Dedicated to Sgt. Manuel Sanchez Jr., New Mexico,
Raul wasn’t completely surprised when he heard the voice at his doorstep. “Hello! Stan Burton, U.S. Army. Anybody home?”
He lowered the volume on the stereo. A book in one hand, he stepped to the screen door. “Yes, how can I help you?”
The officer was dressed in summer khakis, a folded garrison cap in one hand and a briefcase in the other. In a tempered voice, he asked, “Raul Armenta?”
“That’s right.”
The tall lanky officer wasted no time. “I'd like to come in and have a word with you, if possible.”
Even though Raul suspected he knew the answer, he asked, “Can you tell me what this is about?”
Three months earlier Raul had disconnected his phone after former platoon mates had called with warnings disguised as friendly advice.
The officer set down his briefcase. He removed a wallet from his pocket and opened it. He flashed a military identification. “The Red River Valley," he said, "August 1966 through October 1967.”
Raul looked at the man’s badge and the words, U.S. Army, Criminal Investigation Division, Special Agent. He opened the screen door and said, “That was a long time ago.”
“For some people, I guess. I just need a little of your time.”
Raul didn’t want to appear uncooperative. The officer would probably return with a subpoena or some other official document, anyway, so he invited him inside. He pointed to a blue velvet vintage chair. “Have a seat,” Raul said, like he was inviting in a guest. He placed the book he’d been holding on a folding chair then stepped to the stereo and removed the arm from the record just as Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration was reaching a crescendo.
The detective sat. “Thanks.” He opened his briefcase. He removed a portable cassette recorder, a notepad, and a ballpoint pen. “Okay if I put my things here?” He motioned toward a coffee table Raul had picked up at a secondhand store.
“Yeah, okay, just push that stuff aside.”
The detective slid Raul’s heavily dog-eared books to a corner of the coffee table, his eyes on the titles, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul, and Augustine’s City of God. The officer lifted the thickest book, turned it over in his hands. “Looks like some heavy lifting.”
Raul said, “I work at it.” He wasn’t sure if he should address the man as, “Sir.”
“I’m here to find out what really happened out there. We’ve gotten conflicting reports.”
Raul looked down at the recorder. “Is that necessary?”
“Procedure. Look, sorry. I tried contacting you to schedule an interview, but your line’s disconnected. I’m at Fort McArthur on business. I figured I’d take a drive up here.”
“San Pedro’s a long way. It must be important.”
“Mostly preliminary, so far, but that's right, it is important.”
Raul turned away from the stereo. “How about a glass of water?”
“Sure, a glass of water sounds great. It’s hot out today.”
Raul didn’t want to say any more than he had to. “Memory gets hazy over the years.”
“The Army has no statute of limitation on war crimes.”
He tried to keep an even tone but couldn't stop the emotion. “War crimes?”
“Possibly, depending on our investigation.”
Raul couldn’t remember the last time he wore a uniform. He noticed the officer’s uniform was creased in all the right places. Raul had been a STRAC soldier, one of the best in his platoon, not just for engaging the enemy but because he was smart about it and considered the lives of his men.
“Here you go,” he said, handing the man a cold glass of water. He took a seat on the sofa, opposite the coffee table.
“Appreciate that. We’re investigating Operation Tecumseh Sherman. Ring a bell?”
“Vaguely. The operations get blurred. We went wherever they sent us.”
The officer looked around. “You have a nice place, everything organized, real orderly,” the detective smiled. “Yes, sir, you must be disciplined.”
Raul wasn’t sure he meant it as a compliment.
*****
Raul’s colonial-style apartment complex was built above a row of garages, the entire structure taking up half a block in Westwood, on Veteran Avenue, the Veterans Administration just blocks to the west and his university campus a mile to the east. Raul liked telling people, “I live between war and peace.”
Built in the 1930s, the units had no air conditioning, but Raul’s place had large sliding glass doors facing west and catching just enough of the afternoon ocean breeze to make the place bearable.
There wasn’t a glass or dish out of place, books and magazines neatly stacked in corners of the living room, his desktop free of clutter, and three rows of books placed neatly in a homemade bookcase, cinder blocks, and pine planks for shelves.
He’d placed the Hitachi receiver and turntable he’d purchased on his R&R in Bangkok on the top shelf, a JBL speaker at each end. Above the bookcase, tacked to the wall, a mural-size bullfight poster announced the opening of the 1973 bullfighting season in Madrid, a gift from a girl he’d dated while studying in Spain. A potted plant in beaded macrame hung from the wood vaulted ceiling.
