The slow march of light, p.2
The Slow March of Light, page 2
—Anonymous (text) and William Bradbury (music),
“We Are All Enlisted,” 1866
Idaho
December 1959
The words from the hymn “We Are All Enlisted” echoed in Bob’s mind as he drove through the gray afternoon that promised snow. “Haste to the battle,” he hummed, possibly off tune, “quick to the field . . .”
The hymn had been sung at a church service Bob had attended with a friend before heading back to Utah State University. He’d never heard the song before, and he didn’t know why he couldn’t get the lyrics out of his mind now. “Truth is our helmet, buckler, and shield.” It wasn’t like he’d ever been inclined toward military service since he already had a career path in mind, although he could say he was a proud citizen of his country.
Fiddling with the radio, Bob realized he was on a stretch of Idaho road that delivered only garbled static. Silence reigned again, and he reconciled himself to his own thoughts as flakes of snow began to drift from the sky, landing haphazardly on his Ford Fairlane’s windshield.
Christmas had come and gone, and he’d enjoyed the break with his family in Twin Falls, Idaho. But now it was time to get back to reality. After changing his major more than once, from civil engineering to accounting and then to a double major of prelaw and economics, Bob felt content about his most recent choice. At twenty-four, he was behind many other college students in the nation, but that was because of the time he spent a few years ago as a missionary for his church.
Bob couldn’t help the smile stealing onto his face now. He’d been accepted to some of the most prestigious law schools in the country, including the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Chicago; George Washington University; and Harvard. His life was on the fast track now. One more semester at Utah State would be followed by a summer internship at the US Department of Justice.
“Law school, here I come,” he said to the falling snow that fell faster and faster now. Bob switched on the wipers, and the rhythmic swiping created a hollow sound—almost lonely.
He didn’t mind the moments of loneliness that sometimes crept over him. It was easy enough to push away with his classes, his papers to be written, his volunteer hours at church, and writing letters to keep in touch with his family.
He had friends too, no one particularly close though. No current sweetheart. Susan was in the past and had been there for quite a while. They’d planned to get married shortly after she finished school, but Bob had committed to volunteer as a missionary, requiring him to head back east . . . Susan hadn’t wasted much time before sending a letter and ending things. He had dated off and on since Susan, but nothing had stuck with any other woman. Perhaps it was because Susan had hurt him more than he cared to admit. Or perhaps he felt that a serious relationship could come later, when he was through with school. Besides, studying law took most of his focus.
Bob drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he neared the Logan exit. Not too far up the canyon sat the quaint, bricked buildings of Utah State. The temperatures could be fierce in the winter this high up in altitude, but he loved the mountain air.
Continuously falling snow collected on the road, slowing his progress. The setting sun and dropping temperatures put him more on alert. Why the drive through the canyon felt different somehow, he couldn’t explain. Perhaps it was because so many changes were on the horizon—the product of years of hard work. He’d finally be on his way to becoming a government lawyer. He hoped to stay in Washington, DC, among the country’s history. He wanted to excel, to make a mark in the world, to see how far he could go.
By the time he parked in front of the house where he rented a room, he was already thinking of tomorrow’s classes and workload. Christmas break was over, and it was time to get back to work. The snow had lightened to large, lazy flakes, which promised to completely cover the entire university campus by morning.
He made a dash to the house and retrieved the mail that had been left for him. There was already a letter from his older sister, Margaret, which made him smile. She must have written it soon after she’d left their parents’ home after Christmas.
She always asked about his progress in school. Margaret and their parents were pleased with the internship he’d secured. His parents were both hardworking and practical. His mother wasn’t the affectionate sort, but she was generous and cared for others in her own way.
“You’re too thin, Bob,” she’d say. “Are you eating enough at your university?”
Probably not. He ate once a day in the cafeteria at school. Yet he wasn’t all that slender. His six-foot build rivaled that of any of his college friends. He’d always been a good runner and could have played football and participated in track in high school, but instead, his parents had urged him to work at the 7UP bottling plant.
Bob sorted through the mail as he walked into the quiet kitchen of the home. The family he rented a room from said they would be back the next day, so he had the place to himself for the night. He paused next to the table when he saw an official-looking letter from the US government—the president, more accurately.
Had he received an official congratulations letter about his internship with the Justice Department? Or maybe this was protocol for his acceptance into George Washington University?
Bob settled onto the kitchen chair and carefully opened the letter, assuming it would become a keepsake.
To: Albert R. Inama
Salutations,
Greetings from the President of the United States and Friends.
The smile on Bob’s face dimmed as the next words leapt off the page. The letter was not the congratulations he’d suspected. No, the letter was an official order. Albert R. Inama had just been drafted into the US Army.
Basic training would start in February at Ford Ord in California.
