A General's Orders

                                                                                     

Richard "Buzz" Hernandez, top middle, blue shirt

 

      I recently attended another family funeral. Sad, of course, but becoming more of a social gathering when you reach my age. At the lunch table, we started telling stories, about the old days, always about the old days. My younger cousins wanted to hear the story, again, about the general. It was a family classic. How could I forget? It's one of those stories that hangs around, as if it happened a year or two ago, not 57. 

     The exact dates are hazy. It might have been December ’67, a lot of us still in shock after hearing Otis Redding’s plane had gone down in a frigid Wisconsin lake. It might have been early 1968, Martin Luther King was still alive, and we hadn’t, yet, been flown into Washington D.C. to quell the riots, or what people began calling “civil disturbance.” At Fort Bragg N. Carolina, all was still fairly quiet, except for the reports of friends dying in the jungles of Vietnam, where a bunch of us had already served, survived, and returned.

     Our friends, "draftees," called us “dumb,” or “pendejos,” depending on the friends, for having enlisted. If we had waited to be drafted and survived the war, we would have already been home, discharged. Instead, most of us, "enlistees," or "RA's" in military parlance, still had, at least, a year-and-a-half left on our commitments to Uncle Sam, pretty torturous when you’re a twenty-year-old and know everybody back home is heavily into “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll,” not necessarily in that order.

     Overall, personally, it was a sad time. While in Vietnam, I’d learned my seventeen-year-old cousin, Diane, was fighting leukemia. Luckily, I got to see her when I came home on leave after Vietnam, but when I flew out of L.A., I knew it would only be a matter of time before she’d be gone.

     When the call came, like I said, in late ’67 or early ’68, it hit me hard, I mean, added to all the friends I’d already lost in the war and was still losing. With Diane, it didn’t come as such a shock. She’d been sick a long time, but she lived long enough to fulfill her dream and graduate high school; though, she was too sick to make the walk across the stage. Her friends cheered her on when her name was called. Even though she wasn't there to hear it, I'm sure she felt it from her bed.

     Like many Mexican families, our families were close, so when my older cousin, Richard, AKA “Buzz,” called me in North Carolina to give me the news, he asked if I could make it home for Diane’s funeral. There was no way. I’d just finished a thirty-day leave, and I knew the Army only considered bereavement leaves for immediate family. Richard asked if I’d, at least, put in a request, to make sure. He was like a big brother to me, so, to show respect, I said I’d ask, and, as expected, a few days later, my request came back – denied.

     The battery’s first sergeant, Cromarte, “Top,” we called him, had been my first sergeant in Vietnam, so we had something of a relationship. He approached me, and said, “Cano, sorry about your cousin, but the Army only grants bereavement leaves for immediate family. You know that.” I wasn’t about to argue and explain my cousin was like a sister. I appreciated the fact that “Top” even came up to me to tell, me, personally. They don’t usually do that.

     I called Buzz, who owned a landscape business in Beverly Hills, and gave him the bad news. Out of high school, Buzz played minor league baseball for the Baltimore Orioles. He travelled the country. He quit when he married and had his own kids. He is also one of those people who doesn’t take “no” for an answer, without trying every available means at his disposal. “Can you request an appeal?” He asked.

     I explained there was no bucking the might of the U.S. military. I was barely an E-4, like a corporal. I had little “juice” in the chain of command. If anything, I could get “busted” for questioning an order. I told him to give my regards to everybody at the funeral.

     I don’t recall how it went down exactly, only that I was in the barracks, those newer, modern three-story concrete jobs, spit and shine clean, day and night. Cromarte stepped into the entryway, and called, “Cano, pack up your gear. You got a leave coming.”

     A few of my friends knew I’d requested a leave and been denied, so, for sure, I remember all of us being surprised. They looked at me like, “What the….” I knew enough not to ask questions, just follow orders, so I said, “Yes, first sergeant,” got my stuff, and walked to the battery commander’s office where they gave me my travel orders, everybody standing around the clerk's desk, even the battery commander, a smile on his face. The next thing I’m in L.A. at my cousin’s funeral, walking up to her casket, unpinning the purple heart from my uniform and pinning it to her dress. She'd put up one hell of a fight. 

