The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

“I can’t argue that, Micah, and I do understand, especially about those sons.” The colonel lowered his head pensively. “My own is a platoon commander with the First Cav at Fort Hood. My best guess is that he’ll be there right beside your sons if and when we go into Kuwait.”

“Yes sir, there’s going to be a lot of sons headed out and it’ll be hard for them.” In Micah’s mind was the image of Jeremiah Templar standing at the bus station, hand held high to that departing Greyhound. Micah swallowed hard. “Sometimes it’s just as hard on the fathers, maybe more so.”

The man behind the desk studied his trooper, sensing a welling of grief. “You were in Vietnam, weren’t you Micah?”

“Yes sir” the trooper responded. “Marines. Two tours.”

The colonel was silent for a while and stared out his office window, A lingering sadness came over his features. “I had several friends who went to Vietnam, some were a lot older when they came back. A few came home in a flag-covered box and one of them is still over there, someplace. No one really knows where, not even his own family. It still hurts when I think about them, and I can’t even begin to imagine the pain a parent feels.”

“Yes sir, I doubt if any of us can unless we’ve been there ourselves” responded Micah, “and that’s one place I don’t ever want to be.”

The other man’s eyebrows knitted together in circumspection. “Wars bring nightmares that never end for those who have paid the most dearly, in one way or another. There are people in our agency with cousins, brothers, even fathers still listed as MIA after all these years…”

Micah did not hear much more of what the director said, but not because he was consciously trying to tune him out. Rather it was at that exact moment he remembered who Mister Eggers was, and why he knew they could trust him to keep his word. The heartbreaking acronym of ‘MIA’ served as the trigger release for what he had been trying to recall. Micah knew now why Eggers would do everything possible to get those hostages back alive.

CHAPTER THIRTY

During the long drive home from Austin, Micah began to recall events from some three decades prior and belonging to another world entirely. He mentally castigated himself for his inability to remember those events beforehand, and how he first met Mister Eggers. That initial meeting had amounted to something important, even heroic in a time when so much seemed to bring nothing but misery, grief and destruction.

These were the memories of his youth, at least of a youth that vanished near overnight in exchange for a seemingly unending struggle to stay alive. That, and to keep alive other young men whose welfare had been thrust upon him. Too often he fell short of that mark, and perhaps his lingering guilt in doing so was one of the reasons he hadn’t recognized Eggers to start with.

Of all of God’s Creations, the human mind stands alone as a wondrously crafted complexity beyond compare. It accomplishes numerous vital feats and actions without so much as a single conscious thought. More so, it can actually shield part of itself from the other when seeing and experiencing too much.

Such is what occurs with certain memories. The memories are still there, but buried so well that it takes a strong, willful effort on the other part to bring them again into the light of day. They are seared into one’s mind and very being, yet only brought forth and examined on uncommon occasions.

This was one of those rare times…

It was in late January of 1969 in Quang Tri Province, the northernmost territory for what was once known as the Republic of South Vietnam. Quang Tri and four other provinces made up the American military zone called ‘I Corps.’ Micah Templar had been an acting platoon sergeant in a grunt outfit there, part of Second Battalion Ninth Marines. The regiment was nicknamed “Hell in a Helmet,” and for good reason. It had been a tough year for the Marine Corps, the regiment and himself. The Ninth Marines had conducted one combat action after another for the past eleven months running. Those actions had taken a heavy toll on everyone involved.

This had been his second tour, his first in country was in 1966 as a very green PFC. But what had gone on the first time around and what was happening two years later were hardly comparable. The Tet offensive of the January before had sparked a series of bloody, vicious encounters at places such as Con Thien, The Rockpile, Mike’s Hill, Vandergrift Combat Base and the Ben Hai River. Elements of the Ninth also fought at the Battle of Khe Sanh and had the casualty lists to prove it. Those following engagements in spots blissfully unheard of by a vast majority of Americans only further sapped the regiment’s strength.

But the final months of 1968 had brought a welcome respite, as the North Vietnamese Army was forced back across the DMZ due to the staggering losses inflicted by the hard fighting Leathernecks. Micah had been slightly wounded that August and medevacked to the rear for a hospital stay. During that period both he and the Ninth Marines had time to rest and make ready again for their tough, wily and highly capable foes. That wait would not last long.

As Tet 1969 approached, American intelligence chatter was at a fever pitch concerning a massive NVA buildup in the vicinity of the A Shau Valley, near the border with Laos. Not only was this worrisome fact marked by increasing numbers of enemy personnel and units but also