By Martin F. Sorensen
Glade Kalinski called out “Hi, Jim” to Pvt. James Strickland, who was walking by on his way to the mess.
“Hello,
to you, Glade”, came the answer back. “Are you going out after dinner?”
“You bet I am. Got any good ideas in this town?”
“Well, since we’ve been stuck in this place for six months, I’ve been to just about everything there is.”
“How about someplace special, that nobody knows about?”
“Hmm-if nobody knows about it, then I sure don’t.”
“Hey, I’m not going to take you there if it means that everybody will know about it. Are you up for it?”
“What’s so special about it?”
“What’s special about it, my friend, is that you can do anything you want there, if you’re willing to pay for it and if they like you enough. You can get just about as rough as you want.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“I’m telling you about it just as soon as I know about it. Now we better shut up. We don’t want other people in the mess to ask too many questions.”
They went in to the mess and had their dinner. Afterwards they told anybody listening that they were going out to have a few drinks and celebrate nothing in particular.
This night, when he took Jim Strickland with him, they walked the ten blocks down dark streets until they came to a cantina with dim lights, a few tables. A small, dirty sign outside on the wall read La Morenita. It did not have a bar. Three women were sitting at the tables, talking to each other. No one else was in the room.
When the two Marines came in, the women looked at each other. One of them whom Glade had never seen before got up and came over to him and put her arm out to shake his hand and smiled at him.
This girl with long dark hair said to him, in a mildly accented voice, “Hello, Señor, it is nice to see you.”
He was surprised to hear her speak in English. She had a very prominent smile, and a way of cocking her head as if she were continuously checking you out, or was maybe just unsure. But her laugh came easy and seemed to come straight from the abdomen. She was shy in a way the other girls had never been. She didn’t touch him as they had, either, the women who thought nothing of putting their hand quickly down into the crotch.
He thought at first that she was playing a game, pretending innocence. She asked him if he wanted a beer and went into the back and brought one out for each of them. They both sat down at the table, and looked for a moment at Jim Strickland dancing with one of the girls.
The girl looked at Glade and said “I’d like to have a beer with you, and maybe even dance, but I will not go up to a room with you.”
“Well, honey, I don’t know what you are doing in this place if you won’t go up to a room with me.”
She looked him directly in the eye now, and spoke deliberately. “What is your name?”
“Glade.”
“Glade, I know you come here with other americanos to make love to a whore, which is what all soldiers do. But I would like to get to know you better before I make love to you.”
“Honey, I’m not sure I came here looking for a girlfriend.”
“No, mister, and I did not come here looking for a boyfriend. I do not come here every night because I work at La Flor and I go home at night to my mother and father.”
“What do you do at La Flor?”
“I help them put the coffee beans in bags, and do paperwork in the plantation office.”
“Well, do you have a name?”
“Yes, I have a name. It’s Maria.”
“Maria? Now that’s a common name if I ever heard one.”
“My real name is Concepción Maria Valenzuela, but you might not even be able to remember all that.”
“Yeah, I’ll stick with Maria.”
“Glade, would you go for a walk? We can come back and dance a little if you like?”
“And talk about what?”
“I don’t know anything about shooting guns and you don’t know how to make coffee.”
She stood up, put on a shawl that she had lain over the back of the chair, took him by the hand, and went towards the door.
“Here, if we hold hands, your friend will not worry about you. Wave to him when we go out.”
Glade turned around, but Strickland was nowhere to be seen, so he followed the woman out the door. They went out into the warm Central American breeze.
“How far do you want to go, Maria?”
“Ah, so you will call me Maria. Not far. You want to get back and find yourself a girl for tonight and I want to get back to my little boy.”
“You have a little boy?”
“He is eight years old.”
“Where is the boy’s father?”
“I do not know where he is. He left us a long time ago. That is why I am living at home with my mother and father. And you Glade, do you have a wife waiting for you?”
“Hell, no, never been married. You know, Maria, I wouldn’t worry about your little boy’s father - sometimes its better to have no father at all.”
They continued walking in silence past a few houses. He wanted to take her hand in his, but just as he felt the impulse, she turned and looked at him.
“You must think this is a very backward country. We are so poor that we need soldiers from another country to keep order.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about politics, Maria. I joined the Marines because I wanted to fight, and it looks like I’m going to get a chance one of these days.”
“Why do you think that, Glade? It has been very quiet around here.”