Raul’s dark wavy hair nearly covered his ears and the back of his neck. He wore shorts, huaraches, and a t-shirt, stenciled with “UCLA” and underneath “Psychology Department”. The faint sounds of rock ‘n roll thumped from somewhere in the neighborhood.
“Yes, sir, real nice place. Shows you have a sense of pride, ask me.”
“I need order to work.”
"I don't doubt that." The officer slid a small plastic microphone closer to Raul. When Raul’s eyes landed on the plastic device, the officer said, “It’s an official visit.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Anything you say can be used as evidence.”
“Am I under investigation?”
“No, not formally, no.”
“Why now, after all this time?”
“I suppose some guys couldn’t live with it any longer. They made serious allegations, out-right murder.”
Raul rubbed his palms together, slowly. “Should I have a lawyer or something?”
The man knew Raul could shut down the interview by refusing to talk, so he asked, “Did you commit a crime?”
“No,” Raul answered, emphatically.
“Good. Then, I think we can start.” The officer spoke into the microphone, “Test, 1-2-3.” He rewound the tape, hit the PLAY button, and listened to the volume. “Sounds about right. He held down a red record button. When the tape whirred, he said, “Subject, Raul Armenta. Los Angeles, California, August 27th, 1975.” He lowered his eyes to his wristwatch, “14:35 hours.”
Raul thought, ironically, a month earlier North Vietnamese troops and Vietcong cadre had triumphantly marched into Saigon’s streets, soldiers from the South shedding weapons and uniforms as people welcomed the victors with flowers and kisses.
“Did you kill or witness members of your platoon, the Lions Claw, murder innocent people, or execute prisoners?” The detective’s friendly chatter was gone.
Instead of answering, Raul looked up at the bullfight poster, a painting of a massive animal following a red muleta, a thin man in a suit of lights guiding the beast past him. Finally, Raul answered, "I heard stuff.”
“Sergeant, like killing unarmed villagers, for nothing, just for the thrill…that kind of thing, even kids and babies.” It wasn’t a question.
Strange, Raul hadn’t been called Sergeant since before his discharge. It had a familiar yet foreign ring to it. He answered, “Murdering for nothing?”
“Reports were members of the Lions Claw assassinated villagers, raped women, mutilated enemy bodies, executed prisoners, among other illegal acts. You’re a smart guy, a leader not a follower, I’m told. Didn’t’ you consider your platoon was out of control?”
“There were bodies, but I didn’t witness anybody do anything that didn’t need to be done. I mean, like I said, I heard rumors.”
The officer looked down at his notepad and scribbled something. He let a few seconds pass and said, “You understand lying to an agent of the federal government is a crime.”
Raul ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back. “Understood.”
“You’ve thought about it, maybe even justified it, psychoanalyzed it. You’ve nearly finished your Ph. D. in psych. There are rules in war just like in life, so if somebody gave illegal orders, that’s a crime.” The detective sounded more righteous than he intended. He caught himself. “Some guys said they witnessed Lions…” he paused, “commit horrible acts, play jump rope with a dead villager’s intestines, soccer with a human head, you know, see how many times it took to behead a man with a machete.”
Raul sat silently. After some time, he answered, “That was then, you understand, a different me, not who I am today, not who any of us is today. We were fighting a guerilla war where the enemy had no face. That’s what they told us, ‘Charlie’s got no face.’ Did guys crack and go too far. Absolutely. Did they commit crimes? If those are the charges, you better arrest the entire U.S. Army.”
The officer looked at Raul and squinted, slightly, “Psychobabble, semantics, rationalizations, or whatever you want to call it, Sgt. Armenta. I’m talking reality. You can’t split morality. Many soldiers maintained their moral compass.”
“Innocent people died. We were recon and trained to terrorize, a different breed, to kill or be killed, orders from the top.”
“But you knew, didn’t you, the difference between right and wrong?”
“I’m not saying things weren't bad and villagers didn't die, but in that valley they all supported the other side, fought their own secret war, in their own way, and had their sights on us.”
“What about the truly innocent going about their daily lives.”
Raul paused. “They told us nobody was innocent, drilled it into us, not in this kind of war.”
The investigator was silent. He glared at Raul. Finally, he said, “You believe a baby was guilty, a sympathizer, or a mother walking her child to work the field?”
Raul nibbled at his lower lip, “I’m not saying it was right, any of it. You reach a point where there is no right or wrong.” He breathed deeply, as if the air was thick. “We watched B-52s, Phantoms, and our own artillery obliterate complete villages and people, burn them to a crisp, nothing left but ashes. We’d get so close to Charley, we could smell his breath before blowing him away. War crimes, come on, sir.”
