[legendsport]

Chapter 3 — Echoes

Quảng Trị Province, South Vietnam: February 25 1968

By late morning the fog had burned off, leaving the air bright and hard-edged. Major Mike Barrell picked his way through a block of shattered houses on the outskirts of Huế, boots crunching glass and roof tile. A week ago they’d been fighting for the city; now the job was clearing it - booby traps, deadfalls, wire that glinted just enough to tell you you’d missed the first one.

“Tripwire under the frame,” the corporal said, crouched in the doorway. His voice was almost casual. “Grenade in the rafters. Whoever set it knew we’d come in low.”

Mike marked the house with chalk - "DON’T ENTER" - and nodded the squad down the alley. Chickens scratched in a busted courtyard. A bicycle lay on its side with a bent front wheel, the back tire still somehow full of air. On the sill of a window blown clean out of the wall, a child’s tin truck waited as if its owner had just set it there and run off to wash for supper.

They worked slowly, house to house. At a schoolroom missing one wall, the blackboard still read Ngày Tết nghỉ học. The corporal uncovered what they’d been told they’d find, bones and cloth and the dumb, stunned silence that followed. Mike wrote coordinates and a brief note for Graves Registration, his pencil lead snapping halfway through recovery. He didn’t try twice.

At midday he walked the squad back toward their temporary command post, a half-collapsed shopfront where the battalion map was thumb-tacked to a bare plank. The radio hissed with Armed Forces Radio between sit-reps — a crooner from home, then a clipped announcer promising stabilization, progress, pacification. The words sounded as if they’d been left too long in the sun.

He ducked into shade, pulled out his notebook, and started a letter.

*Ruby Lee,
We’re on the back side of it now. The city’s a mess but we’re working through it, block by block. The men are holding up. I’m fine. Tell Mom I’m fine. Tell Sarah I still owe her that story about the tilting windmill. Tell Jake I saw a truck here that could outrun his back down the dirt road. We’ll be all right. Don’t worry.*

He stopped, crossed out Don’t worry, and folded the page. He couldn’t bring himself to write about the pit at the school or the house where the dog still waited by a door that didn’t exist.

A corpsman waved him over. Inside the poncho-strung aid station, Sergeant Herrera managed a grin despite the fresh bandage where his leg had been.
“Sir, you should see the other guy,” he said.
“I've seen them,” Mike answered, squeezing the sergeant’s shoulder until the grin looked real.

Outside, a woman in a blue dress, the color startling amid the ruin, picked through rubble with a stick, tapping, tapping, then lifting a pot as if it might still hold supper. She looked at him once, not afraid, not thankful, just measuring. He didn’t know what he hoped she’d find.

He caught sight again of the toy truck on the windowsill, slipped it into his pocket, and felt its edges bite his palm.

As dusk came on, a radio from brigade backline bled through static: “…student demonstrations reported today in several European capitals protesting the Vietnam War…” He almost laughed at the absurd distance of it; the world protesting a war that here had already burned itself into the ground.

The guns had stopped, mostly. The maps said the city was theirs again. But the quiet felt thin, a skin stretched over something that hadn’t finished speaking.

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West Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany: February 18-19 1968

The chants came first: low, rhythmic, swelling until the cobblestones vibrated underfoot. Loretta Barrell pushed forward with the crowd spilling from the Technische Universität into the gray winter light. Banners rose like sails: USA RAUS AUS VIETNAM! SOLIDARITY WITH THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE! The air smelled of diesel, cold, and adrenaline.

Students beat drums made from paint cans. Someone pressed a leaflet into her hand; she read Freedom for all peoples and felt the words flare like a match. Fifteen thousand, the papers would say later. She believed every voice counted double.

Police vans edged the perimeter. Helmets gleamed. When the first flare went up, the chant faltered, then surged higher. Loretta shouted until her throat scraped raw. For once she wasn’t Fred Barrell’s daughter or anyone’s pupil, just another voice in the tide.

Then came the push: gas, batons, confusion. A student grabbed her wrist, “Hier! Komm!” and dragged her into a café where others huddled, coughing through tear gas. On the café radio, a BBC bulletin reported renewed fighting near Quảng Trị. Her stomach turned; her father had mentioned that that was where her cousin Mike was stationed. She pressed her sleeve to her mouth and tasted ash.

By nightfall she walked home through puddles filmed with soot. Police sirens still echoed off the buildings.