“I don’t know exactly, but we are going to start moving out to places where Sandino and his rebels have been. I hope we do run into him because I would like a chance to show how well I can fight.”
“Fighting can be very dangerous, I think.”
“Yeah, you are sure right there.”
She turned to him and said, “I must go home now, Glade, and you will want to go back and find yourself someone to make love with tonight. But I ask you if I can see you again.”
“Yes, Maria. When can we meet again?”
“This Sunday. Can you come? To the plaza in front of the cathedral at noon.”
“Yes I’ll see you there.”
She turned, and walked away into the night. He turned back to the cantina. When he went in, Strickland was sitting lazily at a table drinking a beer.
“Come on, Jim, let’s go back. Tonight’s not my night. Let’s grab a couple of beers to take back with us.” They got up and went back to the barracks in silence.
The next Sunday, Glade went by himself to the plaza in front of the cathedral around noon. He saw Maria standing next to a little boy, about 8 or 9 years old by his size, who held his mother’s hand tightly, but smiled at Glade when he looked up and saw his mother doing the same thing. The plaza was full of people in the hot, noonday sun, going in and out of the cathedral. There were many women, many elderly women in black lace veils, who stood in various groups around the plaza.
Maria bent down to look her son in the eye. She put her hands on his shoulders, and said something to him in Spanish.
Not many men were in evidence, although a few stood by themselves or in small groups of animated discussion. They did not stop their talk when they saw the American come on to the plaza, but Glade felt their eyes on him. A few of them stopped talking when he made his way over to Maria and she held out her hand.
It occurred to him that she was a well-known whore standing in front of the house of God, and he thought to himself that they would be jealous of the attention this whore paid to an American man who could easily pay an impressive sum for her services.
When he reached her, he briefly looked around him to make sure he was noticed by some of the men, and then he kissed her gently on her cheek, and stepped back.
“Who is this young man?” He knew, of course, that the boy would be her son, and he wondered if one of the men in the plaza might be the father. To him, all these men in their dark hair and mustaches, with their dark eyes, looked very similar. And very sinister. He imagined for a moment that he had a rifle and could point it at any of them he wished and pull the trigger and watch the body falling to the tiles on the plaza.
Maria put her arm around the young boy’s shoulder, looked down at him, and said, “This is my son Juan. Juan, dile Buenos Dias.”
She looked up once again at Glade.
“He does not speak any English. But it would be very nice if he heard you say Buenos Dias in Spanish to him, Glade. He loves Americans, and I think I am sad to believe that maybe one day he will grow up and go away and become a Marine like you. I am afraid I have made a picture of you as very brave.” The boy looked up at Glade and smiled.
Glade for the first time in his weeks in Nicaragua looked in the eyes of a person and felt some kinship. Here was a boy without a father. His mother was a woman not like the others that he met in the cantina. This woman was a mother who was not intimidated by her husband. These two facing him in front of the cathedral were no longer so strange to him.
“Buenos Dias, Juan,” he said, in his drawl-like manner of speaking the few Spanish words he knew. He would have said something more, that it was nice to meet him, or that he's sorry Juan’s father isn’t around but he’s probably a fucking bastard anyway, and I know exactly how you feel.
Maria pressed her hand against Juan’s back, and the young boy put his hand on Glade’s arm.
“Glade,” she said, “why don’t you come with us to a bakery and we will have some good cake and then go for a walk.”
She moved forward, and the three of them walked across the plaza towards one of the streets leading out from the other side.
They went only a few doors down the street and entered a small bakery called Panaderia Lopez, bought some pastry for Juan, and went back outside. They spent the next two hours in the neighborhood of the plaza, with Maria holding one of Juan’s hands and Glade the other.
She pointed out the palace of the archbishop, of the mayor, of the president, of the civil guard, the only building he found of interest.
He entertained himself studying the guards in front of some buildings, as he played out in his imagination a quick draw and exchange of pistol gunfire, each time ending with the guard splayed out against the guard shack or the wall with a large red splotch on his chest. At the presidential palace with the more elaborately dressed guards, he tapped Juan on the shoulder, and pointed to the guards, and the boy looked up at him and smiled and nodded yes.
He listened politely as she spoke of the history of Nicaragua, of the Spanish conquistadors and the country’s liberation, as she pointed out the baroque and renaissance aspects of the architecture.
