Free They Marched Into Sunlight by David Maraniss Page B

Kawczynski, Szutowski, Jaskolski, Moczynscki, Zlotkowski, Czerwinski, Kulwicki, and Danielewski.
    In preparation for life as a tradesman, Danny attended Milwaukee Boys Tech, where he played football and took an apprenticeship at Harnischfeger, a tool manufacturing plant. He was extremely close to his mother, a light-hearted talker like him. They shared a love for professional wrestling, and when matches came to the Milwaukee Arena, where he worked part-time as an usher, he made sure that she got tickets. He fell into a depression when his mother died suddenly at age forty-three, before he had finished high school. Neither he nor Diane knew anyone in their neighborhood who had gone to college. When he got his draft notice, Danny and a buddy enlisted in the army. His last trip home before heading for Vietnam was a furlough in late February. By then his father had remarried and moved to the north side and there was no bedroom for him, so he slept in the cold basement. He rode the city bus back to his old neighborhood and visited the Saint John Kanty priest, Father Czaja, and confessed that he thought he was going to die.
    That weekend he surprised Diane by popping in at her favorite hangout, Wyler’s teen bar. He sat at another table and watched her talk with friends until the end of the night, when he approached her table and asked her to dance. A slow song. “Are you sure you want to dance with me?” she asked. “Well, you’re my little sister, aren’t you?” It was their first dance together. Diane felt awkward at first, but Danny reassured her. He gave her advice about how to deal with boyfriends and what to do about their father and their new stepmother, and together they remembered the smell of their mom’s homemade soups. Back when Danny was born, his father had planted a pine tree by the side of the house on Eighth Street. Now, when the young soldier took a trip back to the old neighborhood, he noticed that the new owner had cut the pine tree down.
    Diane started getting migraine headaches after Danny left, and she worried about their father, who would sit in his chair for hours and stare into space. She prized the letters her brother sent home, but no matter how cute he got about it (one letter ended with “G-O-T-S-A-S-T-B; Get on the stick and send the booze”) that was one thing she would not do.
     
    W HEN C LARK W ELCH took command of Delta Company on the beach at Vung Tau, it meant that officers who came over on the ship would find different assignments at Lai Khe. To Lieutenant Grady it seemed at first almost like Fort Lewis all over again, with no one knowing quite what to do with him except show him a bed. He stood around the Black Lions headquarters until nightfall, and then it washed over him how different this was from any place he had been. Staring into the darkness, knowing nothing about what was out there, he grew anxious and wondered to himself, Where are the bad guys? Nearby, under mosquito netting, Captain George sat on his bunk and wrote home that he had found a weapon and “the nearest bunker to get in” if they got hit. The next morning at five Grady and George were awakened by the sound of artillery. What’s going on? Grady asked. Wakeup rounds, he was told. H and I firings—harassing and interdiction—which involved having the big guns fire into the countryside at predetermined spots without knowing whether enemy or water buffalo were roaming around out there. H and I’s were popular at Lai Khe and other American base camps, so much so that they would soon become an issue with the generals in Saigon, who were catching flak from the Pentagon for spending too much money on ammunition.
    On the second day in camp Grady was getting ready to attend combat indoctrination school, and looking forward to a gradual transition to his new workplace, when he and George were told to hop on a supply helicopter and join the battalion command and two companies out in the field near Phu Loi. Grady had