The letter from his sister forgotten, and all other pieces of mail now inconsequential, Bob read through the draft notice a second time. And then a third. The words were all still there. They hadn’t changed. He hadn’t awakened from a strange dream.
He didn’t need to speak to his parents or a professor to know that turning down the draft wasn’t an option. Not if he wanted to retain any moral character throughout the remainder of his life.
But as he stared at the letter, the words began to blur as the realization settled like a stone in his stomach. All of his plans would have to be put on hold. The coveted internship, the acceptance at George Washington University. His breath stalled. The current semester at Utah State.
What about the professors who’d taken him under their wings? What about his tuition, his room rent . . . his family?
The letter from his sister seemed to mock him now. Writing to a brother living one state away to attend college was a far cry from writing to a brother at an army post. Who knew where he’d end up?
Something wrenched hard in his chest, and the disbelief and shock were replaced by doubts. He was almost a law student. He’d hunted as a kid—pheasants with a shotgun when he was fourteen, and deer with a rifle at sixteen. But he was no soldier.
Bob dropped his head into his hands as his future plans slowly splintered out of reach. He knew a couple of guys who’d been drafted, sure. One had failed the physical examination and hadn’t been inducted after all. Bob knew that wouldn’t be the case with him. He’d pass. And he’d be hundreds of miles away come February.
Two years. He’d be in the service for two years. Minimum.
Slowly, he stood from the table and crossed to the phone at the edge of the kitchen counter. He’d told his mom he’d call to report his safe arrival, although the news would be much different now.
“Hello?” she answered on the third ring.
“I’m back in Logan,” he said.
“Oh, that’s good to hear.” The relief was plain in her voice, although he’d made the drive many, many times. “How was the drive?” she continued. “Did you run into snow?”
The conversation was so ordinary, and he hated to change that. “It’s still snowing, but the Fairlane did well.”
He could almost hear his mom’s smile. She loved that his car was a cheerful yellow and white. Another thing he would miss. Before his mom could ask about his stay with his friend who he’d gone to church with that day, he said, “Can you bring Dad to the phone? I need to tell you both something.”
Chapter two
“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
—“Oath of Enlistment,” Title 10, US Code
Fort Sill, Oklahoma
US Army Field Artillery Center
May 1960
Bob opened his eyes to the pale light of dawn slowly pushing aside the deeper gray of the barracks. Morning seemed to come earlier every day, especially since he’d made a habit of setting his alarm for five, an hour before everyone else woke up. He loved the quiet of the early morning and time to spend with his own thoughts before the day consumed him.
This morning, instead of rising and setting about his tasks, Bob slipped out from beneath his pillow a couple of recent letters from his family. One letter was from his sister, and the other, from his parents. He reread them, imagining the events taking place at home—simple things that he hadn’t fully appreciated at the time. Family meals. Margaret teasing him. His mother’s soft smile.
Bob tucked the letters back into place, then said a quick prayer in his heart for his family that all would be well. Then he gazed up at the rectangle pattern of light coming in through the blinds. The light would shift slowly with the movement of the sun, but for now, it seemed suspended in time. It was hard to believe it was the middle of May, and he’d been a soldier for over three months.
Following eight weeks of basic training at Fort Ord in California, turning his body into a formidable force, Bob had been reassigned to Fort Sill to train in field artillery. He’d stayed open minded, determined to excel wherever he was assigned. He didn’t plan on volunteering for anything though. After a conversation back at his university, a couple of the men in the National Guard at his church had told him to never volunteer for anything—to do his duty and only his duty. Bob had stuck to that advice so far.
“Up with the birds again, Inama?”
Bob glanced at the bed next to his. Tom Komori was grinning.
“It’s too early to smile,” Bob said, but he smiled anyway.
“Well, it’s going to be a good day,” Komori pronounced, his dark-brown eyes full of amusement.
One of the other soldiers in a nearby bed grumbled, “Keep it down. Some of us are still sleeping.”
Komori smirked. In the two short weeks that Bob had been here, he already felt like he and Komori were close friends. Unlike Bob, Komori came from a military family. His father had been a decorated Japanese-American soldier in World War II. There was no need for Komori to be drafted. He had enlisted while attending the University of California. As a third-generation Japanese American, Komori served his country with pride, with a smile on his face.
Various watch alarms went off in the barracks, a cacophony of melodies completely out of harmony. Bob slipped on his military glasses—or at least that’s what he called them. He wasn’t allowed to wear glasses made out of glass, and these plastic ones were black, horn-rimmed.
By 7:00 a.m. the barracks were spotless—including the latrines and common area—the beds were flawlessly made, and everyone had assembled in formation for head count, where the first sergeant announced the day’s training. Firing range, then a demonstration of a 105mm howitzer, and finally Bob would section off to the Fire Direction Center. After breakfast, the unit headed for drill, which consisted of an hour of marching.
