MARK SMITH MORE COLUMNS Mac Advertisement

This is quite a month for military related events, with both Armed Forces Day and Memorial Day holding place as well as anniversaries ranging from that of the 1863 battle of Chancellorsville to the 1954 defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu to the opening of the German attack on the Low Countries and...OK, here we are again...France in 1940 to the May Offensive in South Vietnam in 1968 and so on.

It's easy to get lost amid the ceremonies and "Taps" and the speechifying by men and women who can wrestle any platitude into submission with one hand tied behind their backs.

It's easy to forget what Memorial Day means, who it represents. This is a story about that, about one of the guys you probably never knew who put the "Memorial" in May 30. (No, don't try to ascribe some mystical meaning to Monday, May 28, it isn't there -- it's just another Monday.)

Talking to Veterans Service Officer Ken Shockley the other day, I was reminded of a guy called, no joke, "Mac," that ultimate all-purpose nickname for a G.I. He was actually named John McAndrews and he was married to a young woman in Indianapolis, Ind. He was a buck sergeant in a platoon in Charlie Company, 2d Battalion, 7th Cavalry, an outfit in the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

He joined the platoon about when I did, in mid January 1969, and he stepped right off on the wrong foot by doing exactly the right thing. A listening post's radio went out overnight. Nobody knew what had happened, only that we could not contact the L.P.

The three guys out in the woods should have waited until broad daylight but they started back in when it was still virtually dark. Mac saw three guys creeping toward the wire, had no reason to believe they were ours, and blew a claymore mine. One man was killed instantly. The other two survived. Mac was traumatized.

He nonetheless became one of the rocks of the platoon, first as our machine-gun squad leader, later as platoon sergeant. He became a favorite, always taking care of his people, keeping all our spirits up, always competent, and always refusing to tell me what the word "Ruffles" meant on his helmet cover.

I knew it referred to his wife, but all he would ever say was, "Aw, Smitty, sometime I'll tell you." But he never did.

Mac was terrifically handsome, Clark Gable without the jug-handle ears. You couldn't snap a bad photo of the guy.

In mid-May I was promoted and transferred to take over another platoon, and Mac rose to take my place as platoon sergeant. A week later he was shot through the brain and killed. The anniversary was this past Tuesday.

His platoon had moved ahead of mine trying to flank an enemy unit near the Saigon River between Tay Ninh and Quan Loi in III Corps, and it was pinned down. Mac quickly became a "line two" -- wounded-in-action -- having taken a bullet through the arm.

The medic patched him up amid the uproar, and Mac stayed on the job. Shortly thereafter we heard one of the guys was "line one" -- killed-in-action -- and I wondered who it was, this was not going to be a good day for my old platoon.

After the fight died out, I ran into Mac's boss, my erstwhile leader, and he said quietly, "Mac got hit." Yes, I thought, a nice wound in the arm and the prospect of pillows and sheets and air-conditioning and nurses. But the lieutenant looked as if he'd just watched his house burn down with all his family inside, and I realized what he meant: "Mac got it."

A few yards away my best buddy lay prone on a poncho with one arm up next to his head and a swirl of black hair that was mixed with a deep red.

Two years ago I was tracked down by Mac's sister, who alone among her family wanted to know what had really happened to her brother.

Her life had been changed inexplicably more than 30 years ago, and now, again, I realized mine had been too in that gloomy thicket of bamboo.

And she didn't know what "Ruffles" meant either.

In a couple of weeks I'll be enjoying a reunion of Charlie Company outside Atlanta, and this time there will be someone else there, Mac's sister, reminding us again what Memorial Day means and how the idea of "putting it behind you" is, at best, a bad joke.

World War I British soldier Siegfried Sassoon wrote it best:

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.