They Came To Cordura (3 page)

Hetherington said he had balked at beginning to learn the New Testament. He had come to blows with his father. Then one day, while the family was passing through Oklahoma City, he had slipped away to enlist.

“How did you happen to?”

“I saw an Army poster, Major, and got the notion all at once. I couldn’t stand it any longer anyways. It was like I was carrying a cannon ball in my head. I used to have lots of headaches from it. Besides, I didn’t have the faith anymore.’’

“The faith?”

“I couldn’t believe. I knew most of it wasn’t true. Then at night, in the meetin’s, I would re-cite a while and the folks would holler and roll on the floor and carry on and I would start to cry and believe it even when I knew it wasn’t true. Then in the morning I’d be ashamed. I was too big to cry and carry on. I’d swear I wouldn’t let it happen the next night but it always did. So finally I enlisted. I write to my ma but she don’t answer. He must not let her.”

The officer said nothing. The youth’s flight had been from the terrible Jehovah that was his father to the more impersonal power that was the Army’s.

“Have you forgotten it all now?”

“That’s the worst part, no, sir, I haven’t. I thought I would in the Army but sometimes in the morning I wake up and can tell I’ve been at it in my sleep. I’m not rested any. I did it out loud once, too, when me and some buddies went to Phoenix and they got me drunk. It’s been two years and I haven’t forgot a word.” Hetherington cleared his throat. “I’d just as soon re-cite for you, Major.”

“I don’t know the Bible very well.”

“You don’t have to, sir. Just tell me a place.”

“Well, all right. Aren’t there some genealogies, with begats and so forth?”

“Sure, like Genesis 11.12. ‘And Ar-phaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: and Ar-phaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: and Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg’—that’s too easy, though. Here’s one harder, Numbers 33.28. ‘And they removed from Tarah, and pitched in Mithcah. And they went from Mithcah, and pitched in Hash-monah. And they departed from Hash-monah, and encamped at Mo-seroth. And they departed from Mo-seroth, and encamped at E-bronah. And they departed from E-bronah, and encamped at Ezi-on-gaber. And they removed from Ezion-gaber, and pitched in the wilderness of Zin, which is Kadesh.’”

It came out of Hetherington without effort and without understanding; the place names, mispronounced, came out endlessly in the flat Kansas monotone. The Major heard pride, though, and fear. ‘Re-citation’ was probably the young trooper’s only accomplishment, but each meaningless phrase was also a reminder of his own disbelief, that godlessness which frightened him. The Major let him continue.

“‘And they removed from Almon-dibla-thaim, and pitched in the mountains of Aba-rim, before Nebo. And they departed from the mountains of Aba-rim, and pitched in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho. And they pitched…’”

“Wait,” the officer interrupted. He was staring to the left, where loomed a blackness more stark than the night. Halted, they could tell the outlines of a butte, a mass of rock upthrust and solitary on the plain, tablet-topped, a hundred feet high, a monument to nothing.

“We’d better stop here. Can’t be more than five miles to
Trias
. Tomorrow may be hard on the animals.”

They rode to the base of the butte and dismounted. While the private unsaddled the horses, Major Thorn built a fire with dry twigs of the
encino
tree. The wood snapped, flared, and light reached up the wall of rock. Hetherington had no grain and the officer offered to share the last of his corn so that both animals might have one more feed. Spreading a blanket he poured the grain on to it and showed the trooper how to pick out the little pebbles found in native corn, for once a horse bit a stone he would not eat. Forage for the Expedition was always in short supply; used to oats and hay, the animals took slowly to corn, which weakened them; on grass, which would be brittle and poor until the rains of spring commenced, they became so hungry that they chewed their halter shanks incessantly, rope or leather. After swabbing sand from the nostrils of the horses with damp rags the two men rubbed them down and put on the nose-bags. The Major’s personal mount, a pure-bred Morgan he had bought in garrison and learned to love, had died of colic during the second week of campaign, and he had been supplied with a remount at
Dublán
, a big chestnut eight years old, too high and loose of build for hard service. He watched it feed. He could not develop affection for it. Already it had lost much flesh and seemed twelve years old, appearing ‘roady’ about the knees and hocks; the cavities above the eyes had deepened and the head had an aged look. The tail was limp. He called the animal ‘Sheep’. He thought that a good name for it.