“And that’s how you justify it?”
“It’s not a justification. It’s the reality. You took us, eighteen and nineteen-year-old kids, trained us, then turned us loose, told us to go for it.”
*****
The two jostled verbally like two prize fighters jabbing and weaving, waiting for an opening to land a hard right hand. Raul, no verbal slouch, admitted to nothing incriminating; yet, he wanted the detective to understand what it was like, the sheer terror, the pressure, days without sleep, weeks without relief, no food, water, and, sometimes, no ammunition, the complete and total exhaustion, the chaos, snipers, like vipers, the blood and the broken bodies, Vietnamese, American, and civilians, dark shadows moving through the jungle, sometimes real, sometimes illusion. “The Red River Valley was a nightmare. We thought we’d die out there, like we'd been forgotten.”
The detective’s voice mellowed, “I’m investigating crimes not nightmares.”
Each time Raul thought he should stop talking and end the interview, he forged ahead, believing he’d done nothing wrong, “They trained Lions to be guerrilla fighters, not just recon but more like Charlie, to terrorize the enemy and triumph. That was our MO, terrify and triumph.”
“There’s no documentation about a unit of paratroopers called the Lions Claw, no insignias, no unit flags, nothing. On paper, you guys didn’t exist.”
“That should answer your questions.”
“Are you saying you were trained to murder?”
“I can’t talk for anybody but myself.”
“And what do you say?”
“What you’re looking for was above my rank.”
After two hours of questioning, the detective realized Raul just might believe the story he had invented for himself. “Sergeant?”
Raul looked at the officer.
“It’s reported you executed an elderly blind man and his son, innocent villagers, a war crime.”
Raul answered, “You mean like My Lai?”
The officer’s face flushed. News of the My Lai scandal and trial had spread around the world. Both the investigator and Raul knew, for the Army, it was still raw, and not one ranking officer had been arrested.
The detective said, “The Army brought the guilty to justice.”
It was an absurd statement. Raul answered, “They scapegoated a second lieutenant who served three months in prison, house arrest, and a presidential pardon. That’s who the Army convicted of mass murder, a second lieutenant.”
The detective shook his head. “You can use all the psychology in the world, Sergeant, but you were there. You know, deep inside, even if you won’t admit it, you know.”
The next words came as if Raul had rehearsed them. “We saw shit no human should see. If the Army thinks by bringing a bunch of emotionally damaged grunts into court, it will redeem the country’s conscience, it’s wrong. Even after everything was revealed about My Lai, Americans supported Caley and the grunts who killed those people. They believed if American kids massacred Vietnamese villagers, there had to be good reasons.”
The officer knew he’d get nothing more out of Raul. He grew frustrated, slowly packed up his equipment, and stood to leave. Raul’s eyes caught the name stenciled on the black plastic name plate over the man’s right breast pocket, Burton.
He looked closer at the chief warrant officer’s bars on each shoulder, CID Special Agent pins on the collars, and over his left breast pocket two rows of colorful ribbons, one for service in Vietnam, a purple heart, and a bronze star among them.
As the agent stepped to the door, he said, “Sergeant Armenta,” for technically, Raul still owed Uncle Sam two more years of inactive military reserve before receiving a clear discharge. “What I know is the Army will move forward with the investigation. Some Lions are cracking. My team and I will find everyone we can get to testify and confess as to who did what. If you’re telling the truth, you can move forward with your career.”
He stopped talking and looked around, once again, at the orderly apartment, nothing like the dilapidated farms, the raggedy shacks, broken-down trailers, and filthy apartments he’d visited interviewing alcoholic, drug addicted Lions barely hanging on. He said, somewhat sardonically, “…but if you’re lying, silver star or not, you’ll be needing a lawyer along with that doctorate in psychology.”
A year later, Raul received an envelope, anonymously, inside clipped articles from the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, reporting that after a thorough investigation, a military tribunal had found insufficient evidence to bring charges against members of a unit dubbed the Lions Claw.
Executive and junior officers denied knowing anything, and too few men had been willing to testify, except for a couple of ex-grunts under heavy sedation. Other Lions couldn’t be located. Some had vanished. No major news outlets covered the investigation or the tribunal.
Raul stood on his balcony as an ocean breeze blew in, a .22 pistol in his hand. He looked at the apartment complexes across the street but really didn’t see them. A muscle car sped past, rock ‘n roll blaring out the open windows.
