Plainsong For Private Bradley Manning-Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

He came drowsily awake with a start at about 11:20 that night, that last day of May Friday night of his long awaited journey, his journey to put paid to his past. He, Pete Markin (he had long ago, back in his late twenties after the hell of Vietnam, given up his appellation of choice, Peter Paul Markin, used since childhood when he thought three name monikers were “cool” in his shabby working poor world), was within the hour to begin to make the journey south, south to Maryland, to Fort Meade, to stand in long delayed physical solidarity with Private Bradley Manning the well-known whistle-blower soldier who was to stand on trial for his life the following Monday for what the government has charged were acts of aiding the enemy and giving indirect material support to terrorism by releasing a slew of documents under his control to Wikileaks. Just then though he was sleepy and a little cranky having caught just a cat nap of sleep during the evening to fend off the tiredness that would come early the next morning after a night of lonesome thought travel .

After washing his face, splashing some extra water to revive himself, he began to make some last minute adjustments to the luggage that he was to take with him, To fiddle with that luggage in order to stave off thinking about that other idea that was on his mind, that idea that had driven him to make this late hour trip south. To avoid that idea he thought of other midnight trips down south to Washington, D.C. for some anti-war demonstration or other related cause in the early 1970s and about the ways he had gotten there after he had found “religion” on the war issue, after he had become a winter soldier. Thought about the times that he and his then new flame Joyell (whom he later married but that was not a story he was turning over just then) had hitchhiked down picking up rides from road-weary bennie-eating truckers looking for company on their lonesome long haul runs, picking them up maybe just to hear the sound of human voices above the din of engines and highway noises. Of rides with assorted stoned mini-van freaks, Volkwagen denizens, that really was the only way to describe the rainbow-etched hippie crowds riding the roads in those blessed days. And too of the occasional stray regular driver, usually male, who maybe had had some fantasy about taking Joyell off into the night leaving her scraggly bearded boyfriend behind to hitch himself to oblivion. Yah, she had that look about her then, not beautiful not in the classic way, but rather fetching, fetching in the classic way. Then those roads got too dangerous, too hitchhike dangerous, once the ardor of the new age had turned to dust and the creeps and cranks began to mess up the clanky roads. (And the bloom of Joyell love had been strewn as well along some dusty back road, although she still held her fetching fantasy sway.)

Sometimes there would be quick runs, almost as seamless as if taking their own car. Other times they were stuck on dusty, dirty roads as if there were no such thing as cars. Of course it wasn’t always the hitchhike road, sometimes it was cramped buses provided by some anti-war organization or coalition, cheap rented buses with poor shocks, poor restroom facilities, bad air and hubris. Other times, flush times, it would be a quick flight airline (usually the Eastern shuttle), although then Joyell-less. As he thought about those long gone times he couldn’t quite dismiss that gnawing feeling that had been eating at him since the Manning case came on his horizon in September 2010.

That gnawing feeling had come to this- the accusations lodged against Private Manning concerning leaked information about American troop atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan had driven him back to his own soldier days, dog soldier days, dog soldier days in Vietnam and his own response to things he had witnessed, and later to information that he was privy to about American atrocities in that mist of war, that fog of war. He had dogged it, had kept his head down, had kept it way down. In the back of his mind he heard, or half heard the echo of some basic training drill sergeant telling his raw recruits to just follow orders and keep their heads down or else they would wind up in dreaded Fort Leavenworth. So he didn’t do a damn thing about it and lived with that for a long time. It had taken a long time, too long, before he realized that there were worse fates than jail. Now he was to be redeemed, to settle accounts with his past, redeemed by a dog soldier two generation removed, a soldier who had held his head up high, had acted against the monster wars. Yah, his brother.

Pete thought back to those dark days when his unit spear-headed assaults on villages out in the Vietnam boondocks, mainly around Kontum, burned everything in sight, declared every villager an agent of Hanoi, declared that the proper role of a soldier was to let God separate out the innocent from the guilty and though nothing of it. Later he had seen official reports, classified, of fistfuls of atrocities against civilians, and kept his head down, kept it way down. Reliving those scenes in his head was too much and after a while he could not think more in that vein and switched his thoughts forward to the solidarity rally down at Fort Meade scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. He expected to be tired after the long ride, expected to be faded by the heat of the day which would be well up in the high numbers and would be nothing but a chore to survive. He thought too, as he chuckled about it to himself, that he would rather go to the gates of hell and back than not be there, not be there to stand with his newfound brother, not be there for redemption day.

As Pete heard the honk from a car outside his house that indicated that the young man and his other two passengers that would be his companions on the long ride had arrived he thought about his brother Bradley Manning, about how that young man’s life story on the face of it had been a very unlikely source to be the agent of his own fate, and that he would spent his energies, every energy to gain freedom for that valiant winter soldier. As he left the house he yelled up to his wife goodbye, and yelled too “Free Bradley Manning” and asked her if it sounded okay, sounded energetic enough. Yah, it sounded just fine came the reply.