Dear Dad,
You're always telling me I never write to you enough. Well, here you go. Another missive from the fabulous South Korea, penned personally by yours truly and coming to you live from the front lines. You read that right, Dad. The Army, in its infinite wisdom, as seen fit to send I, Benjamin Franklin Pierce, your son and heir, into the hornets' nest. But don't worry about me, Dad. I've got lots of kids with guns protecting me. You know, This Man's Army and all. I keep telling them they'd have better luck with cans of bug spray, but the joke seems lost on them. Pity, because it's probably the best one I've come up with all week. And that's saying something. I guess it's hard to stay on your toes when every minute of your day is spent elbow deep in someone else's guts. But I digress. Hey, write to the president while I'm thinking of it, would ya? And let him know how things are going out here? I tried already, but either the North Koreans keep bombing our mail trucks, or he's ignoring me. Honestly, Dad, I don't know which one of those to believe these days.
Speaking of the esteemed Harry Truman, how are things back home? Is old Mrs. Henry keeping you fed like she promised? Even more importantly, has she let out my apartment yet? If sweet talking is all it takes, tell her I said thank you for the box of cookies she sent me last week. BJ enjoyed them immensely. He let me know as soon as he handed me the empty box after he accidentally ate them on purpose.
I've actually been thinking about home a lot lately, Dad. You mostly, but the apple trees, too. I know I missed spring, but those apple blossoms keep popping up. BJ's daughter, Erin, sent some flower petals the other day and they reminded me so much of you, I had to go hide in the shower tent and cry. That doesn't happen too much anymore. Between our camp shrink, Sydney, and the callouses I've managed to develop walking around this place every day, I think I might actually be starting to get used to this place. Me! Your son! Shocking, I know. Calm yourself, Dad! I can hear those shouts of indignation even over here.
But all joking aside, I hope you don't worry yourself about me all the time any more. I'll try to write more, in case you still do. I guess a lot of parents are worried about their kids right now, and I'm not the only one with a father who worries too much. I sew these soldiers back together all day, Dad, and sometimes I forget to stop and remember that they're somebody's son. We're all somebody's sons - or daughters - over here, so I don't really understand why we keep trying to murder each other over silly things like lines in the sand.
How are things at work? Strange question, I know, seeing as how I am sitting in the middle of a war zone while you are, hopefully, in your favorite easy chair in the parlor, sipping that wonderful bourbon I found for you that last Christmas in Vermont. It's just, those little things that I miss the most. The crabapple cove pie making contest. Mr. Jacob's rose garden. The softness of things over there. Sometimes I get a taste of it when I get to stay in a hotel in Seoul. That's when I can almost close my eyes and pretend that I'm back home with you. Who would have thought a tacky Korean hotel room could remind a guy so much of home.
I'm getting out of here soon, Dad. They radioed and said they were getting ready to evacuate because the fighting is getting so bad. Just the other day North Korea tried to take us out. They're not supposed to do that, but sometimes I think the closer you get to the front here, the less sense everything makes. The power is out and half the sad excuse for a hovel they set up shop in is gone, so I'm writing this to you by candle light! How Dickensian of me, huh? Get me a top hat and an overcoat and I'll start calling myself Charles. No, I take that back. South Korea has enough people named Charles' in it right now.
I worked on an officer, today, Dad. An honest to god officer – they keep telling me, like it's supposed to impress me, or make a difference, or something. Rank still baffles me, especially out here. Battlefield wounds are battlefield wounds no matter who's got them, but somehow the kid who's father just happens to be a big deal around here is expected to get more of my time then the poor corporal who dragged him in here while on the brink of death himself. I'll have you know the stacks of field manuals they made me read before sending me to this place certainly didn't say anything about checking a man's insignia before diving in to help. But that's what they expect of me around here. And so Officer Boy is headed back to the 4077th with me while they work to set up a new aid station somewhere else, preferably a lot farther away from the fighting. I think they're glad to be rid of me. Never let it be said that my innate ability to talk a person to death is a burden. I knew if I kept on long enough about the state of things, they'd eventually let me go home.
