CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kings and Heroes
Heaven
Heaven, as it turned out, was noisy.
Clattery, clangy, fussy, strident. All accompanied by a nearly constant high-pitched detestable whistling very close to his head. And every time it whistled, the ice pick went right back in his heart. Heaven had unpleasant medicinal smells. Was it formaldehyde, to replace the lost blood in his veins and to preserve him as an organic specimen? Was it old decaying blood? Other bodily fluids? Was it bleach to cover it all up? Whatever it was, it was pungent and dreadful. He had always imagined heaven as a place like Tania’s Luga, where in the chirping serene dawn of tomorrow, someone caressed his head, while his hands braided Tania’s hair, who sat between his legs and murmured jokes in her harp of a voice. That was heaven. Perhaps maybe some comfort food in front of him. Blinchiki. Rum over plantains. Maybe a comfort smell or two. Ocean brine. Nicotine. Oh yes! Nicotine. Sitting, smoking, looking at the ocean, hearing the waves break, while behind him in the house, warm bread rose in the oven. Now that was heaven. Rai. And then perhaps other things, too, rooted in the carnal, yet elevated to celestial. Eros and Venus all in one.
But here in this heaven, not only were there none of these things but clearly the things that were here resembled more a mountain of purgatory than a meadow of serenity. Ad. There was cacophony everywhere and grating sounds: of slamming doors, of creaking windows, of hurrying feet. Of things being dragged and scraped on linoleum floors, of metal pans falling, spilling, of loud language accompanying them like carnage, coming from irritated, frustrated throats. “Oh hell! Can’t you just once watch where you’re going! How many times do I have to tell you! Look what you did! Who the hell is going to clean that shit up?” Flying flapping screeching bats.
He couldn’t move his body. He could taste nothing. He couldn’t open his eyes. All he could do was smell and hear. And his senses of smell and hearing told him he was not in the Elysian Fields. What had happened to him? He was uncorked, and condemned for eternity to listen to scurrilous inmates fight over bedpans. Perhaps there was some cholla nearby, too. Maybe they could stuff it in their throats as they fought over who was going to clean what. Was this his Temple of Fame? Is this how he was buried with kings and heroes?
And then—oh, no! It just never stops. More loud noises, only now a bitter argument. Alexander sighed, rippling the River Styx with his whistling sighs, rowing at the crossroads between the land of the living and the land of the dead. He wanted to tell them to shut the hell up. This argument was too close, almost next to him.
He wanted to open his eyes. Why couldn’t he see in his hereafter? He couldn’t see, oh, but how loud and clearly he was hearing!
“Coma, I tell you! I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry about that, but he is in a coma! A deep and prolonged unconsciousness, very likely brain dead, in a persistent vegetative state, very common after a severe injury like his, coupled with hypoxia. Coma! We’re doing what we can for him, to keep him comfortable. I don’t know who you think you are, telling me we’re not doing enough.”
“Enough? You’re doing nothing!” a voice yelled.
Ah.
This one was angry, was loud, was upset, but it wasn’t grating and it wasn’t cacophonous. “First of all, he is not in a coma. That’s first. Perhaps it’s easier for you to abuse your medical privileges while you pretend he’s lying here beyond your help, but I’m going to tell you right now, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“He is in a coma! He’s been in Saigon a week under my care. You’re here five seconds. I’ve seen thousands like him. I’ve been a nurse thirty years. Not once has his pulse risen above 40, and he has almost no blood pressure.”
“His pulse is 40, is it? Have you even glanced at the patient? Have you lifted your eyes, just once today, or in the last seven days, and taken one look at the patient? A 40 pulse?”
Alexander felt his wrist being lifted and circled by a small warm hand and then dropped back on the bed.
“When was the last time you touched him? His pulse is 62 right now. And without even putting a cuff on him, I can tell just from looking at his skin that his blood pressure is not 60 over 40 as you’ve conveniently listed here in your little chart, which, by the way, you have not initialed off since yesterday morning, but 70 over 55! That is not a comatose patient. Did you even go to school?”
“I have fifty of these men to take care of, not just him! I’m doing the best I can. Who do you think I am? Who do you think you are?”
“I don’t care who you are. And you don’t want to know who I am. What matters is that this man is a major in the United States Army, and he was critically wounded, and he depends on you to take care of him so he can live, and you’re standing here with your bedraggled face and your insolent eyes, telling me you’ve got to clean out the water closet on the second floor, while a human being is lying in your bed with undrained air pressure in his lungs, and with dressing around his chest wound that has not been changed for at least twelve hours!”
