venture out in it than GIs.
Callicles didn’t stir for an hour. The man from Delta rolled over and asked if Callicles was stoned. I said yes, and he giggled and shook his head and rolled away.
In a few minutes the man from Delta Company rolled back and pointed toward Major Callicles. “Jesus, either he’s asleep or dead. Look, he’s got his head all cradled up, he hasn’t budged.”
Callicles was ten yards away, flat on his stomach, but it was too dark to make out his face.
“Hell, my mama told me to watch the booze, sweet woman. Should I throw a rock over there?” He thought about it and decided he’d just be shot dead, and he rolled away.
In an hour Callicles stood straight up and walked to the Claymore, walked down the trail, and peered into the village. “Shit, O’Brien, there ain’t no goddamn VC in Tri Binh 4.” He called it out like a drill sergeant hollering at a training company. “Who says Tri Binh 4 is such a bad place; you guys been giving me a line of bullshit? Jesus! Yank out that firing device and let’s beat feet out of here.” He stalked away like a prince, talking to himself; “Jesus, and I thought Tri Binh 4 was bad shit! Think I’ll hold a goddamn party here tomorrow night, everyone can waltz and drink punch, for Christ’s sake. Shit, a damn lark, a breeze, like walking through a patch of Maryland daisies!”
In the morning the battalion commander rebuked Major Callicles. Things were tense, but afterward the major paced around his office, grinning and winking at everyone. “All it takes is guts—right, O’Brien?” Several nights later he burned down the whorehouse, and the next day he was given two hours to leave LZ Gator for good. It hurt him, leaving.