Читать книгу The Texan's Honor-Bound Promise - Peggy Moreland, Peggy Moreland - Страница 7

I can’t promise you that I will bring you all home alive. But this I swear before you and before Almighty God: that when we go into battle, I will be the first to set foot on the field and I will be the last to step off and I will leave no one behind. Dead or alive, we will all come home together. So help me God.

—Lt. Colonel Hal Moore

(from the movie We Were Soldiers)

July, 1972

The mood around camp was subdued. Those soldiers who had ventured from their sleeping quarters sat in silence, their heads down, their expressions somber, their thoughts focused on the previous day’s events and their chances of making it home alive. For some, this war was a joke, a part in an elaborate play they acted out each day, under the direction of their supervising officer.

Not so for Jessie Kittrell.

To Jessie—or T.J., as he was called by his friends—this war was his one chance to escape poverty, to give his family the kind of life he’d never known. With a wife and child to support and another baby on the way, enlisting in the army had seemed the only way out of the financial rut he was trapped in. Besides the training it provided, once he fulfilled his years of service, the army would pay for his college education, courtesy of the GI Bill.

If he survived this hell, he thought grimly. Like most of the men he fought alongside, before arriving in Vietnam, he hadn’t given survival much thought. He’d been too caught up in the we’re-gonna-whip-some-butts mentality ingrained in them all during boot camp. He’d carried that cockiness with him into his first battle…and left it there, along with the contents of his stomach.

Desperate to block the images that pushed into his mind, he reached inside his shirt pocket for the photo he kept close to his heart. Dirty and creased from frequent handling, the photo was his anchor, his reminder of what he fought for, his reason for being here, his need to survive.

Tears burned behind his eyes as he stared down at his wife and daughter. God, he missed them. Three months was a long time for a man to go without seeing his family. Leah had turned two last week, a birthday party he’d missed. Would she remember him when he returned home? Would she wrap her arms around his neck and plaster a wet kiss on his cheek when she saw him, as she had in the past? Or would she cringe away and cry for her mommy?

The dull whop-whop-whop of helicopter blades overhead had him looking up. Knowing the chopper’s purpose, he slowly tucked the picture back into his pocket. He watched silently as the Huey landed and two bagged bodies were loaded onto the deck. He gulped back emotion, aware that a third soldier should have been making that ride. Buddy Crandall.

But Buddy wouldn’t be making the trip back home.

A wide hand landed on his shoulder and he glanced up to find Pops—the nickname given Larry Blair by T.J. and the rest of the guys—beside him, his gaze on the helicopter as the pilot prepared to take off.

“It’s not right,” T.J. said, shaking his head.

“Buddy should be on that chopper.”

“Yeah,” Pops said quietly. “But some things just aren’t meant to be.”

“MIA,” T.J. muttered, squinting his eyes as he watched the helicopter slowly rise into the air. “Can you imagine what getting that news is going to do to Buddy’s family? Why can’t the Army list him as Killed in Action rather than Missing in Action? Hell, we all know he’s dead! We were there. We saw what happened. There’s no way he made it out of there alive.”

“You know the rules,” Pops reminded him gently.

“If a soldier’s body isn’t recovered and his death not positively verified, he’s MIA.”

“I don’t want my family put through that,” T.J. said furiously. He glanced up at Pops. “Promise me something, Pops.”

“If I can.”

“If what happened to Buddy should happen to me, promise me you’ll let my family know. Tell ’em I fought and died like a solider. Tell ’em I won’t be coming home.”

Pops hesitated a moment, then nodded soberly. “Consider it done.” He gave T.J.’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Check your gear. We’ll be pulling out in a couple of hours.”

T.J. sat a moment longer, then dragged a hand across the moisture in his eyes and stood. He patted his pocket and the photo he kept there, then strode for his tent and the pack that held his gear.