“That is not true! That is simply not true! We change it every four hours when we decompress his lung!”
“Bullshit! Listen to his wheezing—that sounds like a recently drained lung to you? He can’t exhale! Where’s the decompression catheter? And his chest dressing—I don’t have to go near him to smell that dressing, to know that it has not been changed or irrigated in over twelve hours. I don’t have to go near him to see that the IV that drips fluids into his body—fluids without which he can’t survive!—has slipped out of the vein and now his entire forearm has blown up to three times its normal size. What, you can’t see that?” The voice rose and rose and rose until it was the loudest voice in purgatory. “Put the metal pans down, nurse, they’re blocking your view, put them down and take a look at your patient! Smell your patient! He’s got a five-inch stab wound in his leg that’s now infected only because his dressing has not been changed, and the penicillin you’re giving him to treat him is now dripping into his open arm cavity instead of into his veins, and you’re telling me you’re taking care of him? This is your best? A healthy man would go into a f*cking coma under your care! Where is your attending physician? I want to see him right now.”
“But—”
“Right now—and not a single additional word out of you. But you will get one more word out of me—I will have your job, if it’s the last thing I do. You are not fit to wash bedpans in this hospital, much less take care of wounded soldiers. Now go get me a doctor. This man is not staying in your so-called care another minute. Another second. The NVA could take care of him better than you. Now go! Go, I said!”
His arm was being lifted up, his gown pulled away, a long thin sharp needle going softly and without pain deep past his rib, past his muscle, into the pleural space surrounding his lungs. Shh, darling, shh, you’re all right, shh, breathe now. Everything is going to be all right.
Ah, thought Alexander, no longer wheezy, his body relaxing, his mind clearing, his hands, his fingers, his heart comforted…his eyes still closed, and though no nicotine, no ocean, no Luga, no blinchiki, no bread, no quiet, no harmony, still loud, still noisy, still strident, and yet…
Heaven.
There was no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, but finally he thought he had sight because he opened his eyes, and in front of him on a chair sat Tatiana. She was so pale, she looked as if her freckles had vanished. She was unglossed, was wearing no makeup. Her hair was pulled back. Her lips were matte pink, her eyes mottled sage, a gray-green. Her unsmiling hands were on her lap. She sat silently and said nothing. But all he knew was this: the last time he opened his eyes, he saw Tatiana and the first time he opened his eyes in he didn’t know how long, he saw Tatiana. She was sitting by his side and her eyes were softly on him. Around her, in what looked like a hospital room, he saw lilac sand verbena, agave and golden poppy in planters on the windowsill. On the table in the corner stood a small Christmas tree, all done up and twinkly with multi-colored lights. And next to him on the little table, standing against a small easel was a vivid painting not of lilac sand verbena but of lilac in the spring, like the kind that used to grow in the Field of Mars across from his Leningrad garrison barracks.
Alexander moved no part of his body, didn’t move his head or his mouth. He tried moving his fingertips, his toes, his tongue. Something slow to let him know he was alive. Just a small sign before he opened his mouth. Can he hear her voice in his head? Are there any memories he has that they share? Is she telling him things, like not to worry? Is she comforting him with words?
He didn’t know. He didn’t think so. He was afraid to move because she was not moving. She was just sitting looking at him, not even blinking. It occurred to him then that maybe he hadn’t opened his eyes, maybe he was dreaming and his eyes were still closed. They couldn’t possibly be open because she was not reacting to his open eyes. He closed his. And the moment he closed his eyes he heard—
“Mom, look, Daddy blinked!”
His eyes flew open.
Pasha was standing in front of him, somberly peering into his face. Leaning over, he kissed Alexander’s cheek.
“Dad? Are you blinking?” A strong strawberry-blond head pushed up and forced itself in front of Pasha. It was Harry with crystal green eyes. Harry had new freckles. Harry leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, on the nose, on his cheek. “Mom, you have to shave him again, he is growing a beard. But he is not as pale today, don’t you think?” A small hand lay on his stubble, rubbed it. Harry lifted up Alexander’s SOG knife, inches away from Alexander’s face, the gun-blue blade gleaming and said, “Dad, I have never seen anything this sharp. I could shave you myself with this. This is an amazing knife! Is this the kind that went into your leg? Did you know it’s so sharp, it etched the metal on the crank of your bed? After lunch, I’m going to etch your name with it!”