Nose-bags were taken off and the horses hobbled with rawhide
manejas
removed from the necks, passed around one foreleg, twisted, buttoned around the other foreleg. Only then did the men attend to their own wants. Hetherington’s eyes were sore and inflamed from dust and the officer found some boric acid in his saddlebags and washed them out. They heated hard bread over the fire and made coffee. Hetherington’s cup, which was the new aluminium, had melted through, and since the officer’s was the old tin issue and thus intact, both drank from it. When they had finished, the Major suggested they clean their weapons, since they must be full of sand, so each found oil and patches and brought the Springfield rifle from his saddle boot. Blankets about their shoulders, their backs to the butte, they sat close to the small fire in position, as it were, to defend themselves against the still and limitless dark which closed in on them. Neither could now remember the wail of the afternoon wind.

“It sure is cold,” Hetherington said. “It gets in your bones at night and stays there all day. The rest of you burns up but your bones stays cold.”

He was a tall, gangling youth with knuckly hands, large feet, a high forehead with prominent frontal bones. His hair, was flax-colored and straight. The stubble on his cheeks and chin was sparse. The length of his head, the serious, almost aged expression about the eyes reminded the Major of his remount, Sheep. Hetherington was not in any way soldierly: the officer had noticed his awkward seat mounted, and noticed now that the sole of one large shoe was loose, exposing a torn sock and one bare, grimy toe. With the rifle his hands were clumsy.

“It’s a funny thing, but it sure seems like a long way from home down here, from the States I mean, don’t it, Major?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Are you married and with a family, Major?”

The youth was trying to make conversation, and the officer, wondering how to interview him, what questions to ask, how, above all, it had come to pass with such a one as this, he did not know what to talk about. Propping the rifle against the rock, he took his pistol from its flap-holster on his right leg and removing the magazine began to clean the weapon. Tending to jam when dirty, entirely dependent on the magazine which, damaged or lost, made the pistol inoperable, the .45 automatic had been found on the campaign to be unsatisfactory, a weapon of two parts, where the older Colt revolver had been one-part. Hetherington saw him clean his pistol and followed suit.

“Sir, I haven’t talked to anybody yet who was at Columbus. We all heard it was pretty bad, though.”

“They did surprise us,” Major Thorn said. This was a thing which could be talked about if he were cautious; which had to be, in fact, sooner or later. Working slowly on the pistol, he described how the Villistas had come in the night, tearing into the little town mounted, burning up thousands of rounds of ammunition, setting fires; how Colonel Rogers’s colored butler crawled under the Colonel’s bathtub, which cleared the floor by only six inches, and remained there until dawn; how the confused, sleep-slowed troopers of the 12th Cavalry fought in unofficered bunches out of barracks and stables; how the cook crews held the kitchen shack with axes and boiling water; how Mrs. Gardner, strapping wife of the regimental adjutant, hid with her daughter in the mesquite behind her house and with a carving knife cut the throat of a Mexican who found them; how a trooper in the stables killed another with a baseball bat; how one group of enemy were caught against the adobe wall of a mess shack by a machine-gun firing low to get advantage of ricochet and were cut to bits, literally, so that the next day pieces of skull as large as a hand, with the long hair of the
Yaqui
Indian attached, could be found; how ninety-one bullet-holes were later counted in a car parked before the Bank of Columbus; how officers, quartered with their families in houses at the edge of town, finally reached their commands and after an hour and a half of fighting, by the flames of the Commercial Hotel and the U.S. Post Office, forced the Villistas south into the desert, maintaining daylight pursuit several miles across the international boundary.

Hetherington sat wide-eyed. It seemed as good a time as any. Holstering the pistol and returning the Springfield to its boot, Major Thorn sat down again and took from his shirt pocket a small black-leather notebook and the stub of a pencil.

“Hetherington, I have some questions to ask you about your part in the fight this morning. I made some notes after talking with men in your platoon and your lieutenant, but there are things I have to check.”

Bending close to the fire the officer re-read what he had written in the notebook, then asked the youth to tell as exactly as he could what he had done. Hetherington stopped cleaning his pistol and, as the Major turned the notebook pages, asking an occasional question, told what had happened in the arroyo across the river from
Guerrero
.

“Fine. And how many dead did they count?”

“I think it was six, sir.”

