with some low-level pipsqueak, they just turned into human bulldozers. Della Rippa pressed on. “How can you be sure that war is wrong and not believe in God?”
“Because that is the same thing concluded by existential philosophy—that we are alone in the universe and our only hope is in acting out of human compassion.”
Grouchy Bear Della Rippa’s attention span had screeched to a halt. It was time to get back to the war. “Let me get this straight. You don’t believe in God?”
“I’ve lost my faith somewhere along the line, sir.”
Sturbutzel looked over at the colonel sympathetically. Colonel Della Rippa stretched his neck, which seemed to be choking from an imaginary tie. “And you’re requesting discharge from the United States Air Force based on the teachings of a couple of French philosophers?”
My own imaginary tie seemed to be getting a little tighter. “That would be correct, sir.”
“That will be all, Airman Leary.”
I stood up and gave the snappiest salute I could muster for someone who was supposed to be a pacifist. Della Rippa gave back one of those swatting-fly-type dismissive salutes that did not fill me with confidence. Just as I was turning to leave he pretended to remember something that had nearly slipped his mind. “Oh, Airman Leary,” he said, clearing his throat, “There’s one last question I almost forgot.” I felt a trap closing in on me as he paused—dramatically, I noticed—before asking, “What would you do if you saw a couple of thugs beating your mother?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
He had me, he thought, squinting at me and giving me a crusty smile.
“But I know I wouldn’t call in a B-52 strike.”
The pasty-faced lieutenant snorted, trying to suppress a laugh.
“Will that be all, sir?” My salute was a little sharper this time, and I left feeling that I had held my own, but in the world of the Little Pentagon, holding your own wasn’t enough. Before I got out the door I felt pretty hopeless.
By nightfall the hopelessness turned to despair. Perez and Shahbazian stopped by the hootch to offer their condolences about my discharge petition being shot down. “It hasn’t been shot down yet,” I protested.
“The word around CBPO wasn’t good,” said Perez.
With near-incontrovertible logic, they urged me to come downtown for a massage at Niko’s, a Turkish bathhouse they had recently discovered. “Face it, Leary, you’re gonna be stuck around here for seven more months,” said Shahbazian. “You might as well make the best of it.”
Despite the soundness of their logic, I controverted them anyway and walked over to the library to write some letters. Danielle had sent along a clipping from the L.A. Times reporting how happy General Abrams had been with the Army’s new drug eradication program in the Mekong Delta region. I wrote back that Abrams might not be so chipper if he visited Thailand. I tried to think of a funny way to describe my CO hearing but finally gave up and told her simply that I wasn’t feeling too hopeful about getting home early. At least we would finally know one way or the other. I tried to write to my parents but quickly got stuck. I kept hearing my father’s voice asking, “What’s your problem?” And the answer was that I was lost. I was disgusted with the devastation of Southeast Asia that I witnessed every day and which seemed to be accomplishing nothing. But as much as I wanted nothing more to do with Nixon and Kissinger’s war, I was haunted by Della Rippa’s last question. In my heart of hearts I didn’t know what I would do if I saw my mother, or any old woman, being mugged. I couldn’t honestly tell myself whether I believed in non-violence, or minimum necessary force, or if I was just a coward.
8–10 September 1971
“Insufficient Documentation”
A week and a day after my hearing, I was sent over to see Lieutenant Billy Hill at the ComDoc orderly room. Hill was a freckle-faced, red-headed, perpetually sunburned good ole boy who gladly filled the dual slots of deputy commander and chief of combat documentation for Detachment 3 in the hopes it would look good on his next efficiency report. Looking at him, I couldn’t help thinking of a Gomer Pyle who had miraculously made it through college ROTC. With his jutting jaw, wispy crew cut and premature beer belly, he was hard to take seriously as a symbol of authority, but when he called me into his office, I saluted. He handed me a large packet in a manila envelope that had come from Air Force Headquarters, Washington, DC. “It looks important, Leary. You might want to open it.”
It contained a thick photostatic copy of my request for discharge along with several pages of comments from officers who approved and disapproved it along the way up the chain of command. I didn’t need to look beyond the cover letter, however. My seventy-page application had been duly processed by the Directorate of Personnel at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and turned down—for “insufficient documentation.”
I was stunned when I closed Hill’s office door behind me even though I realized that I shouldn’t have been surprised. Link sat in his office pretending to ignore me, but from his vindictive smile, I knew that he knew. Out in the orderly room, Dave Murray was napping, using his typewriter as a pillow. Tom Wheeler, sitting at the opposite desk, stopped typing and looked up. “Not good, eh?”
I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. I had put months into this, providing a stack of supporting letters from teachers and professors and friends like Tom attesting to my integrity and the depth of my conviction, not to mention over fifty pages I had written myself describing my beliefs, their sources, and how they evolved. “I gave them over seventy freaking pages of material, Tom, and they called it ‘insufficient documentation.’”
Wheeler laughed, not exactly the emotion I was looking for. “That’s what they do on all these cases, hoping they’ll just go away. Why don’t you bring your copy down to Ruam Chon Sawng tonight and I’ll take a look before we get wasted.”
I rode through a monsoon drizzle that night on my way to Wheeler’s bungalow. When I pulled the manila envelope from under my rain jacket and handed it to Tom, he just held it in his hand, weighing it. “I can tell you already, you got way too much stuff here.”
“But they shot me down for ‘insufficient documentation.’”
He sat down, and while I looked over his shoulder, he started flipping through my application. “That’s their standard excuse. I talked to one of my contacts over in CBPO who works for Sturbutzel. The whole system’s swamped right now. If you want the brass to actually read it, make it a page or two with lots of strong supporting letters.” He paused a moment. “All this Camus and Sartre and Wilfred Owens stuff—get rid of it.”
“But…”
He wasn’t paying any attention to me, instead leafing through the letters. “What the hell is this letter from Father Boyle doing in here?”
“He was the last priest I confessed to.”
“Throw that out and go see Chaplain Kirkgartner. He’s cool. He’s the dude who came up with the House of Free Expression, right? Have him write something about how your existentialism shit developed out of your wonderful Catholic upbringing.”
“Kinda