Another soft grunting noise, a body pushing, shoving, another small head rising up, but this one lower to the ground, not over him, but trying to jump up to be seen, a blonde, brown-eyed, round-faced head that said, “Daddy, look, I cut my hair to look just like yours and the boys. Mommy doesn’t like it. But do you like it, Daddy?”
Now Alexander moved. His fingertips moved and his hand moved and his arm lifted and touched the three heads in front of him. He pawed them with his palm, placed his hand right over their eyes and noses, and hair, like a bear. They stood motionlessly, their heads bent into his hands. They felt warm. Clean. Harry had a small black stitch in his cheek. Pasha was wearing glasses. Janie really had cut her hair to her scalp—obviously spending too much time with her brothers, and had a bruise on her temple to prove it. Alexander opened his mouth, put his tongue to the roof, cleared his throat, took air into his lungs (or lung? Was he like the cursed one-lunged Ouspensky now?) and said, “Anthony?”
“I’m here, Dad.” The voice came from his left.
Alexander turned his head. Anthony, dressed in jeans and a dark pullover, his hair longer, his face clear and shaved and saved and unbruised, sat draped in the chair by his other side. Alexander blinked in relief and for a flicker of a moment, for a brief soaring flutter of swallow’s wing, he thought, Please, dear God, maybe it was all a dream, maybe none of it happened, our dreams, mine and Ant’s, all our lives, of caves, of burning woods, of running, and this was yet another, and it was real bad, but now I’ve opened my eyes and maybe everything is okay and Anthony is okay.
But the moment went plummet. The swallow was gone. A million flickering decisions, a million choices, a million bricks and steps and leaves and actions starting with his father’s life, with his mother’s life, with their train ride through the blue Alps from Paris to Moscow in December 1930, with his mother’s money already hidden deep in her suitcases, hidden away from Harold, whom she loved, whom she believed in, but still—her ten thousand American dollars came with her in secret, just in case, for her only son, for her only Alexander, whom she hoped for and loved most of all. One train ride from Paris to Moscow and now, forty years later, Alexander’s perfect son sat in a chair, and had no arm.
His eyes filling with some very alive things, Alexander turned quickly away because he couldn’t bear to look at Anthony, whose own eyes were filling with some very alive things. Tania, Alexander whispered. Where are you, Tania?
The children had been ushered to the background, and though they still tried to stick their little heads in, they were unceremoniously pushed aside, and now in front of him, on the edge of his bed, near his rib, sat Tatiana. His hand rose and lay in her lap. He turned his palm down to feel her skirt, it was soft—cotton jersey or cashmere. He felt her thighs underneath. Ah, density. He glided his paw up her sweater, also cashmere soft, over her breasts—ah, weight—up her throat, to her face. Yes. It was Tatiana, not specter but matter. She was measurable. His little Newton had mass and occupied space. A small finite matter in infinite space. That is what math gave him—principles of design that tied together the boundless universe. That is why he measured her. Because she was order.
Her arms went around him. Alexander smelled her lilac soap, her strawberry shampoo, faint coffee, musk, chocolate, faint bread, sugar, caramel, yeast, such familiar comforting smells, like refuge, and he was pressed into her neck, his jaw against her breasts and her silken hair was in his hands. He was alive. She said nothing, sighing so heavily, rippling her own River Styx as she held him, her struggling palpitating heart at his cheek.
But he said something. He whispered to comfort her. “Babe, how can I die,” he whispered, “when you have poured your immortal blood into me?”
And late late late when he thought they had gone—or he had gone—to sleep maybe, to a place inside his head where they couldn’t reach him, in the dark, he opened his eyes, and next to him sat Anthony. Alexander shut his eyes, not wanting Anthony to see all the things he was carrying, and Anthony leaned deeply in and lowered his forehead onto Alexander’s bandaged chest.
