Loon Read online

  For my mother,

  Martha Lamb McLean

  FOREWORD

  Valerie Solanis took the elevator

  Got off at the 4th floor

  She pointed the gun at Andy saying

  “You cannot control me anymore”

  I believe there’s got to be some retribution

  I believe an eye for an eye is elemental

  I believe that something’s wrong if she’s alive right now

  —“I Believe” by Lou Reed and John Cale

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF JUNE 3, 1968, IN NEW YORK City, Valerie Solanas, a rejected actress and a cult hero to a small segment of postmodern quasi-feminists, shot popular artist Andy Warhol three times in the chest at the Factory, his New York studio at 231 East Forty-seventh Street. She worked there occasionally. Solanas was the founder and sole member of a group named SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men). When she was arrested the following day, she said, “He had too much control over my life.” She was later found to be insane and was confined to a mental institution for six years. Warhol initially was pronounced dead, but, after a desperate heart massage, he survived.

  An hour later, sixty-five blocks uptown, at the magnificent Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue, history professor Richard Hofstadter was giving the Columbia University commencement address to what remained of a ragged collection of several thousand angry seniors. Most had walked out to protest America’s growing involvement in the war in Vietnam. Fittingly, Hofstadter’s subject was violence, more specifically the effect that the rapidly escalating war in Vietnam was having on the fabric of American society:

  This misconceived venture in Vietnam has inflamed our students, undermined their belief in our political process, and convinced them that violence is the order of the day. I share their horror at this war. The deep alienation it has inflicted on young Americans is one of the staggering costs of the Vietnam undertaking. While this war has toppled a president, its full effects on our national life have yet to be reckoned.

  The following day, June 4, 1968, a dozen United States Marine Corps CH-46 helicopters, two minutes apart, lifted slowly off the ground from their base at Quang Tri, Vietnam, and accelerated at an extreme angle to the west. Their destination was Camp Carroll. The mission was to pick up the one hundred eighty boys of Charlie Company and transport them, fifteen air-minutes, to the last piece of earth that many would ever see. On a map, it was called Hill 672, part of a rugged series of foothills southwest of Khe Sanh that protected the borders of both North Vietnam and Laos. For those of us who survived the coming three days of horror, it would become forever known as LZ Loon, or simply Loon.

  On the following evening, June 5, 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan, a twenty-four-year-old Jordanian national. Kennedy, a native of my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, had enrolled at Harvard University only to drop out after several years to serve his country in the navy during World War II. To some, he was the best hope for a country that seemed to be in a spiraling decline. To many, his assassination was the last, unbelievably violent, straw. Among the stunned individuals that day were a growing number of the then 537,482 American boys serving in Vietnam who were fighting the very war that America was abandoning. A master politician like his brother, Kennedy knew that his best chance to win in November hinged on his opposition to the war in Vietnam, and so oppose he did, with a fervor that left Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy and other early political leaders of the antiwar movement far behind.

  Robert F. Kennedy was forty-two years old. He died the following morning, on June 6, 1968.

  Those of us in Charlie Company who survived LZ Loon would not hear the news for another week.

  Many of us died that day as well.

  1

  JUNE 6, 1968.

  It had already been a long day, and dawn had yet to break.

  On his hands and knees, Bill Matthews scampered up over loose rocks and jumped into Bill Negron’s hole. Out of breath, he gasped, “They’re diggin’ in. They’re right in front of my hole, Skipper. I can hear ’em. They’re all over the fuckin’ place.”

  “Now, hang on, marine. Cool it. Catch your breath. Who’s digging in and where?” Negron was calm.

  “The gooks, for chrissake. The NVA, just like they did at Con Thien before they came through the wire, and, in case you haven’t noticed, we ain’t got no fuckin’ wire … sir.” Matthews caught his slight sarcasm and tried to temper it.

  Negron grabbed his radio handset and called over to the 3rd Platoon. “Charlie Three, this is Charlie Six Actual, do you read me? Over.”

  “Six, this is Three. Go.”

  “Three, this is Six Actual.” Negron was gripping the handset ever more tightly so as not to miss a word. “Is everything cool down there?”

  “That’s a negative, Six. I think the visiting team has arrived and is getting ready for the kickoff. Over.”

  “Charlie One,” “Charlie Two,” and “Charlie Three” were the radio call signs of the platoons that comprised C Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. Charlie Six was the company commander, in this case, Captain William A. Negron. The “Actual” meant Negron himself as opposed to a designee, such as his radio operator.

  A brief radio silence was broken by a call from the 1st Platoon. “Charlie Six, this is Charlie One. We’ve got company about five-zero meters out. Over.”

  “One, this is Six Actual. Roger that. Give me an azimuth. Over.”

  Negron was looking for the exact coordinates of the reported activity so he could direct 60 mm mortar fire to the area.

  “Six, this is One. Wait out… Six, this is One—one-five mils magnetic. Over.”

  “Incoming!” came the call from the near side of the perimeter.

