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The aftermath of Mail Call filled the mess hall with the sounds of rustling papers, knives slicing through tape holding battered care packages closed, and an unusual level of quiet as soldiers focused on their letters. Different groups sitting together occasionally broke out into a flurry of muted conversation—at one table a Sergeant proudly showed off the photograph of his new daughter to his friends. At another table, a private received some ribbing from his best friend as they compared notes on the spring farming conditions in Iowa and Ohio. An occasional curse, the location hard to determine, followed by a soldier stomping out usually meant someone’s girlfriend or wife left them for a boyfriend in the States.
Colonel John ‘Hannibal’ Smith hardly ever received mail. With both his parents gone, the most he received was a general letter from one of his brothers assuring him that nothing had changed on the home front in the three months since the last missive. His Boys, as he affectionately dubbed his team of highly skilled and dangerous commandos, had bunched up at the table behind him. BA Baracus, the team’s bad-tempered Sergeant, finally had his mail privileges restored last week and just received a fresh care package from his mother. That usually meant homemade cookies that had to be eaten quickly before Vietnam’s humidity ruined them—a task his teammates had no qualms about helping him with. The Sergeant always grumbled and pretended to share only because it beat the alternative of wasting his mother’s baking but they all already knew every line of the routine. Despite outward appearances, if a person managed to become BA’s friend, they quickly realized his gruff exterior hid one of the most generous and giving hearts God ever gave a man.
The team’s pilot, Captain H.M. Murdock, had received his own Dear John letter in the last mail call. With no mail of his own to share, he accepted his portion of the cookies with an insistence that they would heal his broken heart. While the man took his loss with a decent amount of presumed good humor, they all knew he was hurting. Hannibal suspected only the team’s supply officer, Lieutenant Templeton ‘Face Man’ Peck, knew most of the details though. The two men were best friends and shared everything. They also had an uncanny way of communicating with each other, sometimes having whole conversations in one or two glances.
Face himself had two letters, one he quickly stuffed into his shirt before he thought anyone saw him do so, and the second from Father Magill. The Supply Officer had already regaled his friends with tales of what an orphanage full of kids could get up to. Now he re-opened his case for the pre-canonization of Fathers Magill and O’Malley, and for Sister Gwenie, outlining his arguments on a point-by-point basis. From what Hannibal could tell, only Captain Ray Brenner and Murdock’s door gunner Tommy seemed to be listening. Ray’s own letter from his girlfriend sat in front of him and he gamely endured the customarily teasing that came from the other guys when he refused to divulge his letter’s contents.
Satisfied that his Boys were thoroughly distracted for a few minutes and, therefore, not about to start any trouble he might want to get in on, Hannibal turned his attention to the men sitting at his table. Colonel Roderick Decker sat opposite of him, brow furrowed as he ploughed through a very long and formal looking letter with his usual air of bulldog-like determination.
“What’s the matter Rod?” Hannibal quipped, taking a sip of the flavored hot water that passed for coffee here. “You gettin’ a divorce?”
“No.” The man scowled, never looking up from his letter. Decker’s private streak ran a mile wide and Hannibal gave up waiting for more details after a moment. He turned his attention to the man sitting next to him—Major Henry Allen had several letters in front of him but he always opened the ones from his wife and his daughter Amy first. Unlike Henry’s usual pattern, Lizzy’s letter still sat in its envelope, as he seemed stuck on his daughter’s news. Hannibal noted the thickness of the letter—Amy had covered at least three sheets of paper in her distinctive, looping cursive. Henry still focused on the top page, his eyes roving over the first few paragraphs as if he could not quite absorb the news.
“What’s she doing?” Hannibal finally asked when Henry’s eyes traveled to the top of the page again, “Quitting college to become a full-time hippie and live in a commune?”
“She’s engaged.” Henry responded quietly.
“To a hippie in a commune?” Decker’s head shot up suddenly, barely noticing his companions’ conversation until the various fragments collided in his mind like a train wreck.
“No!” Henry snapped back before pausing uncertainly, “At least….I don’t think so…” Suddenly pricked, he pursued the letter faster, giving the other men the key points. “Let’s see…She met him in college…”
“Great.” Hannibal rolled his eyes, taking another sip of his coffee. “Your daughter really went after one of those punks who’s hiding on a campus, wearing beads and burning his draft card as a protest? Or is he using it to light a joint?”
“No….” Henry’s brow furrowed together, “No….let’s see….Amy’s excited so she’s a little all over the place in her explanation. Um….they met in college….he was a business major…but he left college to enlist…”
“Point in the kid’s favor.” Hannibal muttered, tilting his head toward Henry. “At least he’s not a draft dodger.”
“Looks like he believed the war wouldn’t be over by the time he graduated…and he’d rather volunteer and get some control over his situation then get drafted and let the military decide everything for him. She also says that if he serves and discharges honorably, he can use the benefits he’d earn to finish college and get the two of them set up comfortably…”
“Sounds like the kid’s thinking ahead…” Decker grumbled but it was a quieter grumble then his usual timbre so Hannibal assumed it meant his fellow Colonel approved of the boyfriend’s plan.
All of that information, and quite a bit more that Henry saw no point in sharing, covered the first page and half of the second one. Henry reached the mid-point and nodded, “Oh….here’s Amy’s request. It looks like the kid ended up earning his Beret so she’s asking that, if I run into him, I’ll do everything I can to make sure he comes home safely.”