Potter's not going to be too pleased. There's a good chance the general's son is not gonna make it, and I know this makes me a hypocrite, Dad, but there are some soldiers no one wants to pronounce. Not even me. Three years I've been here, and that part just never gets any easier, no matter whose son it is.
Well, the time has come, Dad! They're going to let me exchange the horrors of war for the horrors of Igor's mess tent cooking instead! I'm headed back to camp and I'll write more when I can. I love you dad.
Ok, I'm back.
When I close my eyes, I can see the trees. Do you remember that one time someone came to town and honest to god asked us why anyone in their right mind would name their town after something so inedible as a crabapple? I thought old Mrs. Henry was going to have a stroke right then and there. Excellent practice for me, a scene people would be talking about for years around town if she just keeled over. I could have done it though, dad. Saved her life. Well, maybe. Strokes are tricky business, but you didn't work most of your life to send me to med school for nothing.
I remember some springs when the trees would bloom in such intense colors, it would make your eyes hurt. Remember that, Dad? Remember walking down the avenues and just… not saying anything, because what can you say about something so beautiful? Mom used to collect the blossoms, and any other flower she could get her hands on. Remember? How she'd steal your highball glasses, and not the cheap ones either, and put bouquets of flowers all over the house? Lily of the valley on the sideboard in the dining room because the window there would waft the scent around the house so perfectly, it was like you had candles lit in each room? Or the lilac she used to put right beside the telephone on the table in the hall by the front door so you couldn't excuse yourself from it, even to make a phone call? Or the books in your library we still find apple blossoms pressed into? BJ's little one, Erin, sent him flowers last month and I was reminded so much of home, I had to run into the shower tent to cry. Had to be alone. Can't show weakness in front of the men and all that, but don't worry about me, Dad. I'm getting better at not spontaneously bursting into tears over here. MacArthur has toughened me up, put hair on my chest, so to speak, and made me a real man. Are you proud of that, Dad? I wonder a lot if you are.
I flew today. That's when I saw the trees for the first time. I flew and closed my eyes, and it only took a few minutes of free fall for me to see the blossoms explode behind my eyes. It was like nothing I've ever seen before. Reds so red they looked like blood. Whites so white, they made my head ache.
Remember what you said to me, that day on the train platform, Dad? When we said goodbye? You made me promise to take care of myself. To stay out of trouble and stay alive. Well, I did that, Dad. For three whole years I kept myself alive, and kept what felt like half of North and South Korea alive, too. I wanted to quit so many times, but I didn't, because as much as I want to come home, there are people here who need me.
Don't be mad at Joe, Dad. He's our pilot. I started calling him Silent Joe half way through our ride back because the guy wouldn't even crack a smile, but I get it now. He can barely speak English. He's Italian, or at least I think he's Italian. I couldn't really tell what he was screaming at me over the alarms and the smoke and the explosions. All I know is that he's the best damn pilot in the entire Asian theater. Want to know how I know this? Because he managed to maneuver his way out of the path of a jet. An actual, honest to god, fighter jet. A fighter jet, I feel I should mention, that was headed straight for us. Well, get Silent Joe a medal, because he maneuvered us out of the path of that jet. Sure, he lost control afterwards and we started spinning out, headed for the ground. But you mustn't blame Silent Joe, Dad. It wasn't his fault. His country probably pulled his birthday from a hat, just like mine did. Just like all of ours did. No one wants to be here. But thank god for Silent Joe. Without him I think…
What was he saying?
Where was he going with this?
It's so hard to keep things straight with his brain doing that strange, augmented reality thing.
Guess what I'm trying to say, Dad, is don't blame Joe for me. He did his best.
Hawkeye opens his eyes and the pain comes, so he closes them again, but nothing makes sense there, in the blackness behind his eyes. He'd been writing a letter. He gropes for the pages, his favorite pen, pens are so hard to come by in Korea. But it's not there. None of it's there. Like his thoughts, all scattered.
