Ten days after high school graduation, I left the very middle-class Detroit suburb for Army basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Following my return in 1968 to attend Michigan, I left the Wolverine State for the Golden State’s far more pleasant climes.

A few times, I flew back to visit with my family. And while there, on a few occasions I’d engage my sister in a conversation about our next door neighbors, the Wagner’s. Karl was a carpenter, worked in the construction trades building homes through the area. He and Catherine had three kids; two daughters. The oldest girl, Sandra, was two years younger than was I and, for a while, was among one of my sister’s best friends. The next oldest daughter, Lois, was my youngest sister’s best friend, for a while. And for a while, as Sandra began to blossom in puberty, I felt incredibly drawn to her. Juvenile hormones, steadily growing for more than a decade, eventually burst their binding chains with intensity. It’s how all life is. 

I recall one summer evening in particular. For whatever reason, my parents were out of the house and both my sisters were in their upstairs bedroom. How it happened that I nudged Sandra aside, or how I coaxed her into our finished basement . . . Nearly five decades later, it’s all a blur. I wanted to . . . what? I had a vague notion. But I was young; thirteen, maybe fourteen. I had no experience. I had no moxie. I had no moves. All I had was expanding desire. What I recall is that I’ve little doubt that Sandra might have gone along with whatever I had in mind. I felt alive. Sandra was alive. I could see it in her eyes, the way she coyly looked at me, and in her smile.

I knew I wanted to kiss her, and touch her. I felt that she felt that she wanted me to as well. But then, all of a sudden I heard my sister’s voice, “Ed, what are you doing down there?”

“Nothing . . .” And that’s as close as I got to Sandra. Ever.

Except for my interest in Sandra, everything was “for a while.” That while changed dramatically when Catherine died from cancer. Sandra would have been around thirteen. Ostensibly to help out, Felicia, Karl’s fully-grown second or third cousin took up residence in the house. And Karl began drinking, and, on more than one instance, one or more of his carpenter buddies would join him, and on more than one occasion the pal would stay the night.

Winter in Michigan is the entirety of the time when the weather is miserable. It doesn’t have to be snow driven. The ground doesn’t have to be blanketed white, for it to be winter. Winter frequently lasts from some time in early November into the second or third week of April, when the air is damp, cold . . . ugly, and the ground cracks underfoot in a sort of permafrost, or is squishy, soggy from a partial melt.

The calendar said “spring,” but the weather remained winter when I saw Sandra slowly making her way home from school. Her head was down. Her books were tight to her chest.

“Hi! Mind if I walk with you?”

Sandra, if she issued any reply, I don’t remember what it was. What I recall with extraordinary clarity was that Sandra seemed dead; a walking, lifeless zombie. There was nothing in her walk, nothing in her voice, and a gray emptiness in her eyes that sadly mirrored the season.  

“Ed, I’m surprised you didn’t know about Karl,” my sister chided me, as if I was supposed to know, as if either our mom or dad would have brought me into the circle, as if during one of our California-to-Michigan phone conversations the topic of Karl Wagner would have come up.

Before the family fled from Michigan to Texas, there were strong rumors — supposedly backed by sufficient evidence that would have warranted police investigation — that Karl had been engaged in a protracted sexual relationship with Felicia, and that perhaps Felicia had brought Sandra into the sport. (Lesbian, heterosexual, incest . . . no one knows for certain. The move out of state truncated the inquiry that would have been more conclusive. But the sudden change in both the daughters’ personalities definitely pointed to something vile.)  Regardless how deprecating it all was, my sister told me that, just prior to the family’s move, Sandra confided to her — under the most grave promise that my sister keep the secret — that, more than just a few times, a few of Karl’s friends, after some drinking, had had sex with her.

“I thought there was something, I suspected something like that,” was my reply to my sister. “But how the hell could a father . . .? Do that, let any of that happen, to a daughter?”

Karl’s story, and why we better think it over.

Karl was one of the first and one of the few to survive the D-Day assault on Normandy. After the beachhead had been established, he was reassigned to an infantry unit that pushed through France, en route to Germany. During one of the winter months in late’44, his company had seen some but not a lot of action. What Karl experienced was long days and long weeks of cold and very little sleep. German units and patrols either were everywhere, or were believed to be. It was especially bad during the bitter morning mists of vague shadows that could be the enemy, or a quivering bush, or a feral dog. Regardless what it was, a wrong guess could be instantly deadly — or worse; a slow, agonizing wound that ended in slow, agonizing death or ghastly mutilation. You don’t rest easy when a cracking twig was portentous of fates you fought as much as you did the Germans to keep from your eyes.

One morning, Karl was doing guard duty while the other members of his squad were curled against a row hedge, trying to get as many winks as they could. There ahead, in the gray: movement, toward the squad. Slow. Almost silent. Bent figures, steadily, ominously inching their way toward his location. Karl nudged the squad to as alert a condition as he could, but there wasn’t time. There just wasn’t time to devote time to much pondering. Germans.

Their great coats, helmeted heads and rifles were as clear as his fingers were numb. Karl opened fire on the advancing enemy. One shot was followed by another, which was followed by another. He heard the screams as one by one they collapsed, fallen into immortality and beyond a threat to him and his men.

