“A bridge. He said they blew the bridge and the water was red.”
Hawkeye paced the length of Colonel Potter’s office, nursing a cup of coffee that tasted suspiciously like hot mud. Potter sat behind his desk, painting a rather depressing landscape of a dead tree, while Radar stood nervously by the filing cabinets, clutching a clipboard like a shield.
“It’s a repressed traumatic memory,” Hawkeye explained. “The sound of the choppers triggered it. The amnesia isn’t just from the shrapnel hitting his head. His brain intentionally shut the blast doors because whatever he saw at that bridge was too much for a nineteen-year-old kid to handle.”
“War has a funny way of making old men out of boys overnight,” Potter sighed, setting his brush down. “Radar, you’ve been burning up the wires to I-Corps. Tell me you found out who this boy is.”
Radar stepped forward, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Well, sir, I called every regiment, battalion, and mess hall from here to Seoul. Nobody reported a missing private matching his description.”
“Nobody?” Potter raised an eyebrow. “You don’t just misplace a soldier, son. The Army has paperwork for missing paperwork.”
“That’s the thing, sir,” Radar swallowed hard. “I expanded the search to classified deployments. I had to use Sparky in Tokyo to bypass a few switchboards—don’t ask, sir, it involves two bottles of Scotch and a promise of a Jeep tire—but I found a match.”
Radar handed the file to Potter. Hawkeye leaned over the desk to read it.
“Corporal Thomas ‘Tommy’ Riley,” Potter read aloud. “Combat Engineer. Assigned to the 8th Engineer Battalion.” Potter frowned, looking up at Hawkeye. “The 8th Engineers were operating near the Chosin Reservoir. That was weeks ago.”
“And it was a bloodbath,” Hawkeye said quietly, the cynical humor entirely stripped from his voice. “If he was up there… no wonder his mind decided to check out.”
“There’s more, sir,” Radar squeaked. “His unit… his platoon was tasked with rigging a pontoon bridge with explosives to delay an enemy advance. But there was a miscommunication. The order to blow the bridge came down too early. While his own men were still crossing.”
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the room. The distant rumble of artillery suddenly felt a lot closer, a lot more real. The anti-war reality that Hawkeye tried so hard to deflect with martinis and Marx Brothers routines was staring them right in the face.
“Friendly fire,” Potter whispered, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “The boy watched his own unit get blown to kingdom come because some brass hat in a warm tent read a map wrong.”
“And he survived,” Hawkeye added, the tragic puzzle pieces finally locking together. “He survived, wandered the frozen hills for weeks, got clipped by random shrapnel, and ended up here. His brain couldn’t handle the guilt of surviving, so it erased Thomas Riley altogether.”
“Major Burns is going to have a field day with this,” Radar muttered.
“Frank Burns doesn’t get to breathe the same air as this kid,” Hawkeye snapped, a rare, terrifying anger in his eyes. “If Frank so much as looks at him wrong, I’ll surgically attach his stethoscope to his large intestine.”
“Easy, Pierce,” Potter warned. “We know who he is now. The question is, how do we fix him? We can’t send him back to the front. He’s medically unfit. But if we send him to a stateside psychiatric ward without restoring his memory, he’ll be a vegetable in a straitjacket for the rest of his life.”
“I have to talk to him,” Hawkeye said. “I have to walk him across that bridge again. In his mind.”
That evening, the Swamp was unusually quiet. No poker, no jazz records. Just Hawkeye sitting on a stool next to Tommy Riley’s cot. The young corporal was awake, staring blankly at the canvas ceiling.
“I know who you are, kid,” Hawkeye said softly.
Tommy slowly turned his head. “You do?”
“Your name is Tommy Riley. You’re a Combat Engineer.” Hawkeye paused, watching the boy’s face for any flicker of recognition. “You like building things, Tommy. But the Army… the Army made you blow things up.”
Tommy’s breath hitched. The monitor of his pulse began to race. “I… I remember cold. So cold.”
“It was the Chosin Reservoir, Tommy. You were on a bridge.”
“Don’t,” Tommy whispered, tears instantly welling in his eyes. He curled his knees to his chest. “Please, Doc. Don’t make me look at it. The water… they were screaming…”
“I know, Tommy. It wasn’t your fault.”
Suddenly, the flap of the Swamp flew open. Major Frank Burns stormed in, clutching a clipboard and looking incredibly smug.
“Aha! I knew it!” Frank crowed. “I just saw the file Potter left on his desk! He’s an engineer! Probably a saboteur! I’ve called the Military Police, Pierce! They’re coming to take this malingering coward to the stockade where he belongs!”
Tommy screamed. It was a guttural, soul-tearing sound. The sudden intrusion, the shouting, the aggressive uniform—it all shattered the fragile dam in his mind.
Tommy leaped off the cot, eyes wild, no longer in the Swamp, but back on the icy riverbanks of North Korea. He grabbed a heavy metal lantern from the table and swung it wildly at Frank.
“The detonator! Stop them! Don’t push it!” Tommy shrieked, backing into a corner, holding the lantern like a grenade.
“Hawkeye, do something!” Frank yelped, cowering behind the still.
But Tommy wasn’t looking at Frank anymore. He was staring at his own hands, sobbing hysterically. “I pushed it. God forgive me, I pushed the plunger. I killed them all.”
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
