“Where has this been stored?” she asked.
Thomas answered.
“In a metal box beneath my bed.”
“Has anyone else handled it?”
“My wife. Two attorneys. A veterans service officer in 1981. Another in 1996.”
“Were copies submitted?”
“Many times.”
Linda looked toward Daniel.
“Close the window.”
Daniel placed a sign on the counter.
TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE
They escorted Thomas into a private conference room.
He moved carefully, favoring his left leg.
Only after watching him walk did Daniel notice how rigidly Thomas held his spine.
Linda brought water.
Thomas thanked her but did not drink.
Daniel sat across from him with the letter protected inside a clear sleeve.
“I need to understand the full history,” he said.
Thomas nodded.
“Start wherever you need.”
Daniel glanced at the date.
“Tell us about September 1968.”
For several seconds, Thomas said nothing.
Not because he could not remember.
Because he remembered too clearly.
He had been twenty-four years old.
He grew up outside Wheeling, West Virginia, in a house where coal dust settled on windowsills even when the windows remained closed.
His father worked underground.
His mother cleaned rooms at a small hospital.
Thomas enlisted at nineteen because the Army offered steady pay and because nearly every young man he knew believed service was something that belonged naturally between boyhood and whatever came after.
By 1968, Thomas had been in Vietnam for almost a year.
He knew the smell of wet canvas, helicopter fuel, red mud, burned powder, and uniforms worn too long in the heat.
His unit was sent toward a small village near the Cambodian border after intelligence suggested enemy forces were moving through the area.