Copyright (c) 2014 Phyllis Zimbler Miller
All rights reserved.
The Army drops charges against the last of the five enlisted men accused of participating in the Songmy massacre. – January 22, 1971
“SUBJECT: Standards of Conduct
“1. In the past year several officers were relieved of their duties in this Group and either reassigned or eliminated from the service because of personal character deficiencies. Either your loyalty, integrity, and off-duty conduct are above reproach or they are unsatisfactory.
“2. I urge you to reflect on the above as well as the attached letters from General Westmoreland, Chief of Staff of the Army, and General Polk, CINCUSAREUR, addressing officer conduct, which were previously disseminated but worthy of continued review.” Memo of 29 January 1970 from the commanding officer of the 66th MI Group
I placed the silver cranberry tray received as a wedding gift on the army-issue end table closest to the door. Then I set down the two large borrowed ashtrays on the other end tables. I checked the room once more, confident that I had followed all the instructions in the memo about the colonel’s return call.
I visualized the complexities required for this return visit if we had young children. The children were to remain quiet and unseen except for the moment they were brought out to politely greet the colonel and his wife, then be vanished once again to the back of the quarters.
At that moment Mitch entered the living room wearing a sport jacket and pants. I wore a black-and-white checked dress with hidden snaps down the entire front starting from the Mandarin collar – a classic “coat” dress.
I looked at Mitch – if you didn’t count the short haircut he could look like any young man preparing to have his boss over for coffee. But the absence of sideburns made a clear statement Mitch was no longer an advertising copywriter.
While in Munich Mitch had tried to keep his hand in advertising, placing an ad in the Herald Tribune’s “Situations Wanted”: ADVERTISING COPYWRITER now with U.S. Forces seeks freelance. Concepts & copy. English, fair German. Box 8,546, Herald, Paris.
He got no replies.
Now Mitch checked his watch as the downstairs buzzer rang. “They’re three minutes late,” he said, buzzing them in. I imagined the colonel or his wife pushing the switch for the staircase lights – lights that barely stayed on long enough to climb to our apartment on the third floor.
I peeked out the front window. “The staff car drove right up to the door even though that area is only for pedestrians,” I told Mitch.
Outside on the staircase we could hear the colonel and his wife climbing the three long flights of steps. “They must not be too happy,” I said.
The colonel and his wife entered the apartment – he was not wearing a coat although she wore a mink coat. I wondered whether to offer to hang up the mink. Then I decided that, as the visit would only be 20 minutes, it was probably okay to leave the coat with the wife.
The colonel’s Yorkshire terrier was not in evidence, but I did glance at the colonel’s sport coat pocket. I had heard that last Saturday night at a party he brought the dog tucked in his jacket pocket.