“Can’t fault the girl for that….” Hannibal trailed off as an odd sensation prickled up his back and he glanced over his shoulder at his team. BA and Murdock were still haggling over the cookies and Ray now seemed to be directing the negotiations. Face watched them, laughing and insisting that Murdock could not learn one of his scams quickly enough to be of any use…but every few seconds, the Lieutenant’s eyes darted over toward the table claimed by the higher-ranking officers. Hannibal studied the younger man out of the cover of his eye for a moment but finally wrote it off as Face’s natural inclination to be nosy. It really was one of the younger man’s best traits under most situations—Supply Officers were only successful if they kept their ears to the ground after all.
Henry either did not notice the activity behind him or paid it no mind. “I know I can’t fault Amy for that…but my daughter’s engaged and I’ve never even met the guy! Being in the army doesn’t mean anything—we’re in a draft period. If you can stand up straight and breath, they’ll bring you in. Am I supposed to scour the whole warzone until I figure out who this kid is? That is if he’s even in Vietnam….the army’s still deploying people to other countries in the middle of all of this. For all I know, he could be Stateside and serving his term over there and Amy might just be confused as to where he went…or he lied to her about where he went. What if the guy’s just stringing her along and is using the excuse of being in the army to run around behind her back while she thinks he’s overseas?”
“Finish reading her letter before your Dad-tuned brain overrides your Officer brain.” Hannibal grinned, seeing amusement in the situation since he had no daughters of his own to worry about. “Maybe Amy will give you more information on the last page.”
Henry flipped the second page over and a photograph that had been sandwiched between the second and third pages slipped out, landing image-side down on the table. Ignoring it for a moment, he skimmed the writing and shook his head, “No. The rest of the letter’s mostly her extolling how smart and kind and generous and clever he is….” Exhaling forcibly, he looked away from the laundry list of traits his besotted daughter associated with her intended before he even reached the paragraph where Amy remembered to give her father the young man’s name. Instead, he picked up the photo and quickly rolled his eyes. “Oh come on…this kid is her knight in shining armor? He looks like he just hung up his alter-server robes the day before he enlisted. Give the kid a tie and some glasses and he’d be an accountant! Why’d Amy fall for this kind of guy? Good Lord…He’s….he’s…”The Major abruptly paused his rant and pulled the picture closer to his face in a bid to study it better. The he jerked back in surprise, “He’s your sneaky Lieutenant, Hannibal!”
In the same instance Henry’s eyes widened in recognition, a clatter came from the table behind them and Murdock yelped, “What? Is there a snake under your seat, Face? Where’re you going so fast?”
When the pages of Amy’s letter, and the photograph, finally floated down to the table in front of Henry’s vacated spot, Hannibal set them in a neat pile. An odd silence descended over the rest of the occupants of the two tables for several minutes until Murdock finally broke it. He appeared to be the only one completely unsurprised by the chain of events and just grinned gleefully, “You know Colonel; I never figured I’d get to see someone run so fast they leave something suspended in mid-air for a minute outside’a the Looney Tones. Now here I got to see it twice in five minutes….a coffee cup and a bunch of papers. I’d call that pretty educational.”
“They weren’t suspended in the air, Fool.” BA grumbled, recovering his usual scowl, “Face’s coffee cup hit the table right ‘way—good thing he’d finished it off a'ready—and the paper just floated down.”
“Should…one of us go make sure Major Allen doesn’t maim Face?” Ray inclined his head toward Hannibal. “After all, Face has a mission coming up tomorrow.”
“Nah.” Hannibal shrugged, reaching into his uniform pocket for a cigar. “They’re going to have to sort this out. They might as well do it now while the timing’s good…and unless Amy’s knocked up, Allen won’t be maiming anyone today. The two of them just need to reach an understanding.”
All the younger men exchanged glances and BA sniggered quietly. They all knew what kind of ‘understanding’ Henry wanted to reach with the younger man.
Typically unconcerned with private property, Hannibal picked up the photo and glanced at it before showing it to the others with a smirk. The camera caught Face’s trademark grin at a level of genuineness rarely seen by his friends, his arms draped over the shoulders of a pretty brunette and his chin settled on the top of her head. Her hands rested over his, angled so the ring on her left hand clearly showed up.
“I dunno….” Murdock leaned over to take the photo with a grin, leaving Hannibal’s hands free to light his cigar. “I think they’re a cute couple myself. Major Allen could do a whole lot worse’n have Facey for his son-in-law.” He elbowed BA good-naturedly. “Don’t you think so, Big Guy? A man could do a whole lot worse’n have Face join his family.”
BA rolled his eyes, Murdock’s enthusiastic jabbing barely moving him. “I’m gonna have to give it some thought but I suppose it could be a worse guy.” He admitted gruffly. “It could be yo---uh…someone like…him.” BA abruptly cut off his usual shot at the pilot to gesture at one of the guys across the mess hall. The end result had less impact then he wanted but the Sargent had no desire to abruptly shove his thumb down on Murdock’s wounded heart.
As Murdock affected a hurt gasp and Tommy muttered something low enough that only the pilot could hear it, Hannibal put the photo on top of the letter. “Murdock’s right, BA. Henry could do a whole lot worse for a son-in-law. Face isn’t a bad kid. He’s just….tricky until you’re used to him.”
From the length of the letter Amy penned and the way she grinned into the camera, Hannibal figured she had already gotten more than ‘used’ to the smooth-talking Lieutenant. Glancing at the picture again, Hannibal bit down on the end of his cigar. Now he had one more reason to get all his Boys back to the States safely.