Friendly Fire, by C.D.B. Bryan, is the story of Peg and Gene Mullen, an Iowa farm couple, whose son Michael was drafted, sent to Vietnam, and killed by artillery fired by U.S. or South Vietnamese troops -- "friendly fire." C . D. B BR YA N) G2 I ; ni,-,c_ Chapter Five The Mullens' friends and neighbors, stunned by word of Michael's death, began arriving at the farm shortly after Father Shimon left. They were stricken, outraged, bewildered that this distant war in Vietnam, a war so wearying; so incomprehensibly foreign, so enduring, could somehow have taken Michael's life as it had claimed the life of- that Jesup parish boy only two months before. The men wearing faded bib overalls, ankle-high work boots, day-glo orange earflapped vinyl caps, their mellow, weathered faces creased with sorrow, approached Gene shyly, hesitantly. Gently they touched him on the shoulder, laid their calloused hands almost tenderly across his back. Their wives, in woolen slacks and heavy hand-knit cardigans, brought baskets of food, stews and casseroles, pots of coffee which they set to simmer at the rear of the Mullens' stove. And then they moved back to take Peg's hands in their own, hugged her, kissed her lightly upon her cheek, begged her to give them something to do, wanting to help, and could barely contain the grief in their eyes. The women gathered around the kitchen table with Peg, and the men sat in the living room with John and Gene. They talked in low voices about Michael, what a wonderful young man he had been, how they felt he had been-in many ways-like a son of their own, how hard he had worked, the many little kindnesses he had shown. They retold stories about Michael, about his 4-H activities, how much he had wanted to be good at basketball, about the time back in 1960or was it '61?-the time Michael wouldn't let any of his family into their newly completed house until the lawn had been seeded and dragged and rolled. Michael had been fourteen then, and his family hadn't 54 finished the lawn until at least eleven at night. Or how about the time that neighbor, the one whose young wife had died of the aneurysm, had driven off the dead end, dragged himself out of his demolished car, his face smashed by the windshield, and crawled all the way to the Mullens' back door, where Michael discovered him, brought him inside, wrapped him in blankets and placed crushed ice on his shattered face until the ambulance and doctor could arrive. Over and over again the men tried to express their sorrow, tried to make some sense out of the war, to say something comforting about Michael's service to his country. And suddenly, astonishingly, one of the men, and then another, would begin to cry, would hide his face, wipe at the tears with the back of his hand and blow his nose into a great billowing pocket bandanna. - These men were part of "the great Silent Majority" President Nixon had referred to, and they wept as much out of confusion and frustration and rage as they did out of grief for the Mullens' loss. From kindergarten through the twelfth grade in their Iowa schools they had pledged their allegiance to the flag, been taught to love their country, respect their government. To them, America's history was of Genesisic simplicity, its early Presidents Old Testament prophets whose lives were parables of selflessness and virtue. Standing there by the Mullens' big picture window, looking out across John Dobshire's road to the rolling snow-swept hills beyond, they were simple, decent people who saw their silence as a form of stoicism, not acquiescence, who interpreted silence as a strength and virtue and whose lonely lives on isolated farms were testimony to the little stock they placed in talk. Of course, they thought themselves patriotic. Of course, they believed that a man has a duty to serve his country. Many of them, a majority, had fought in the Second World War, a war which had had front lines and battlefields and winners and losers, where success could be measured, enemy territory absorbed behind ribbons and pins and flags on the carefully kept maps back at home. These men had been young then, thinner and tougher, and they remembered how, mov55ing up through the liberated cities and villages, they had been greeted as heroes, how the grateful citizens had gifted them with flowers and wine, how the pretty young dark-haired girls had climbed up the armorplated sides of their half-tracks and Sherman tanks to be kissed. It was a war which had confirmed the image they carried both of America and of themselves: strong and generous, invincible and humane. And of course, they had been scared. There was no- shame in admitting that-but they had gone, hadn't they? In some jewelry box, or sock drawer, or half forgotten in the bottom of some desk somewhere, they still had their dog tags, their combat infantryman's badges, maybe even the medal or two awarded them because against their better judgment, on some occasion and in spite of it all, they had volunteered for something especially dangerous, something that they hadn't even needed to do. But they had done it. Why scarcely mattered; the point, to them, was that they had risked their lives and survived. They had survived and come home to Poyner and Cedar and Big Creek townships, to Eagle Center and La Porte, proud of their participation in that war. Later they joined the local American Legion chapter or the VFW and with the passing years found themselves looking back on their experiences with a strange and paradoxical longing that disturbed them. They had returned as young lions, brave warriors, to be celebrated and praised . . . and absorbed and confused . . . and frustrated and forgotten as their war became American history, shuffled farther and farther back into chapters superseded by the new crises Americans responded to in Korea and Hungary and Berlin and Czechoslovakia and the Suez and Lebanon and Cuba and now in Vietnam. The irony was not lost on them that the two Axis powers which they as young men had warred against, which they had helped reduce to rubble and had subsequently helped to rebuild with tax money taken out of their own pockets, had re-emerged as the two most powerful nations in Europe and Asia. That is why that afternoon at the Mullens' farm these men remained mute. The death of 56 Michael reminded them how powerless they had be-come. These sudden crises, which in retrospect seemed so inevitable and abundant, unnerved them because they no