“How many wounded were found?”

“Five. One got away.”

“How many prisoners?”

“Seventeen, sir.

Major Thorn nodded. “Everything tallies. Thank you, Hetherington.” He cleared his throat, which the dust had rawed. “This was a very brave thing. I think so and General Pershing agrees with me. That is why you have been detailed to me for a while. I am the Awards Officer of the Expedition. I am going to write a citation for the Congressional Medal of Honor for you. As you know, this is the highest honor the government can give a soldier. I will send it to General Pershing, who will endorse it and send it to Washington. Meanwhile you will stay back at the new advance base at
Cordura
until we get the telegram from Washington saying your award is approved.”

The youth still held his pistol in one hand, the magazine in the other. The first look on his long face was one of confusion, the next of surprise, as he understood, the next of self-conscious gravity.

“It sure is nice of you, Major. Anybody’d have done it, though. There wasn’t much else to do.”

“No,” the officer said. “I think most men would have run for help. In any case, what you did was fine, certainly more than duty required, and I believe the Medal will be approved. What it will mean to you I don’t know. At least you will have an extra two dollars a month on your pay.’’

He smiled, woodenly he knew, but the whole matter, military yet uniquely personal, was difficult to discuss. He went on to say that they would follow the Provisional Squadron of the 12th only long enough to see if there would be a fight. If not, they would leave for the advance base.

“Do you expect there will be, Major?”

“It’s possible.”

“Would we be in it?”

The officer advised him to turn in, saying he would himself as soon as he had written the citation. They must start at daylight if they hoped to reach
Gral
.
Trias
in time. While he built up the fire Hetherington put away his weapons and spread his shelter-half near the fire, his two blankets on top. The Major suggested that he would be warmer wearing his O.D. sweater under his shirt, next to the skin, rather than over. Shivering, the youth changed, took off his ammunition belt, canvas leggings and shoes, then lay down at the far side of the blankets and rolled himself up so that only his flaxen hair and high forehead protruded from the end of the roll.

“What is your middle name, Hetherington?”

“Lloyd, sir.”

“Thanks.”

“Good night, sir.”

“Good night.”

Hetherington closed his eyes, and after a moment opened them. There was no smoke from the
encino
wood and he could see the man on the other side of the fire against the grey rock, seated, blanket about his shoulders, on his knee the small notebook in which he wrote slowly with the pencil stub. Firelight glinted from the lenses of his glasses and from the oak leaves on his collar. They were old oak leaves and worn. He had been a major for some time. Prominent at the corner of his left eye was the black knot of friction tape. His hair, sandy in color, had recently been trimmed close, and this, with the neat fit of his ears, made him round-headed. After a time he stopped writing and removing his glasses folded them and put them in his pocket. When he did this his plain round face seemed almost youthful. Across the fire the eyes of officer and man met.

“Can’t you sleep, Hetherington?”

“Not yet, Major. Must be I’m too tired.”

“Would you like to hear your citation?”

“I guess so.”

The officer exposed the page to the light and read:

“Andrew Lloyd Hetherington, 647421, Private, L Troop, 6th Cavalry, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty, in action involving actual conflict. On 14th April 1916, at o6.oo hours, during an attack by his regiment upon a Villista force at the town of
Guerrero
, Mexico, Private Hetherington was left in charge of the horses in an arroyo east of town while his platoon, dismounted, moved on to a bluff to place fire upon the Villistas fleeing south. Observing a column of approximately 30 Mexicans wading the river in march formation and carrying the Mexican flag, Private Hetherington surmised correctly that they were not Federal troops but Villistas attempting to seize the horses of his platoon and at once opened fire with his rifle, at which the Villistas deployed and returned heavy fire. For over half an hour Private Hetherington remained at his post, his only cover several large boulders, the objective of repeated rushes by groups of 3 or 4 enemy. Crossing open ground to replenish his ammunition from the saddlebags of his platoon, firing more than 200 rounds, he killed 6 of the Villistas and wounded 6. As a result of Private Hetherington’s gallantry in the face of overwhelming odds, the horses were saved until his platoon returned and drove the remaining enemy across the river, where an aditional 17 were captured. Signed and sworn to, 14th April 1916, Thomas Thorn, Major, Cavalry, Awards Officer, Punitive Expedition, U.S. Army.”