  The ensuing explosion was followed by yet another call. “Grasshopper Charlie Six, this is Grasshopper Six Actual. Things sound kinda rough up there for you. Give me a sit rep. Over.” “Grasshopper Six Actual” was the call sign for our battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel James H. MacLean (no relation to me).

  “Grasshopper Six, this is Charlie Six Actual. We are in the V ring. Surrounded by unhappy gooks. Send water, ammo, air, and arty. Now. Over.”

  “Charlie Six, this is Grasshopper Six. I read you loud and clear. What’s your body count? Over.”

  “Grasshopper Six, be advised that I’ve lost an entire offensive football team and one baseball team. I’m too busy killing ’em to count ’em. I’ll be back when it’s quieter. Over.”

  “Roger that, Charlie Six. Groceries and goodies are on the way. Over and out.”

  The brief radio silence was followed by an urgent whisper on another radio that was barely audible.

  “Charlie Six, this is Charlie Three. Over.”

  It was the voice of 3rd Platoon radio operator Mitchell calling from LZ Loon across the ravine.

  “This is Six. Go,” replied Terry Tillery. Tillery was Charlie Company’s radio operator, and never far from Negron’s side.

  “Six, they’re coming at you. We can see it from here. They’re all over your fuckin’ perimeter and they are coming at you. Over.”

  Negron grabbed the handset from Tillery.

  “Three, this is Six Actual, do you read me? Over.”

  “Roger that, Skipper.” Mitchell was out of breath and scared.

  “Three, can you give me their grid coordinates. Give me some numbers so I can lay some lumber on them.”

  With that, two 122 mm rockets screamed over the perimeter, followed by a volley of incoming grenades, mortars, and small-arms fire. The ground attack had begun.

  “Here they come!” someone screamed.

  “Gooks in the perimeter!” came the cry from the 2nd Platoon lines.

  “
Gooks in the perimeter!” came the cry again, now from the Delta Company lines. Delta marines were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.

  Negron, observing the assault, looked calmly to John Camacho, the artillery forward observer, and gave a sullen nod. “Do it. Do it now.” Camacho picked up his handset and called the rear. Negron then turned to Tillery, his radio operator, and said, “Pass the word. Get everybody in a hole. Now.”

  “All stations on this net, this is Charlie Six,” Tillery stated. “Be advised we are calling them in on us. Repeat, calling them in on us. Pass the word. Get down. Now. Over.”

  Negron, Camacho, and Tillery slid into a small command bunker they’d dug out the night before. Had there been time, they’d have dug it a mile deeper.

  Minutes passed. Camacho got final confirmation of the coming artillery bombardment from the rear and, eschewing the radio, yelled “ON THE WAY!” and leapt back into the bunker.

  Around the perimeter, from hole to hole, came the cries of “ON THE WAY!” and “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” At once, we all got small.

  Camacho, on Negron’s order, had instructed our supporting artillery to fire directly onto our position. We prayed like hell that none of the rounds fell directly into any of our fighting holes. We had little choice. The NVA had broken through our lines in several places and were now inside our perimeter.

  The following seconds passed in near silence but for the sporadic crack of an enemy AK-47 rifle. Then it came. The air at once was filled with exploding artillery, flying shrapnel, and screaming boys.

  Their boys.

  The artillery air bursts, ordered by Camacho, had caught the enemy in the open. Instead of exploding on impact, the artillery had been fused to ignite in the air above the battlefield. It was slaughter.

  With the last explosion, we leapt from the safety of our holes to reinforce the lines and ensure that every NVA soldier who had penetrated the perimeter was dead.

  They were scattered everywhere, and they were all very dead.

  2

  KIDS LIKE ME DIDN’T GO TO VIETNAM.

  I was comfortably reared in an upper-middle-class suburb, and my young life was directly out of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. From earliest memory, my parents said that I could be anything I wanted to be. Teachers, neighbors, and peers reinforced this ideal. Perhaps I might become a lawyer like my father or an artist like my mother. I developed a strong interest in architecture. I dreamed of creating fabulous modern buildings to rival those of Le Corbusier or Frank Lloyd Wright. Anything was possible, for I was to become the beneficiary of the best education that money and influence could secure.

  The fathers of my generation had gone from surviving the Great Depression to crushing the Japanese and saving Europe. They came home with hard-earned pride and the promise to renew their interrupted lives.

  The first act for most of our fathers upon returning home was to make us—millions of us, in unprecedented numbers. I was born on May 26, 1947, in the earliest wave of what became known as the great postwar baby boom. In a few short years, we would be more than half of the American population. The society that spawned us, however, was unprepared for our arrival. Each school year, our class was twice the size of the year before. Classrooms were bursting. Elementary schools could not be built fast enough. Town budgets were strained.

  Still, we were a generation with limitless opportunity. America was flowering with unprecedented wealth. For the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the national economy was on a solid steady rise. The newly passed GI Bill of Rights afforded every returning veteran the opportunity to attend college, largely at the government’s expense. Skilled jobs were being created to meet the growing demand. Homes could not be built fast enough. Suburbs sprang up throughout the country to supply affordable housing for the burgeoning families. With the jobs and the homes came families and a demand for consumer goods and services that had been unimagined before the war. There grew an expectation that each family would have a car, washing machine, television set, refrigerator, and telephone. Unemployment fell to an unprecedented 2 percent of the workforce.