     I don’t even recall if I took a military “hop” out of Pope Air Force Base, or I caught a commercial flight. I only knew the army even gave me a month leave, more than the usually shorter one-week bereavement leave they offered, at the time.

     Once home, everybody was happy to see me and thankful I could make it to the funeral. With all the commotion, I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Buzz, except for the normal chit-chat, but he did say we needed to talk, later. Finally, when the dust cleared, Buzz stopped by my parents’ home, where I was staying. He told me he wanted me to take a little trip with him, so I jumped into his truck.

     We headed up Sunset Boulevard towards Beverly Hills, a route I knew well. I’d been working with him, and his dad, my uncle, Rufino, since I was in elementary school and learned how to hold a rake.

     “You have to go thank the general,” Buzz told me.

     I’m sure I asked questions, like why and what general? Buzz told me one of his clients was General Omar Bradley, retired, who lived up in Trousdale Estates, in the Santa Monica Mountains, in Beverly Hills. At the time, I didn't recognize the general’s name, only the title, “general,” any general, and how did Buzz know a general and get him to, what, pull strings?

     A real charmer, and a suave businessman, Buzz had a good relationship with all his clients, singers, actors, directors, and all sorts of celebrities. He told me he filled General Bradley in on my predicament, about me not being able to go home for his sister Diane’s funeral. It was like a quid pro quo, I guess. If the general did something for Buzz, my cousin had to reciprocate, in some way. The general told Buzz, first, I had to follow the chain of command and request an official leave. He didn’t want to go over anybody’s head if he didn’t’ need to.

     When Buzz reported back to the general that my leave request had been denied, the general had his secretary call the post commander at Fort Bragg and explain the situation, and things began to happen. Man, who was this general?

     We pulled up into the general’s driveway. His home overlooked all of Los Angeles. An assistant, an African American man, sharp, STRAC, answered the door. I later learned he'd been at the general’s side, all through WWII. General Bradley, about six-one or two, greeted us in a large, bright hallway, an interior putting green off to one side, behind a glass wall. He shook my hand, soldier to soldier, respectfully. There is something about “great” people, a certain presence; okay, call it charisma, but it's more than that, metaphysical. Omar Bradley might as well have had an aura around him.

     I looked up at him and, nervously, thanked him. Now that I think back, it was a big deal, a retired general asking another general for a favor over a low-ranking corporal, a nobody. General Bradley began peppering me with questions, where, again, was I stationed, and with whom did I serve. When I said the 82^nd Airborne, I could see him beam. “A fine unit. I commanded them in Europe. You were in Vietnam,” he asked? “Yes, sir. I just returned a few months ago.” He asked what unit I’d served with. Again, I could see the pride in his eyes when I said, "The 101^st Airborne, sir."

     "I was at Bastogne when they defeated the Germans," he said. Some things you don't forget.

     Everything happened quickly. It was over before I realized. When I returned to Fort Bragg, First Sergeant Cromarte and the battery officers treated me differently, just something about the way they acknowledged me whenever I passed. I’m sure they wanted to know how I merited a general’s attention, but I didn’t volunteer anything. Maybe, it even made all of them walk a little taller knowing they’d done General Omar Bradley a favor.

     It wasn’t until years later, when I began studying history, Vietnam, and WWII, I learned the man whose hand I had shaken wasn’t just any general. Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower had attended West Point together, both playing on the 1912 football team that lost to Jim Thorpe’s Carlyle Indians, coached by Pop Warner, a sporting event dubbed the Army vs. the Indians, a game Thorpe and his smaller, but faster, Indian buddies fought hard to win.

     Bradley had been a second lieutenant on the Mexican border when Pershing invaded in search of Pancho Villa. In WWII, he served directly under Eisenhower who was the supreme commander of all allied forces in Western Europe. General Bradley was General of the Army., commanding the First Army, which included both the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions, during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He finished his career as first Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

     Like I said, some stories stay with us forever. This is one of them. I'd like to think my next promotion to sergeant came from my own competence and not because of a general's orders, but then, again, who knows for sure.