“Dad,” he whispered, “I swear to God, you have to stop it. You’ve been doing this for weeks now, turning away every time you look at me. Please. Stop. I’m hurt enough. Think of yourself, remember yourself—did you want my mother to turn her face from you when you came back from war? Please. I don’t give a f*ck about the arm. I don’t. I’m not like Nick Moore. I’m like Mom. I’ll adjust, little by little. I’m just glad to be alive, to be back. I thought my life was over. I didn’t think I would ever come back, Dad,” said Anthony, raising his head. “What are you so upset about? It wasn’t even my good arm.” He smiled lightly. “I never liked it. Couldn’t pitch ball with it, couldn’t write with it. Certainly, unlike you, couldn’t shoot f*cking Dudley with it. Now come on. Please.”
“Yes,” whispered Alexander. “But you’ll never play guitar again.” And other things you will never do. Play basketball. Pitch. Hold your newborn baby in your palms.
Anthony swallowed. “Or go to war again.” He broke off. “I know. I have some adjusting to do. It is what it is. Mom says this, and you should listen to her. She says I got away with my life, and I’m going to do just fine. All we want is for you to be all right,” Anthony said. “That’s all any of us ever wanted.”
“Antman,” said Alexander, his hand on his son’s lowered head, his wounded chest drawn and quartered, “you’re a good kid.”
“I f*cked things up so badly,” said Anthony on another night perhaps, though all nights and days drifted, hung suspended, seemed like one. “I never listened to a word my mother told me. All our mysteries went straight to the enemy. I’m really sorry. I trusted her so completely.”
“You’ve been like that your whole life. So open.”
“I didn’t see it. I really fell for her. I thought she was Andromeda, and she turned out to be the Gorgon Medusa, and I never suspected a thing until it was much too late.” His voice was unsteady. “I don’t know what I’m more staggered by—the depth of her abandoned heart or my own stupidity.”
“You know what, Ant?” said Alexander. “Self-flagellation is unnecessary. You’ve suffered enough.” He wanted to tell Anthony that even in Moon Lai’s unholy world, where black was white, and white was black, and Alexander’s twenty-five-year sentence for a fraudulent surrender and desertion charge was just punishment, and Anthony’s heart was the taipan’s plaything, and babies were nothing and meant nothing, the Gorgon Medusa still crept to the cellar door twice a day to change Anthony’s bandages and give him opium to ease his pain.
“I’m sick about Tom Richter,” said Anthony, his voice breaking.
“Yeah, bud,” said Alexander. “Me too.” They sat, unable to talk about him. Alexander turned away. He might have even cried. He was getting too soft in his hospital bed; he had to get on his feet.
Anthony told Alexander that back in 1966 Richter had called him into his quarters before Ant was moved up to SOG, and said that before he could put Anthony under his command, there was one thing he needed to know and get straight. Richter said that he had been legally separated from his wife since 1957, and so the time for recriminations had long passed; but there was one small question niggling him that he needed answered. After the Four Seasons graduation celebration, as they were all in the vestibule waiting for their cars, Anthony had been looking for his lighter and Vikki came up to him, flicked open hers and brought it to his face. The only reason Richter was mentioning this at all, he said, was because in the seventeen years he had known his wife, he had never seen her light a cigarette for anyone.
“I told him,” said Anthony, “that I had no idea what he was talking about, that I didn’t remember the incident at all. I apologized if it was improper, and Richter said that that was not the improper thing. I replied that there was nothing else and nothing to think about. And so we left it at that and never spoke about it again.”
The father and son’s heads were low, staring into their separate distances and Alexander wanted to say that sometimes even bad husbands saw things, and then, because they were great men, did the right things, and sometimes the impossible did happen, and cigarette lightning struck—where it was clearly not supposed to—a wild girl in New York, a wild soldier in Leningrad—and then wanted to ask but didn’t if Vikki was going to continue to light Anthony’s cigarettes.
Alexander closed his eyes while Tatiana tended and nursed him, wrapped and rewrapped him, washed him, embraced him, and fed him from her hands, as he slowly recovered, his glass becoming smooth with her ministrations and the constant metronome of the symphonic noise of his family.
“Darling,” Tatiana said, touching his feet to see if they were cold, adjusting his blankets, “do you know what your youngest son built for his science project this year? A replica of the atomic bomb.” She paused. “At least I hope it was a replica.”
“It was, Mom,” Harry unconvincingly assured her, sitting on his father’s bed. “Dad, I showed everyone how it worked—from splitting the atom to launching the missile. It was so good, it won the Arizona state prize!”
“Yes, son,” said Tatiana. “Congratulations. But afterward your mother was called into the principal’s office with a school psychologist and asked if she would consider putting her youngest son under observation—wait, or was it…surveillance?”