The Barrell Apartment, West Berlin: Early Morning

The door slammed hard enough to shake the hallway mirror. Fred Barrell, still in his trench coat, stood in the entryway, fury barely contained. Tillie looked up from the kitchen doorway, her expression a mixture of worry and weariness.

“Do you have any idea what kind of spectacle you made of yourself?” Fred demanded, waving a photo. “Out there with Communist agitators!”

Loretta dropped her scarf on the table. “They’re not all Communists, Dad. They’re people who still believe freedom means something!”

“Freedom?” He laughed without humor. “Freedom doesn’t come from mob rule. It comes from men willing to stand a post and defend it.”

“You mean die for it.” Her voice rose. “You call it defending liberty, but it’s just killing with better slogans!”

“Watch your mouth,” he said, finger stabbing the air. “You think Moscow cares about liberty? They’re using fools like you.”

He threw the photo down, and Loretta saw her face, mouth open in a shout, her head circled in red ink. "I never thought I'd raise one of Lenin's 'useful idiots.'" The disappointment in Fred's voice was evident even through the anger.

Tillie stepped between them. “Please, both of you. Fred, she’s upset. Loretta...”

Loretta’s eyes flashed. “He’s supposed to defend liberty. How can he hate people for using theirs?”

Fred’s voice dropped to a hard, tired growl. “You don’t know what hate is. I’ve seen what happens when people think marching is the same as sacrifice.”

“You’ve seen too much,” she shot back. “That’s your problem.”

He pointed toward her room. “You will not go to another demonstration. That’s an order.”

She met his eyes. “You’re not my commanding officer.”

“Loretta!” Tillie’s voice cracked, half plea, half command. Silence followed. Loretta’s throat burned; she turned, went to her room, and shut the door.

At her desk she began to write.

*Dear Dad, You think you’re defending freedom. I think you’ve forgotten what it means.*

She folded the page and slid it into her journal. Outside, her parents’ voices murmured — Tillie’s calm, Fred’s anger ebbing into exhaustion. She opened the window; the night smelled of rain and tear gas. Somewhere a siren wound down into quiet.

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Bethesda, Maryland: April 8, 1968

The smell of coffee and newsprint filled the Cleaves’ kitchen. The radio hummed with political news; outside, the forsythia were beginning to bloom. Roger Cleaves had just returned from Florida camp, suntanned and restless. His eldest, Dwayne, sat with one leg propped on a chair, a fresh bandage wrapping a strained hamstring. Evelyn flipped pancakes while the youngest, Dick, watched her nervously.

“Go on,” Roger said, catching the look. “Spit it out.”

Dick took a breath. “I’m eighteen now. I’ve decided to enlist. Marines.”

Evelyn froze, spatula mid-air. “You what?”

Roger grinned, clapping his son on the shoulder. “That’s my boy. Hell of a choice.”

Evelyn turned, pale. “A choice? Roger, after everything we’ve seen on television?”

Roger’s grin faded but his pride stayed. “Discipline, purpose. The Corps made a man out of me.”

“Made a stranger out of you for two years,” she said. “And you want that for him?”

Dwayne looked up from his plate. “Maybe he just wants to do his part, Mom.”

Evelyn shook her head. “Your ‘part’ could get him killed before he’s even lived.”

Roger’s voice hardened. “This country’s worth a damn sight more than sitting around worrying. Somebody’s got to stand up.”

“Then go yourself!” she snapped. “Leave my sons out of it!”

The room fell still. The radio announcer’s cheerful voice about Opening Day sounded obscene.

Roger finally said quietly, “If this country’s worth anything, it’s worth serving.”

Evelyn pushed past him into the hallway. The bedroom door closed like a verdict.

Dwayne exhaled. “Dad…”

Roger held up a hand. “Save it.”

A few hours later he sat alone in the garage, tools untouched, a half-packed duffel from camp on the bench beside him. He picked up a framed photo from an old Marine reunion and saw himself, twenty years younger, square-jawed and certain. He studied it until his eyes blurred.

“It did make a man of me,” he muttered, “just not a better one.”

He set the photo down. Through the open garage door came the crack of a bat from a neighbor’s yard and the faint call of the radio: “And that’s the ballgame…”

Roger closed his eyes, hearing instead the echo of a distant helicopter and the argument he hadn’t finished.