The Name He Left Off the Wall

The Box

June had a box. Of course she did.

It had once held canned peaches, and it sat on the top shelf of the hall closet at the Pike house on Elm Street. Harold had brought it home from Margaret’s house and put it up there. As far as June knew, he had never opened it.

“He knows it’s there,” June said. “He just can’t.”

I went over on a Wednesday afternoon while Harold was at the post. June set out windmill cookies from the IGA, and we opened the box on her kitchen table.

On top was a framed photograph. A young woman in Army fatigues, with dark hair pinned up under a soft cap, standing in front of a Quonset hut with sandbags stacked against the wall. She was squinting into the sun and laughing at whoever held the camera.

On the back, in faded blue ink: Long Binh, March 1968. Tell Harold I’m still the boss.

June had to set it down for a minute.

Under the photo was a manila envelope with Margaret’s DD-214 inside. Different form than mine, older type, but the same bones. First Lieutenant, Army Nurse Corps. Republic of Vietnam, 1967 to 1968. Vietnam Service Medal. Vietnam Campaign Medal.

And a Bronze Star, for meritorious service, with a citation typed on onion skin paper.

I read the citation out loud to June. It said Lieutenant Pike had served in the intensive care ward during a period of heavy casualties in early 1968, during the Tet Offensive. It said she worked thirty-six hours without relief during one mass casualty event, and that her skill and composure directly saved lives.

I knew about Tet, and I knew what thirty-six hours without relief means. I had to flatten that paper on the table with both hands to keep them steady.

At the bottom of the box was a bundle of Christmas cards, held together with a rubber band that had gone brittle. They were all from the same man, Walter Hensley, of Gallipolis, Ohio, and they ran from 1969 to 2014.

Every one of them said some version of the same thing. Merry Christmas, Lieutenant. Still here. Thanks to you.

“Gallipolis,” I said. “That’s right across the river.”

June nodded slowly. “I never knew about him,” she said. “Margaret never said.”

Walt

Tom drove me over the bridge to Gallipolis on a Saturday morning. There was a Walter Hensley in the county listings, and his daughter had told me on the phone that her dad would be glad of visitors.

He lived in a small ranch house with a ramp onto the front porch. He was seventy-seven, a big man gone thin, with one leg that ended above the knee. He sat in a recliner with a quilt over his lap.

I told him who I was. I told him about the post and the wall and the box. I showed him the photograph of Margaret outside the Quonset hut.

He held it in both hands for a long time.

“That’s her,” he said finally. “That’s the Lieutenant. Lord, look at her.”

He told us the story without our asking. He had been nineteen, a private with the First Infantry Division, and on the second day of February in 1968 a mortar round had taken his leg and a good deal of his blood. He came into the hospital at Long Binh in the middle of Tet, when the place was overrun with wounded.

“They set me aside,” he said. “You understand? They had too many. They put the ones who weren’t going to make it over to one side, so they could work on the ones who were. I was on that side.”

“She walked past me,” Walt said. “Then she stopped and came back. She looked at me and said, ‘This one’s not done yet.’ And she took me herself. Stayed with me through the night. I don’t remember much of it, but I remember her voice. She kept telling me I was too ugly to die in her ward.”

He laughed, and then he did not laugh. He put the photo down on the quilt and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“I wrote her every Christmas,” he said. “Forty-five years. She wrote back every time. Two lines, always the same. ‘Glad you’re still here, Private. Behave yourself.'”

I asked him if he would come to a meeting at our post, the second Tuesday in November. I told him what I meant to ask for.

Walt looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at Tom.

“Son,” he said, “you’ll have to help me with the ramp.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom said. “I’ll be here at five thirty.”