He tries the eye opening thing again. Pain forks through his brain. His eyes can't see anything other than undulating white, and there's so much pain. Pain was not something the army prepared him for. We'll keep you safe , they promised. As a prominent member of the medical community and a valued asset to the army, we'll make sure you're well taken care of , they said. When this whole god forsaken war is over, Hawkeye knows exactly what he'll say to the Army about how he's been treated.
Dear Dad,
Please remember to put in your letter to the president how the virulent lack of cleanliness in this camp is deplorable. Put an Esquire after your name, maybe someone will listen.
God, now he sounds like Margaret.
Margaret.
BJ.
BJ was up on the helipad when that… leaping lizards, was that really a plane he remembers seeing? Was it really careening towards them? Had Silent Joe really maneuvered them out of the way so fast Hawkeye nearly got thrown out of the helicopter? Nearly? Is that the right word? Thinking too much about it makes his head hurt, so he retreats back into the trees. But they smell funny. Everything smells funny here. It's like charred flesh and iron blood. God he hates that smell. If there's one thing that's going to haunt him about this place, it's that smell. He doubts he'll ever be rid of it, or be able to attend a barbeque again.
Hawkeye decides to focus on other things, instead. Like where in the hell he is. Opening his eyes still isn't an option, so he lets awareness of his body seep back in. Awareness brings pain, but he can't stay in this dream place forever. What would his father think?
Dear Dad, –
"No," he admonishes himself. "Focus."
He's on his back, if he can trust his own senses. It's hot and something irritating is tainting the air. There was a plane, a crash. The helicopter he was in fell from the sky.
So how is he even alive?
"An excellent question," he thinks he might say to himself.
But he's missing a piece. Something important. Something about Silent Joe.
Hawkeye sits up abruptly, not entirely sure how he manages it, and takes in his unfocused surroundings. There's a huge knot at the back of his skull that pulses in time with his heart. His legs don't move when he tells them to and further inspection shows why. White bone from a compound fracture on his lower left leg glints up at him from the grass. He's laying half in and half out of what appears to be a high clump of dried out grass, but his legs are over dirt… only his brain isn't functioning enough to figure out why.
Dear Dad,…
"Oh for Pete's sake," he moans, covering his eyes with his palms. He has to focus. Get help, because Hawkeye isn't going anywhere on this leg.
Ignoring the pain of... well, everything, Hawkeye forces his eyes open yet again and this time, makes his poor brain acknowledge what it sees. His legs are lying in what appears to be a patch of grassless earth. To his left a wall of white obscures everything. To his right, the edge of a forest appears then disappears back into that same wall of white. In front of him… well that's either a hallucination, or confirmation that a fighter jet, a French fighter jet if the insignia on the side is anything to go by, really did, indeed, force them out of the sky.
Silent Joe pulls up on the controls. The g-force shoves Hawkeye back against his seat. They're spinning, they're falling, Silent Joe is screaming at him. Things he can't decipher. But in the end the words are clear as day, though he has no idea what they mean.
Ti prego perdonami. Mi dispiace.*
And he's letting go of the collar of Hawkeye's shirt and letting him tumble from the body of the helicopter. He's letting him go and there's nothing left for Hawkeye to hold on to, and he's falling and falling and falling. There's nothing but swirling chopper blades to look at. Why would Silent Joe let go?
He hits the ground hard. The world goes black. He's back in the aid station, penning his missive, only this time he gets to finish it.
Dear Dad, ...
Hawkeye, leans over and throws up into the grass. Great wracking heaves shake his frame as he brings up blood and bile and he remembers everything. It's like a bomb going off in his skull. Too late he realizes that shockwave isn't really internal. The minefield, the minefield he's been sitting in, is exploding. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, known as Hawkeye to his friends, the man who just survived a free fall from a helicopter, is blown backwards. Something impacts his middle. Something hot and hard and unrelenting that drives all the air from his lungs. He's blasted backwards on a wave of air and fire and noise. Back towards his trees. Back towards his home, as the war finally seals his letter in blood.
Dear Dad.
If only he'd remembered his pen.
*Please forgive me. I'm sorry.