Komori sat by Bob on the bus that took them out to the firing range. They passed by the two stately stone buildings named after World War II vets, McNair Hall and Searby Hall.
Leaving the main post, the bus drove past wide expanses of field, passing the artillery trainees practicing using radar to track targets. Soon, the bus reached the firing range. At Fort Ord in California, Bob had become proficient with the M1 rifle, the carbine pistol, and the 50-caliber machine gun, which had a maximum range of 8,100 yards. Perhaps he could thank his youth scouting for giving him his first taste of marksmanship and his growing up in Idaho hunting pheasant and deer.
“Ready?” Komori said as they headed off the bus. “You going to show off again?”
“If hitting the target means showing off, I guess I am.” Bob kept a straight face, but Komori laughed.
“Then it will be a good day,” Komori said. “And a good night. Don’t forget you promised to go into downtown Lawton with me.”
Bob nodded. He had promised. It was Friday, and his battery didn’t have night training. The downtown area of Lawton was where the soldiers would spend their off-hours. Restaurants, shops, and a movie theater . . . Lawton had it all. He didn’t always join a group when he went off-post. He was more likely to catch a bus and do some sightseeing on his own.
After the firing range, where Bob had hit every target dead center, the unit headed out to watch a demonstration of a 105mm howitzer. The bus took them to a field with a wall of trees. Tucked against the trees, the 105mm howitzer was large, even from a distance, its 2.5-ton weight making it an impressive force.
The howitzer was fired in a series of three tests—dawn, day, and night. Bob’s unit was observing the daytime test. The bus stopped, and the soldiers unloaded. They stood in formation as they watched the loading of the 105mm. It required a crew of eight to operate.
“There are thousands of these out there, if you can believe it,” Komori said. “Dozens of countries own them, since they’re accurate and powerful. I hear they have the 280mm in West Germany. You know, what they call the atomic cannon.”
“West Germany, huh?” Bob said. The center of the Cold War. Where Germany had been defeated by the Allies in World War II and then divided up by the victors—France, England, the United States, and the Soviet Union. There was not an active war in Germany, but the political tensions there were part of the news every day. It was said that one false move by either a West German or an East German could set off World War III.
A shiver passed through Bob even though the May day was plenty warm. A couple of weeks ago, on May 1, the Soviet Union had shot down an American U-2 spy plane. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had disappeared. At first President Eisenhower claimed that it was a weather plane that had gone off course. But then Soviet leader Khrushchev revealed the wreckage of the U-2 as well as a picture of the pilot, who was alive and now a political prisoner of war. On May 11, a chagrined Eisenhower was forced to admit that the United States had indeed sent a spy plane over Soviet territory.
Tensions had only escalated between the two superpower leaders when Eisenhower refused to back down on future plans for spy flights right before the Paris Summit. Khrushchev and his delegation left the summit before talks had even started. And Powers was sentenced to three years in prison and seven more years of hard labor.
In this moment, as Bob stood watching soldiers load the 105mm, he understood both the necessity of such a weapon—since another superpower was intent on dominance—and the measures of protection that his government had taken to ensure peace. The men surrounding him had all dedicated their lives at the risk of losing all else.
Bob stood a little straighter, a little taller, and when the gun fired with its double recoil, he felt more a part of his unit than he ever had before. The soldiers remained absolutely silent. As the sound ricocheted through the air, Bob felt the same ricochet straight to his heart. The men around him had all made the same oath, the same promise, the same sworn allegiance. I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
The cannon struck an old army tank, and the explosion burst through the air in a mass of fire and smoke. Bob watched the flames climb into the sky, then recede. He felt sufficiently sobered, and as they loaded onto the bus to head back to the main campus for lunch at the mess hall, he said very little.
Komori seemed to sense his mood and draped his arms over the seatback in front of them and chatted with a couple of other men.
Following lunch and another hour of marching, Bob prepared to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Fire Direction Center, while Komori left with the unit that would return and practice firing 105mm howitzers.
Bob made his way to the deuce-and-a-half-ton covered truck that was set up as an operation center. Inside the truck, desks had been covered with maps containing the location plotting for targets.
“You’re late, Inama,” Olander said. He was from another unit. Five of them total worked in this small space, radioing the information to their own batteries.
“I’m five minutes early,” Bob said, and Olander laughed.
“What’s so funny?” another soldier asked as he stepped inside.
And so the conversation went, but Bob was no longer paying attention. His radio came to life, and the coordinates of the weapons were called in. He measured how far the target was from the coordinate. Then he calculated the amount of gunpowder needed to reach that target, according to elevation, after doing a quick check in one of the military books that listed distance versus elevation versus how much gunpowder the howitzer needed.