  All was not perfect, however. Although we emerged from World War II as the sole nuclear power, the Soviet Union and others soon joined the club. We were good. The Russians were bad. The looming specter of a nuclear holocaust became vivid in our everyday lives, and many families built home fallout shelters. We practiced “duck and cover” drills under our desks at school. Aboveground atomic testing became routine throughout the world.

  In 1950, we were brought into war on the Korean peninsula to combat Communism for the first time. It ended in a divided stalemate three years later. Three years after that, at the Geneva Convention, the remote Southeast Asian country of Vietnam was similarly divided after the defeat of the French colonialists. There was a growing resolve throughout the decade that Communism was evil and must be fought at every turn.

  The United States and the Soviet Union built atomic bombs in staggering numbers and aimed them at each other. We maintained huge numbers of troops in Germany, Japan, and Korea to deter the looming threat. To maintain the troop levels, a compulsory draft required all boys in good physical health of eighteen years and older to serve a minimum of two years in the military. Those in school, whether high school or college, were deferred until they graduated or dropped out. That was the law. It applied to all and had been in place since before we were born. From an early age, consequently, we all knew we would have to serve. Yet, in spite of the threat, we grew up with privilege that was unimagined even a generation before. Many became the first in their families to attend college.

  Our new generation became defined on the steps of the United States Capitol on January 20, 1961. There in the cold and the snow stood the young, vibrant John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States—his right hand gently resting on the Bible held by his wife, Jacqueline. He extolled service and sacrifice.

  Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

  Thanks to Kennedy, there was still a strong feeling that one individual could make a difference in the world. Millions of young Americans enthusiastically heeded his words and set forth to execute the Kennedy vision. My cousin Mike Ingraham became a freedom rider, one of thousands of Northerners to bus to the Southern United States in support of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the burgeoning civil rights movement. My brother, Don, entered the newly formed Peace Corps after college in 1964 and spent the next two years teaching school in northern Thailand.

  One of the less noticed initiatives of the Kennedy administration occurred shortly after his inauguration when he quietly began to approve the deployment of American advisers to a remote corner of Southeast Asia called Vietnam. This number slowly edged upward until August 7, 1964, when, at the direction of President Johnson, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted the president broad discretion in Southeast Asia. The resolution was passed in response to the alleged attack on an American vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese. By December 1965, there were nearly two hundred thousand American troops in Vietnam. Most of them were United States Marines. By the time I arrived, there were nearly half a million American ground forces in Vietnam, and President Johnson was more determined than ever to achieve an unconditional victory.

  There would be no turning back.

  My life was unremarkable, though it was one of privilege. Brought up in the New York City suburb of Summit, New Jersey, I learned to swim at the YMCA and attended Brayton Elementary School and Summit Junior High. Our family car was a 1956 Ford Country Squire station wagon. My parents reluctantly purchased our first television set in 1953. During the spring, I played pickup baseball at Memorial Field. My idol was Mickey Mantle. I took trumpet and piano lessons, went to dancing class, and did well in school. I had a paper route delivering the Newark Evening News. Everybody liked me, and I liked everybody.

  I was a most agreeable child.
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  By the sixth grade I was a minor rock and roll idol in my own mind, writing music and performing at school talent shows. I had an interest in baseball, Buddy Holly, and girls.

  I worshipped my brother, Don, who was six years my senior. His every move was watched, his every word hung upon as ultimate wisdom and truth. I wanted to be just like him. He was sent away to boarding school when I was nine and thereafter returned only for vacations during the school year. I lived for the small bits of attention that I was able to garner from him after that.

  My older sister, Ruth, was especially dear to me. She was closer in age and a rebel, particularly when it came to our parents. While I was trying my best to please them, Ruthie was constantly pushing the edge. I adored her and was admiring of both her directness and her ability to live life on her own terms, usually against high odds.

  Barby, six years younger than I, felt that she missed the experiences that the older three shared and was doomed to be brought up in a separate family as an only child. That wasn’t true, of course. We older three had so worn Mom and Dad down that there was no negative energy left for Barb. Like our mother, she was artistic, expressive, and sensitive.

  Summers were spent with extended family on a large lake in southern Quebec, near the small border town that spawned my mother. Childhood times at the lake were the happiest of my life. Summer days passed like years.

  Although we knew some boys who went into the military after high school or college, it was not all that common. Most were deferred from the draft by attending high school and college. Those who did serve were normally sent to Korea, Germany, or Japan for a year and then quietly came home. If you were called, you served.

  In the fifties, it was that simple.

  The change began in the 1960s. The escalating war in Vietnam played a role, as did a feeling of privilege and entitlement among many in the baby boom generation. Although our fathers and perhaps even older brothers had served in the military, many of our number increasingly felt that service was an inconvenience that we need not endure.