Alexander laughed lightly. His chest still hurt every time he let out a breath. “Science project,” he then said slowly. “It’s not January already, is it?”
“It is,” said Tatiana, squeezing his feet.
Alexander stretched out his hand. “Harry-boy, come here. Did I miss your tenth birthday?”
“Yes, but Dad, now you’ve got three more scars!” said Harry happily, coming to his father. “And one of them is in the chest! That’s stupendous. My friends can’t believe it. I told them you got shot in the heart and survived. I’m the most popular kid in school. I think your fame is rubbing off even on Pasha.”
“Sticks and stones,” said Pasha, calm and unfazed. “I don’t need the approval of the masses to feel good about myself.” He took his father’s other hand. “Dad, for my science project, I made a replica of the human lung under the stress of tension pneumothorax.”
“Yes, and it did not win first prize,” said Harry.
Pasha ignored him. “Now that one of your lungs has undergone tension pneumothorax,” he continued to Alexander, “will you at least consider not poisoning it anymore with nicotine?”
“Pasha, leave your father’s few joys alone,” said Tatiana. “He’ll be as good as new soon.” She was passing by Anthony with a drink in her hand and almost without stopping, brought it to his face, and he, barely looking away from his folded-over newspaper, bent and drank from the straw, because he could not hold the paper and the drink at the same time; and so he drank from his mother’s hands, glanced casually at her, and then leaned slightly forward and kissed her hand and she moved on, almost without a stagger.
Alexander took Pasha’s arm. “Nicotine isn’t bad for your lungs, son,” he said. “You know what’s bad for your lungs? Acute lead poisoning from machine-gun fire.”
Pasha, his hand still in Alexander’s, turned to his older brother. “Ant, does your stump twitch?” he asked. “I read in one of my science books that you’ll still feel your phantom arm for years because all your severed nerve endings will feel it.”
“Thanks for that info, Pash. For how many years you think?” Anthony briefly lifted his amused eyes to his brother.
“Pasha,” said Alexander, pulling his son to him, “what have you been reading? What the hell is tension pneumothorax?”
“An acutely collapsed lung brought on by trauma,” replied Pasha, looking so happy to be asked. “Seriously life-threatening. In your medevac they had to do an emergency decompression puncture on you. But in the hospital, Mommy got them to place a plastic tube into your chest through an incision under your arm, and this tube expanded your lung and kept draining the unexhaled air that built up in the pleura and drained it until the hole in the lung healed.”
Shaking his head at both his son and his wife, Alexander smiled. “So has that been my problem? A hole in my lung?”
“No, Dad,” Pasha said soberly. “Most of your problems stemmed from systemic and pulmonary blood loss.”
“Pasha!” That was Tatiana. “That’s it. I’m forbidding the children to speak until their father is discharged in a few weeks. Until then, they can just sit and look cute. Pasha, no.” Dragging him away from Alexander, she pointed a finger at him. Eleven-year-old Pasha was already two inches taller than his mother. “No more,” she said. “Don’t even think of opening your mouth.”
Alexander smiled at his chastised son, and even more so at his son’s lioness mother, pretending to be mad but so bosomy and hippy and petite, wearing clingy raw cream silk, her hair in satin ribbons, her full mouth in sheer gloss, her slim legs in seamed nylon stockings, which meant tight accessible open girdles. He stretched out his hand to her, stirred and dilated, aching, alive.
“Daddy!” said Janie, jumping up and down. “I learned how to pee standing up, just like the boys. Are you proud of me?”
“Very proud. But I already have three sons. I need a baby girl, Janie.”
“Anthony,” said Jane, kicking Harry off Ant’s lap and climbing on herself, kissing her brother deeply on the cheek, “Aunt Vikki was crying out on the deck the other day, and I asked her why she was crying, and she said because she lost her husband, and I said I was sorry for her but glad Mommy didn’t lose Daddy, but then I started to cry for your arm because Mommy is so sad about it, and do you know what Aunt Vikki said? She told me not to cry, because even though they’ve cut the silver strings of your guitar, they have not taken away your whisper, and your lips shape words even in silence, and you can still sing, in five languages—and she said that was all right with her.”
“Aunt Vikki said that, did she?” said Anthony. In a silent triangular vortex of exchanged and strangled glances, Alexander and Tatiana and Anthony had their years flicker before them in quavers, Bethel by Scottsdale, Luga by Leningrad, Moscow by memory as they looked down at the fascinating linoleum floor, hoping to find the solace there.