After they had seen the buildings in the neighborhood of the plaza, she told Glade she had to get back home to help her mother. She promised to meet him sometime at the cantina. They parted company.
Two days later at the cantina, Glade saw her come in the door.
“Hello, Maria. I’ve been waiting for you. We should have set a time to meet.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that. I have to be careful with my son, you know. We both like you very much, but you and I are only friends and I don’t want him to be hurt.”
“Well, I sure like him a lot. And you, too, Maria. More than you seem to like me, I think.”
“You know, Glade, I already have told you that I am not a whore. I don’t go to bed with men for money, even if they are Americans and have a lot of money. I am not from a convent, either. If you want to make love to me, you have to get to know me and care something for me, and then you will find that I am very passionate. I want to make sure you know that I am not just going to be your fuck tonight.”
“Hey, wait a minute, Maria. I don’t want to go fast, maybe, but I want to go in the right direction. I do want to know more about you, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be here in Managua.”
He sensed that she was a woman of personal pride, and a woman who needed a strong man. He looked into her eyes as she stared at him, and he felt that she was looking at him as a man, a man who could be a hero for both herself and her son. He was sure she loved him, especially because she did not want to be treated as a loose woman.
“I’m sorry, I feel angry because we meet in this cantina. Why don’t we go somewhere else? Lake Managua is not far from here and it is quite beautiful at night.”
He agreed, and they left the cantina, and once again walked along the streets until they came to the plaza with the cathedral in it.
“The lake is just on the other side of the government buildings,” she said. He followed her across the plaza and down a narrow street. They quickly found themselves on an embarcadero with ornate railings and lampposts. The water lapped against the rocks below the railing. The moon was visible in scattered moving reflections on the surface.
They moved hand in hand past a few houses with yellow window light.
“My son likes you very much. Well, it is more than liking. And I think you have some feeling for him, too, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I must admit that I like the little kid, especially since he doesn’t have a father.” He looked out over the water at the faint blinking lights in the distance. Over to the right, a small boat bounced up and down with the waves. He put his arm around her shoulder. “You know, Maria, it means a lot to me that you didn’t want to go to bed right away with me, like the other girls. I would really like to get to know you better.”
“Glade, I do really want to go to bed with you. But I will not do it in that cantina, and I must tell you something else. I am not interested in making love if there is no future between a man and a woman. I can only have love if I find a man I can believe in, a very strong man.”
Glade took his cue, put his arms around her, and gave her a kiss full on the lips. She put her arms around his waist, kissed him back, and pulled him gently towards her. They then walked for a few yards, with her head leaning against his shoulder.
“I will wait for you, Maria. I didn’t think I could say this to anyone, but I love you.”
The Glade and the platoon of Marines were called out from Managua to a little village, following reports that guerrillas were near the town and were threatening villagers who worked for the American company at La Flor coffee plantation.
The road out to Boaca was just barely two lanes, with thick green vegetation up close to both sides of the road. There were a dozen Marines in two trucks who jumped down into the dust of the deserted central square. The hot sun cast strong dark shadows.
Glade looked around the plaza, from which radiated several narrow streets of dirty white buildings that were followed garishly painted huts and then the thick green foliage. The plaza was large, seemed too large for a town like this, maybe fifty yards on a side. There was a fountain in the middle of it, but with no water coming out.
One of the streets was wider than the others, and went out a long distance, maybe a couple of hundred yards into the jungle. You could see that it ended abruptly, a cliff, with the land visible several hundred feet below, and layers of dark green hills shading off in the distance.
There seemed nothing to fear. No one in sight. They had heard stories of guerrillas who came in out of the jungle at night, or who came into villages when no American Marines were near, and these Marines would have been heard for miles with the deep roar of their trucks. So there was no reason to think anything would happen here. They were just there to make a show of force. There was no enemy force here, no band of rebels.
Glade jumped quickly down from the back of the truck, ran over to a small house, and kicked in the door and pointed his rifle in.
“What the hell are you doing, Kalinski?” shouted Capt. Tepps. “Get back over here.”
Kalinski turned around and smiled and walked back over to the truck. Tepps had quickly descended from the truck. He looked Kalinski right in the eyes.
“You fucking idiot, are you trying to get us all killed? Just because you don’t see anybody doesn’t mean they aren’t there. If you want to kill yourself, then go over to that church and see what’s in it.”
