I’ve been awarded R and R because I was in a firefight where nearly the whole platoon was killed and I collected up the pieces of my buddy Puppy’s body and stayed with them until the chopper came and then I was reassigned to a special mission in Cambodia where we successfully seized twenty tons of supplies headed to VC forces. That was dangerous and exhausting—we worked mostly at night and went into hiding during the day and it was never clear which Cambodians we could trust and which were Communist sympathizers and there was no reliable source of drinking water so some of the guys gave into the temptation of drinking straight from the Mekong without even trying to purify it, and some of those guys got dysentery and some died. Then I was plucked out of that platoon for a recon mission with five other soldiers, one of whom was a guy named Banjo from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who was at the end of his tour—basically, as soon as we completed this mission, he could go home to his wife and his three-year-old daughter and a baby boy he’d never even met. Banjo wasn’t wrapped too tight, we all knew it, but he had more time than the rest of us put together so I was hoping experience would make up for what was clearly a soft spot in his brain. We hiked across the border back into Vietnam—thirty hours over two days—and finally encountered Charlie along the trail but they didn’t detect us so orders were to let them pass and ambush them from behind but Banjo just lost it and started firing his M16 and then we ended up in a full-blown firefight. We all retreated but we were in the jungle and we got disoriented and when Banjo got shot, he dropped our radio. Another guy, Romeo, stepped on a booby trap and got a bamboo spike straight through his foot so he couldn’t go any further, plus he was howling. I went out in search of the radio because without it, we were lost—and I found it. This big strapping kid named Fitz threw Romeo over his shoulder and I took Banjo and we macheted our way out of the jungle to a clearing. The clearing was actually a village that had been bombed out. The whole place was razed, black and charred, parts of it still on fire, and I shot my M16 in the air to see if anyone would materialize. That was when I heard crying. I hunted around until I found a little boy, five or six years old, sitting next to a woman, obviously the child’s mother, who had been killed. I picked him up and we radioed for the chopper and the little kid came with us. I tried to figure out what his name was. The only thing he would say was “Luck, luck.” So I said, “All right, your name is Luck and I’ll tell you what, little buddy, the name fits.”

A few days later I was called up to see one of the big guns, Colonel J. B. Neumann, and I had a private audience with him. I thought maybe I was in trouble. I hadn’t done anything wrong that I knew of but even so, I was pretty nervous.

I sat down across the desk from Colonel Neumann and he said, “Well, Private Foley, looks like you have a guardian angel.”

“Sir?”

He then proceeded to tell me that someone from even higher up—stratospherically high up—had called to check on me. The colonel had then done some digging and learned about my “heroic efforts” in the field—staying with the bodies of my buddies Puppy and Frog, going back for the radio and helping Banjo, and rescuing the Vietcong child from the village. Because what I forgot to tell you was that Luck’s mother was wearing the black pajamas of the enemy. The colonel said to me, “Another soldier might have figured the easiest thing was to shoot him.”

I said, “He was a little kid, sir, too young to understand why his country was at war. He climbed right into my arms and clung tight to my neck. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.”

The colonel said, “You’re a good soldier, Foley, and a patriot besides. We need more men like you. I’m putting you in for a promotion and a full week of R and R. You deserve it. Dismissed.”

I stood up and saluted and said, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

It wasn’t until I got back outside that I wondered who had been checking in on me. I figured you used a connection or Nonny did. And I’m not going to keep this from you, Ma: In our conversation, the colonel offered me a cushier position—a job in requisitions, which would basically mean sitting at a warehouse all day keeping track of supplies. I turned the position down, Ma, and here’s why.

I like being a soldier. I’m good at it. I’ve seen fellow soldiers—hell, my brothers—blown to bits and I need to honor their memories by staying on the front lines and finishing what we started together. I can’t just hide out in requisitions because my family is privileged and I have connections.

When I get home from Guam, I’m going to be assigned to a new platoon as a sergeant. I’m going to be a leader, Ma.

I want to say one more thing and I want you to hear me loud and clear, not like I’m shouting at you from another room or from the end of the driveway like I always used to, but like I’m standing in front of you, Ma, holding your hands, my eyes locked on yours. I plan on coming safely home to you. But the most important thing isn’t whether I live or die, Ma. The most important thing is that you go to bed each night believing that you raised a hero.

Love, your son,

Tiger

Part Three

November 1969

Someday We’ll Be Together

It’s a weekend of firsts. Magee has never been to Nantucket Island before, nor has she ever been away from her family on Thanksgiving. When Mrs. Levin called and invited her, saying, “Now that you and Tiger are engaged, you must come meet the family,” Magee thought her mother would object. However, her mother had practically packed her bag and pushed her out the door.

“It’s the natural way of things,” Jean Johnson had said. “You’re twenty years old. It’s time to start your own life.”

Magee knows her parents have her triplet eight-year-old brothers to feed and clothe, and besides, her mother likes Tiger. She was over the moon when Magee showed her the letter where Tiger proposed. Magee wrote back and accepted, and they’d set a date: Saturday, July 4, 1970.

Tiger will be home at the end of May, just in time to be fitted for his tuxedo.

Magee and the Levin-Foley and Whalen clans arrive on Nantucket by ferry on Wednesday afternoon. Magee worried she might get seasick—she was born and raised in the tiny hamlet of Carlisle, Massachusetts, and her experience on the water has been limited to a rowboat on Walden Pond—but the ferry is huge, like a floating building, big enough to transport forty cars. They drive off the boat caravan-style; Magee is in a station wagon with Tiger’s parents and his sisters Jessie and Kirby; Tiger’s other sister, Blair, her husband, and their four-month-old twins follow in a black Ford Galaxie. In the car, Tiger’s mother, Kate, announces that she has a surprise.