Machine Dreams

by on East Main. Big ambitions, right? Tell Bess to expect us and don’t worry too much.
    love to everybody,
Billy
    WESTERN UNION
TELEGRAM
    MR. AND MRS. MITCHELL HAMPSON
68 PINE STREET
BELLINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA
    INFORMATION RECEIVED STATES THAT YOUR SON, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS WILLIAM MITCHELL HAMPSON, HAS BEEN LISTED AS MISSING IN ACTION EFFECTIVE JUNE 1970 WHILE PARTICIPATING IN AN OPERATION AGAINST A HOSTILE FORCE. YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY ADVISED AS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IS RECEIVED.
    UNITED STATES ARMY
DEPT. OF THE ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C.
    Spec. 4 Robert Taylor/RA 21350688
Co. C, 227th Aviation Bn.
1st Infantry Div.
APO Frisco, 96490

July 5, 1970
    Dear Miss Hampson. You may not know of me but I shared a hooch with your brother, Billy, and Luke at Lai Khe. Their chopper went down in a night operation west of Tay Ninh and I was in that operation. I was interviewed for the After Action Report, but those aren’t released most times and I’m writing because we had agreements, and Billy told me to write to you. He was real fond of you and used to read us some of your letters (the funny parts) out loud. All this is real bad for us here. Your family will want to know as much as possible about what happened. Night of June 30 we were resupplying an 18-man unit, just two choppers. We had no word of a hot zone but we came in very hot. Their chopper took a lot of hits, lifted off, started flaming from the engine at about a hundred feet. Both of us on the right of our machine, the copilot and me, saw the gunners jump more or less simultaneous. The chopper moved forward maybe fifteen feet as the pilot tried to touch down, then fell nose first and exploded. We had to pull off and call in artillery, and the area was not searched until dawn. There was nothing left of the unit, but they were all accounted for, and the pilots were with the chopper wreckage. If Luke and Billy had not got clear of the wreck, we would have found them. If they’d been killed in the ambush, we would have found them. Since they had no weapons or radios, it’s likely they hid and were captured as the VC pulled out. If they were not hurt and were trying to evade capture, they might have circled around as the fighting continued, and been captured somewhere between there and the nearest friendlies—which would have been Firebase X-Ray, about 20 clicks east. But there were a lot of VC in the area, doesn’t seem likely they would have gotten far. There is no way of knowing. I hope something more definite is learned, but I doubt it. I send you and your family my condolence. We have lost our own inBilly and Luke, but I hold out some hope for them, at least for a while. Luke was The Vet and Billy was our new guy, they were tight. They would have hung together if possible, I tell you that.
    Sincerely yours,
Spec. 4 Robert Taylor

THE WORLD
Danner

1972
    M y father owned a concrete plant. He wore khaki shirts and work pants, the same kind of clothes he wore in wartime photographs when he was building airstrips in New Guinea and teaching the Papuan natives how to operate steam rollers. They could learn a good bit, he told me once. In grade school my brother Billy and I rode the Brush Fork school bus from our house in the country past bus shelters emblazoned with our father’s name, and the name of the plant: MITCH CONCRETE. The words were painted on the three-sided shelters in large red letters. The bus driver shopped at each shed to pick up children who had walked as far as a mile or two down dirt roads to the highway. The shelters were well built and didn’t leak. They had corrugated fiberglass roofs, concrete floors, and built-in wooden benches painted white. The bus shelters were not actually heated, but when they were under construction my father brought up the possibility of building sliding aluminum doors across the fronts to cut down the wind and rain, the blowing snowin winter. The school board said no, that some of the kids waiting in the shelters would be junior high or even high school students, and it wasn’t wise to equip the shelters with privacy. Besides, if the sheds were built deeply enough, a portion of wind and rain would be eliminated. My father followed this advice, and there was no recorded case of sexual activity in the bus shelters.
    The shelters are still standing, well kept and newly lettered with the same two words, because the subsequent owners of the concrete plant decided to keep the original name. My father sold the plant after my