Four men walked slowly and cautiously over to the church. There was one small door in front, and a path leading around either side of the building. To the right was a small single-story residence with one window and a door on the front and on the left a small outdoor shrine to the Virgin Mary. It was about five feet tall, a round cupola with a small statue in the middle of it, and a water faucet beneath the statue.
Glade
looked at James Strickland, both with their rifles pointed in front of them.
“Well,
Jim, figure there’s any virgin putas in that church? Maybe we’ll have a real
good time here.” He looked around the
plaza, disappointed that there was no enemy.
“No, Glade, I think this here church is gonna be empty, ‘cause everybody has left this miserable little rotting town.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna kick the damn door open. Maybe we ought to just get the Browning automatic rifle and shoot the shit clean out of it before we do anything.”
“I don’t think so. We’re not supposed to ruin more than we have to and we haven’t had anybody shooting back at us yet.”
“Well, Jim, it may just be about to happen.”
Glade moved just to the right of the door. He put his back to the wall, moved his gun to his left hand, and with his right hand he reached over to the doorknob, turned it slowly, and then quickly pulled the church door opened. The others crouched down in the dirt with their guns all pointed at the door.
Glade turned in to the door, lowered his rifle, and pulled the trigger twice in succession fast. The loud retort was followed by the sound of plaster breaking up and crashing to the floor. Then there was silence.
“Kalinski, what the shit are you trying to do?” yelled Capt. Tepps. “Who told you to start shooting up the place? We’re here to try to calm things down, not to start some goddamned battle. We still have to make it up the road to the coffee plantation, and for all we know Sandino himself now knows where we are.”
“There’s nobody in there, Captain”, Glade shouted back, “I’ll go in and see what’s inside. I’ll be careful, as long as you guys cover me.”
Glade took the Browning and pointed it inside the door, where he could see the pews and the altar of the small church. They hadn’t put any conquistador gold into this place, he thought. There were about 10 pews, and then a small altar with a grotesque and garish painted wooden crucifix on it.
Glade walked in and looked to the left, and saw the statue of St. Francis in two pieces lying on the floor at the base of the wall, with the eyes of the saint staring oddly straight at him. It startled him. He took a step backwards, and was momentarily to the right inside of the door, against the wall.
He put the safety on the rifle and leaned it against the wall. He moved to the door to announce to the others that the church was empty. An arm came from behind, around his neck and choking him, and he felt a sharp knifepoint sticking into his flesh just above his right hip and another one just under his ear.
A hand reached out and took hold of his rifle, and slowly pulled it away. He was quickly forced to turn around, where he saw four men dressed like peasants. Dark skinned, with the ubiquitous Nicaraguan mustaches, their eyes wide open with fear, they crouched in the corner of the church, below the level of the window, each carrying a rifle, and a machete tucked into the belt. The man holding him forced him out in the doorway.
“Tell the Americans to not move,” he said, “or you will be cut to pieces and they will all be killed by others hidden in the jungle.” He jabbed the knifepoint hard against Glade’s throat.
“Just tell them to not move”. Glade did as he was told, and the man pulled him back from the door, and forced him to the floor. They moved Glade along the wall, past the altar and out the back door.
Once outside, they were in a very small courtyard. There were graves with wooden crosses on them, and a small garden of shabby roses. They moved quickly out a gate in the back and were immediately in the thickness of the jungle. The four peasants went in single file. The last one held the Browning against Glade’s stomach. Someone shouted in the jungle ahead. The man pulled the trigger, and when it wouldn’t fire, he dropped it, and the four men disappeared into the jungle. Glade picked the rifle up, took the safety off and fired two rounds into the leaves. Then he turned around and started walking, pushing large leaves out of the way until he found himself on the road facing the Marine truck with rifles facing him.
“What the hell, Kalinski, we almost shot you full of holes, coming out of there like that,” Captain Tepps said.
“Hey, Captain, I just fired and they ran off scared shitless.”
“You think they ran off,” Tepps said.
“Hell, there’s none of them around any more,” Glade said.
As they stood there talking, with the other soldiers still watching them from the truck, a shot rang out. The Captain opened his eyes wide, felt his back with his hand, and dropped suddenly to the ground as blood spurted out his back. Everyone inside the truck ducked. Strickland turned quickly and sprayed a hail of bullets into the jungle. Then he ran over, and with two other Marines gently lifted the Captain up and carried him back around to the truck bed and lifted him up on it.