“Tatiana,” said Alexander suddenly, “am I back stateside?”
“Of course, darling.”
He opened his eyes. His wife, his babies were around him. Anthony was in his chair. “Am I back in Phoenix?”
“Of course, darling. You’re home.”
He looked at her. Stared at her. Glared at her. “Tatiana,” he said. “Oh my God. Please, in front of my children, tell me, swear to me that you did not admit me to the root of all evil, submerge me in Hades, tell me I am not in Phoenix Perdition Memorial!”
There was no answer.
“Oh, for the love of all that is holy! Get my kids out of here before they hear their father say things no children should hear. Ta-TIA-na!”
The Son and the Father
The President of the United States in the name of The Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor
To:
Captain Anthony Alexander Barrington
March 13, 1970
5th Special Forces Group
1st Special Forces MACV/SOG Republic of Vietnam
Entered Service at West Point, NY
Born June 30, 1943, Ellis Island, NY
Citation:
Captain Anthony Alexander Barrington, United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group was a battalion leader of a long range reconnaissance unit responsible for covert operations in Laos and Cambodia. On July 18, 1969, he went missing while returning to active duty. He was found by a search and rescue Special Forces squad of twelve men in an NVA POW camp, army base, and training ground that masqueraded as a civilian North Vietnamese village Kum Kau near the border with Laos. The team extracted Capt. Barrington and five other POW. Capt. Barrington, having been tortured, beaten and wounded, having lost his left arm during his imprisonment, despite his serious injuries, engaged the enemy in heavy fire after being pursued for a kilometer and a half flanked on three sides. The team escaped up a steep mountain into the woods, trying to make their way in enemy territory to a helicopter extraction. Despite suffering heavy losses, they inflicted grave damage on the enemy, killing all but a handful of the NVA. Separating from his troops, Capt. Barrington fought off the attackers in an attempt to let the rest of his injured men move closer to HEP. Though severely injured, he carried two wounded men on his back, one by one, to the extraction point. One of the men was a decorated Montagnard Special Forces soldier, Ha Si Chuyk, and the other Maj. Anthony Alexander Barrington, Capt. Barrington’s father. His gallant and intrepid actions during this time earned him the highest honor the U.S. Army can bestow.
Major Anthony Alexander Barrington
March 13, 1970
5th Special Forces U.S. Army Training Advisory Group
MACV/SOG Republic of Vietnam
Entered Service at Fort Meade, MD
Born May 29, 1919, Barrington, MA
Citation:
Major Anthony Alexander Barrington, United States Army Reserve Corps, came to Vietnam in November 1969 to find his son, missing and presumed dead. He led a highly specialized and heavily armed Special Forces squad into North Vietnam to Kum Kau. Though Maj. Barrington was already critically wounded after hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, he found and extracted his son, Capt. Anthony Alexander Barrington, and five other U.S. soldiers who had been captured by the North Vietnamese Army. While escaping through the jungle to a helicopter extraction point, Maj. Barrington and his men came under heavy enemy fire of small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and rockets. Eleven Special Forces troops under Maj. Barrington’s command fought a vastly superior division-size force of 550 North Vietnamese soldiers. During the battle, six of his men were killed and five were seriously wounded. The six fallen men included Lieutenant-colonel Thomas Richter, commander of the MACV-SOG headquarters in Kontum, and Squad Sergeant Charles Mercer, plus four indigenous mountain warriors who had fought alongside the U.S. Army since 1964. Despite heavy blood loss, Maj. Barrington carried three of his wounded men through enemy fire, and then stayed in the rear continuing to engage the enemy to let his men get further ahead to the HEP and not be overrun. Maj. Barrington and his son became separated from their troops and staved off the attack, throwing the NVA forces into disarray by grenades and machine gun fire long enough to let their comrades make it safely to extraction. This heroic action allowed seventeen injured and fallen men to be brought home. Maj. Barrington was still repelling the enemy when he fell nearly mortally wounded to an AK47 Kalashnikov round. His extraordinary leadership, infinite courage, refusal to leave the fallen behind, and concern for his fellow men saved the lives of a number of his comrades. With complete disregard for his personal safety, Maj. Barrington’s courageous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon him and his unit and the U.S. Army.