First the company wanted to know. Then the battalion wanted to know. “How large was the enemy?” “Where was the enemy?” “What were the map coordinates?” “Are you still taking fire?” “Hold your position. Under all circumstances, hold your position, don’t move!”

When the mist cleared, under the growing dawn, Karl, his squad, and reinforcements made their way to the scene of the battle, to count the German dead, hoping to find any still breathing and able to provide information about other German positions; numbers, strength, what have you. But what they found were not Germans. What they found was a French woman, old looking well beyond her years as the product of severe malnutrition, and two young girls; perhaps, even likely, her daughters. One whose skull had been half blown away and the gray of brains splattered over her threadbare garments and the snow.

Catherine had reported all this to my mother when my mother inquired about the howls she’d heard late one night coming from the Wagner house. The howls were Karl, caught in a nightmare he was never able to fully dislodge. Until she took ill, Catherine had been able to calm her husband somewhat, when the night riders would bring it all back. But after she died, no one save heavy drink could serve as the balm. He just went down, and down, and down, and he took his daughters with him.

That was the big war, the “good war.” But it’s been a part of every war, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Explanation is not exoneration. Okay. That’s true enough. But neither the mind nor the spirit are built “Ford-tough.” Take a paperclip. Stretch it out into a wire. Begin bending it. Keep bending it. Don’t stop. Continue to give it just the right dose of stress, for just the right length of time . . . and by all that is holy in this world: do NOT dare beg to know why it broke! Or what your responsibility in the matter was, or what it must thereafter be. 

And know this too: for five years we have been sending our men and women into the scorching matrix, to face protracted, repeated bending and twisting. And we send them back. And we send them back again and again and again. And as this image gains increasing fierceness, ask yourself these additional questions. Would you treat any other creature on earth in such a fashion? If you encountered someone else so mistreating an animal, would you stand by ignoring it, or would you report the cruelty to the authorities?

The article, highlighted below, is what summoned the story of Karl and Sandra back into my thoughts. I’m not the least going to judge the soldiers, though I do harshly judge those who don’t want to weigh their own role in the tragedies. 

— Ed Tubbs

G.I. Tells of Ordering Unarmed Iraqi’s Death

By SOLOMON MOORE

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq — A top Army sniper testified Friday in a military court that he had ordered a subordinate to kill an unarmed Iraqi man who wandered into their hiding position near Iskandariya, then planted an AK-47 rifle near the body to support his false report about the shooting. 

Sergeant Vela is the third soldier to be charged in the death of the Iraqi, Genei Nesir Khudair al-Janabi, last May. Sergeant Hensley and another soldier, Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., were acquitted of murder charges last year, but were convicted of planting evidence.

All three soldiers were elite snipers with the 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska. Sergeant Vela’s lawyer, James Culp, of Austin, Tex., did not dispute that his client had shot and killed Mr. Janabi, but emphasized the battlefield stresses the soldiers endured.

Mr. Culp argued that Sergeant Vela had had only a few hours of sleep over three days of constant operations.  Mr. Culp also said his client’s superiors pressed his squad to increase their kill rate.

Sergeant Hensley said that on May 11, he led his squad to a hiding spot overlooking a village they suspected was controlled by Sunni insurgents. But after several days with little rest, soldiers were drifting into sleep. “I woke up to a local national squatting in front me with his hands up,” Sergeant Hensley testified. The man was Mr. Janabi, who lived nearby.

Sergeant Hensley said he tackled Mr. Janabi and pinned him to the ground.  Mr. Janabi was followed into the hide-out by his son, Mustafa, 17.

Sergeant Hensley and his team held the two captive until he spotted several Iraqi men in the distance and Mr. Janabi became agitated. Sergeant Hensley feared that Mr. Janabi’s thrashing would alert the other Iraqis. 

Sergeant Hensley said he released the boy and ordered everyone except Sergeant Vela to leave because he “didn’t want them to bear witness” to what they were about to do.  “I pretty much knew at this point that something was going to happen to the father,” Sergeant Hensley testified. “He was making too much noise. I thought that the only way to protect my guys was to take this guy’s life.” 

Sergeant Hensley said he ordered Sergeant Vela to load his 9-millimeter pistol, and then made four radio calls to his command post to support a cover story. The first call reported that an Iraqi man was approaching, the second that the man was armed, the third that the sergeant was preparing to shoot.  The fourth call confirmed that he had killed his target. 

“At that point his head was at Sergeant Vela’s feet, and I asked him if he was ready and then I moved out of the way,” Sergeant Hensley said. He ordered Sergeant Vela to fire, and Sergeant Vela complied immediately, Sergeant Hensley said.  “A round was fired into his head,” he said. 

Mr. Janabi did not die immediately, Sergeant Hensley said. As his brain hemorrhaged, he choked on his blood. Sergeant Hensley simulated the gurgling sound and testified that he ordered Sergeant Vela to fire again. “It wasn’t uncommon for us to have stuff like that out there,” he said. 

When a military prosecutor exhibited a picture of the dead man, the young man said, “That’s my father.”

Another was shown and he repeated, “That’s my father.” 

“Did your father look like this when they released you?” the prosecutor asked. 

“No, he didn’t,” the son answered.