He went very fast back around to the cab, climbed in, and watching both left and right, continuously, he used the radio to contact headquarters in Managua. When he had finished, he told the driver to go as fast as he could to the corner of the plaza by the church, and turn the truck around with the side facing the plaza. When the truck stopped, he ordered everyone out between the truck and the church.
“Now listen,” Strickland said, “you are going to get some duty you never planned on. They are going to fly in a plane to take the Captain out and give us more ammunition up here. The problem is there’s one pilot and one plane, and it turns out this guy doesn’t have any brakes.”
“What do you mean he doesn’t have any brakes? How the hell is he going to stop. Let’s get out of here.”
“Uh-uh, we can’t do that. That would be to let Sandino and his men know that we won’t stand and fight. You know Marines don’t run. Let me tell you what’s going to happen. He’s going to land on this street here, and you are going to have to clear it up for him.”
“God, Strickland, do you see that sign down there, not very far away, it says ‘Gasolina’. You got any idea what it’s going to be like if the pilot runs into that with your plane. We’d better off taking our chances with the captain driving back to Managua.”
“Well, we don’t have any choice, he’s on his way. And to be honest, the way he’s going to avoid going over the cliff is that you are going to run out there on the street and stop him. Then, when we’ve unloaded the supplies, and put the Captain inside, we can turn him around, and he can fly back out the way he came.”
“What if they start shooting at him from the jungle around here?”
“We’re just going to have to take that chance. We won’t all be hanging on the airplane, and when he’s all turned around, we can fire into the jungle to make sure that anybody around will stay out of sight. Now there are about twenty of us, so half will ride shotgun and the other half better get started cleaning out the road, we don’t have much time for all the things we gotta do.”
The corporals sorted the men out and they began the work of cleaning the street. There wasn’t much debris, but they had to check a lot of places where there were plants growing in the middle of the road and they had to check there were no potholes that could ruin the plane’s chances of surviving the landing. They figured if they could get the plane to land near the center of the plaza, that would give them about twenty or twenty-five yards before it started down the road into the jungle towards the cliff. They stood there for a second and stared at the little gas station, and a small desolate-looking turret with a gas hose standing a few feet in front of it.
“All right, we don’t have much of a choice. We’ve got to put something in front of that damned thing, rocks or anything, and then we’re going to have to blow up the front of the two houses across the street so the plane can swing wide away from the gasoline pump.”
A couple of men jumped up into the truck and grabbed two satchels from up near the cabin, and jumped down with their guns pointed at either side of the road towards the houses and the thick underbrush and plants between. They knocked down the doors of the houses, and made sure nobody was inside, then inside each house divided up the satchel on either side of the door. When they had laid out the fuse across the street, they got set to light it.
Honyust yelled, “Jesus, don’t light that god-damned thing right now. What the hell’s going to happen to the gasoline pump if something hot smashes into it? We better figure out a way to protect it.”
“We could move the truck up against it,” someone said.
“No, that won’t work. What if the truck gets stuck there, then the road won’t be wide enough for the plane to get by?”
“Hell, the damn thing is only four feet high. Let’s just pile some doors in front of it, and rocks in front of the doors and that ought to take care of it.”
“Good idea, get to it.”
So they went to several houses and took off the doors, each time making sure nobody was inside, quickly gaining the conviction that nobody was at home in this town at all. They put the doors in front of the gas pump, tied them around with rope, and piled rocks in front of the wood. They then set off the fuses, which burned slowly across the street, and detonated small explosions in the two houses.
When the dust settled, they took sledgehammers and broke up pieces, and took them out to the side of the houses, and made enough area free that they believed they had enough room for the pilot to maneuver around the pump. They then walked back to the plaza and waited, with a few men posted at various places for security.
Glade was out in front of the truck, with his rifle pointed out to the center of the plaza, towards the water fountain.
As they looked up into the sky, they saw far off into the distance, across a long valley with steep hills on both sides, the lone biplane moving silently and slowly towards them. As it moved closer, they could see the pilot looking left and right as he approached. He made one slow turn around the plaza, waving to them as he flew in a steady drone overhead. Honyust went out to the center of the plaza and caught the pilot’s attention, and pointed down to where the gas pump stood.
The pilot made another turn around the plaza and then flew low overhead and nodded, and made one final long leg down towards the valley to make his approach. Strickland left a couple of men in the truck with the captain, and positioned the rest at three places along the makeshift landing strip, one before the gasoline pump, one after, and a third at the entrance to the plaza.
