“That’s when the first boy begged us not to leave him.”
“Had you told the wounded you intended to leave them?”
“Not at that point. But every GI north of the thirty-eighth parallel knew the Commies’ prisoner policy. No quarter given. The North Koreans had been mutilating POWs before executing them. A couple of ambulances filled with wounded had been burned out with flamethrowers. And we were even more afraid of being captured by the Chinese.”
Shad takes a moment before going on. “Wasn’t it your duty to stay with the wounded, Mr. Garrity?”
“Mr. Johnson, that might be a thorny problem in some philosophy book, or even a field manual. But in real life . . . no soldier is obligated to wait for certain death unless ordered to, and we hadn’t been. Tom and I had a tough choice. We were medics, and dedicated to our work. We could stay there and be captured—which meant death or worse—or we could try to climb out and bring back help, if we could somehow hook up with an American unit in time. We knew the odds were low. We told those boys how things stood. We said, ‘We’d take you with us if we could, but we can’t move you without killing you.’ And that’s when one of them, a tough little fella from Idaho, said, ‘Kill me now, then. Better you than them devil monkeys.’ That’s what some guys called the gooks—the North Koreans—back then. I don’t think he even knew it was the Chinese who’d knocked us off the road. Anyway, I looked at Tom, he looked at me, and we knew each other’s minds. It was either put them boys out of their misery or leave them to a terrible fate.”
“And Major Powers?”
Walt sniffs as though he has just detected a noxious odor. “Major Powers. Well . . . early on, the major had been praying, like he said. But about this time he chimes in and says, ‘I know what you men are thinking, and you can’t do it. No matter what these boys say, it’s wrong, and you know it.’”
“How did you respond?”
“I told him I thought what he was saying was fine for a church meeting, but not much use down in that gorge. I’d gone to church most every Sunday growing up, but my heart told me it was up to them boys to decide how they wanted to meet their maker.”
“And?”
“They decided. They told us to give ’em enough morphine to go to sleep and not wake up. And that’s what we done.” Walt sniffs a couple more times, like a man with hay fever, but then I realize his old slit eyes are welling with tears.
“Another thing the major left out . . . them two boys held hands while we done it. Held hands and prayed till they fell unconscious. Not one day of my life has passed that I don’t see those boys in my mind. But I’ll tell you this: Even if the Lord sends me to everlasting perdition for what I done that night, I know I did right by ’em. Tom, too. I know that in my heart. Their own mamas wouldn’t have done no different.”
Shad looks astounded by this assertion. “Do you really believe that, Captain Garrity?”
“Son, if I didn’t believe it, I’d have shot myself in the head thirty years ago.”
Shad appears to have no idea how to respond to this. “Permission to approach the witness, Your Honor?”
Judge Elder nods.
Shad walks away from the podium and circles slowly toward Walt. “You said ‘we’ during that description. But did you inject either soldier with a lethal morphine dose?”
“I offered to, but my dominant hand was numb from the broken shoulder. Tom volunteered to do it, to make it easier on the boys. And on me, too, probably.”
“I see. And the unconscious man?”
“Like the major said, Tom didn’t want to inject him. But one conscious boy knew that fella and said the boy wouldn’t want to wake up alone with a North Korean’s bayonet in his gizzard, if by some miracle he did wake up. I agreed with them, and Tom finally went on and did it.”
“I see. So . . . you don’t believe that Tom Cage committed murder on that night?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes—that’s right. It wasn’t murder. It was like putting down a horse with a broken leg. Three horses. They were hopeless cases.”
“Yet Major Powers survived that night.”
“Yeah,” Walt says with what sounds like resentment. “That’s another thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Another thing the major left out.”
Shad looks wary now. “I think we’ve heard enough to clarify what happened in the ambulance.”
“Well, I think you’re missing a key detail, Mr. Johnson.”
I remember Quentin’s insistence that the jury hates to be denied any part of a story. Shad knows trouble is coming, but he also senses that he shouldn’t resist. Now that the door is open, Quentin can easily bring out whatever Walt wants to say during cross. Better to bring it out himself and try to steer the questioning. “Please enlighten us, Captain.”
Walt gives a tight smile. “Major Powers wasn’t like the other wounded in that ambulance.”
“How do you mean? He had the lightest wounds?”
“No. He did have the lightest wounds, but since he couldn’t walk, that wouldn’t have mattered. Except for another fact.”
“What’s that?”
“He was air force. The other wounded were all army. And Powers wasn’t just air force. He was a pilot. A jet pilot. And all field officers in both the North Korean and Chinese armies were under orders not to harm captured American pilots. Pilots were considered the highest-value American prisoners by the Chinese, because it was their MiGs we were fighting in the skies over Korea. Even the Korean civilians had been ordered not to hurt our pilots if they parachuted down or crash-landed. Pilots were passed back up the chain until they were taken into China for questioning. My point is, a lot of them survived. So, while Powers surviving to live fifty-five more years to come here and testify might make it seem like Tom and I acted hastily that night, the fact is, those army boys were as good as dead the minute we went off that road. In that ambulance, only Major Powers had a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
While Shad tries to find a way to gracefully get Walt off the stand, the old Ranger says, “World War Two was the same. Hermann Goering had been a pilot in World War One, so he set up special camps for airmen in the next war. In some wars, being a pilot is kind of like being in an international gentlemen’s club. Not that some didn’t suffer—they did. But that’s not like having your eyes gouged out with a sharpened spoon, or having your balls cut off before they bayonet you through the mouth.”
Shad stares at Walt like a man watching an unpredictable dog.
“You know who really killed those boys in that ambulance?” Walt asks pugnaciously.