The pilot maneuvered the plane gracefully lower in its flight path, aiming to the side of the plaza where the wide street led out. He suddenly made one quick left bank, and as he passed over the jungle, lifted his left hand out of the cockpit, and dropped three small objects in quick succession. The men watched as the small canisters descended quickly to the jungle floor, and heard three explosions. The plane circled again around the plaza, and then dipped down and began to approach the ground for a landing.
As he flew lower and lower it became clear he would be able to land at the far end of the plaza, and have twenty or thirty yards to slow down before hitting the road with the gasoline pump on it. The men stood ready. The Vought Corsair made a final, slow dip down on to the plaza. The pilot stalled the plane ten feet off the ground, and it dropped on to the plaza, made one great bounce and then settled on to the dirt, the tailskid dragging clouds of dust across the plaza.
When he reached the edge of the plaza, two men jumped quickly out and held on to the edge of the wing on either side, and two more nimbly caught on to the tail and the plane slowed rapidly down. Several more men moved in and held on the fuselage by gripping the edge of the cockpit.
All of them were running as fast as they could and trying to slow the plane down, at the same time they all looked down to where the gasoline pump was. As they approached it, the plane had slowed down to where all the men were hanging on to some part of the wing, and the plane slowly turned right to avoid the pump, and came to a full stop ten yards further.
Strickland ran over to the pilot. The pilot saluted him “Good morning. Lieutenant Schiltz at your service.”
“We’re sure glad to see, you Lieutenant. The captain’s in the truck over in the corner of the plaza. Where do you want to have us turn you around? And why did you drop those bombs?”
“I dropped the bombs because I didn’t want any surprises on that side of the plaza. So now, move me down to the end of the road and turn me around and bring the captain down here. Some of you can unload the supplies in the meantime. When I start to take off, have them fire into the jungle.”
“You heard what the ace said, you guys. Take up positions in the plaza facing this so-called runway and get ready to give him some cover when he takes off. Kalinski, you’re the hotshot, you go out by the water fountain, and when the plane takes off, you start firing into the jungle. You’re the point man. Got that?”
“I sure do, Sir, ain’t nobody going to stop this takeoff, Sir.”
“We’re depending on you, Kalinski. Don’t fuck up.”
“You can depend on me, Sir.”
They brought the captain back to the airplane in the truck, then backed the truck out to the plaza and placed it again in the corner. Glade took his place in the center of the plaza, waiting to hear the plane taking off. He pointed his rifle into the dense jungle and fired off a round.
“Hey, idiot, don’t shoot until the goddamned plane takes off” Strickland shouted.
Glade kept his rifle pointed into the jungle. He thought he heard rustling among the leaves, but he couldn’t be quite sure. The pilot started revving up his engine. He stared intensely at the foliage as he heard the plane coming his way. Suddenly a head with a bandanna covering the face showed between the leaves, and the person stepped out onto the plaza. Glade pointed his rifle. The rebel quickly took off the bandannas and Glade stared into the face of Maria Valenzuela.
“Goddammit, Kalinski, shoot” shouted Strickland. Glade looked back and then looked at the woman again.
“Shoot, or I’ll shoot you!”
Glade stood there frozen. Suddenly twenty shots rang out. The woman leaped backward like a cloth doll, jerked violently by a giant invisible hand, dropped her pistol in mid-air, and threw her arms out on both sides and landed on the plaza in a small, bloody cloud of dust and dirt. The Marines unloaded their rifles on the jungle in an enormous racket. The biplane’s engines roared and it came out on to the plaza trailing a cloud of dust that obscured the jungle next to it, and veered to the right and took off, clearing the fountain with only a few feet to spare, and climbed up into the sky.
Strickland went out to where Glade was standing, then called two men over.
“Put Kalinski under arrest for disobeying an order and endangering all of us.” He pointed a finger at Glade.
“You’re going to get a god-damned court-martial for this.”
Glade was taken back to the barracks and put under guard while paperwork was prepared to start court-martial proceedings. There were no legal officers in Nicaragua, so the military commander decided on sending him back to the United States on the next naval vessel headed through the Panama Canal.
While he was on the ship, Glade cut both his wrists, and was found unconscious in his bunk. Upon his return to the States he was given a medical discharge.