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John Kerry's Band of Brothers

By Bill Andrews

It was not your typical run-of-the-mill Super Bowl party that Sunday evening at VFW Post 4262 in Columbia, South Carolina. Most of the revelers were local veterans rooting riotously for the Panthers while another large contingent was from New England rooting uproariously for the Patriots.

If not for the fact that many of the locals had been working with the New England crowd for John Kerry's campaign over the weekend, the atmosphere might have been combustible. In any case, the mantra that night was that we would leave politics at the front door and only talk football. However, if Tuesday's Democratic primary in South Carolina was not on our lips during the game, it was certainly in the backs of our minds. John Edwards was a Panther fan and John Kerry was, of course, from Boston. The analogy between football and politics couldn't have been more dramatic.

Most of the Veterans for Kerry arrived in Columbia last Friday morning on a chartered bus from Boston; others drove or flew in. Bill Dulling, a Bostonian who was the point man in South Carolina with Veterans for Kerry, had called me earlier to see if I could join his "Band of Brothers," and I had agreed to drive down after work on Friday.

It seemed that the most animated and energized volunteers were those working for Wesley Clark, whose campaign headquarters was on the floor below ours in a building directly across from the state capitol. They were mainly college students who seemed to be having a great time waving to motorists and shouting chants, a din that competed with capitol traffic to produce a near-deafening cacophony of noises. The good-natured citizens of South Carolina merely made the most of this onslaught.

By contrast, our group of old World War II and Vietnam vets looked a little out of place. Despite the fact that we didn't sing, chant or hold massive banners, the press seemed to love us. We received considerably more coverage than we deserved by our numbers. Our advantage was that we spent much more time on the telephones than on the streets.

About two miles from the main headquarters was our telephone center, with crowded rooms set up like a telemarketing center. Our job was to call thousands of South Carolina veterans, making the case for Kerry with as much diplomacy and suggestive power as possible. Each of us had a miniature telephone pad with headset and lists of names, telephone numbers and dates of birth. Each name was color-coded to indicate era of service. Across the hall was another room staffed by our younger college-aged colleagues who called the general public. Their job was more challenging because they lacked the rapport we had with our target audience.

The greatest challenge for me was to learn to block out all the ambient noise from dozens of simultaneous conversations. Another distraction was the work of television news crews who pointed cameras and boom mikes in our faces as we made our calls. Aside from the local electronic media, a Japanese news team filmed us on Saturday and a camera crew from PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" filmed on Sunday.

Although the work was demanding, I enjoyed the opportunity to talk during breaks with other vets who told their war stories and explained how they got involved with the Band of Brothers. Working the phone on my left was Bob Barrie who joined the Navy in 1942 at the age of 17 and participated in the Iwo Jima and Okinawa operations. After the war he got his doctorate and worked on international trade agreements for the Truman and Kennedy administrations. On a call to a World War II vet on his list, the wife informed Bob that her husband had died the year before and that she was available if anyone was interested in a 75-year-old widow. On another call to a World War II vet, the wife said that her husband, a farmer, was out in the backyard. When asked if she might inform her husband of the call, she answered that he was literally in the backyard — buried. By far, this was the most difficult part of our work. Over a thousand veterans of World War II are dying each day and our calling list, updated a year ago, attested to this lamentable demographic.

On my right was Neal Tallon from Plattsburg, New York, a 58-year-old Vietnam vet who served with the 1st Military Intelligence Battalion near An Khe and was approached by the CIA for a career in that organization. He turned it down. Incredibly, he informed me that his father was born in 1893 and that his grandfather had been 25 years old when the Civil War began. After the primary election in South Carolina, Neal planned to leave for Florida for five weeks of similar work for the Kerry campaign. When I asked him how he could possibly take off work for that length of time, he told me he had just retired.

The big surprise for me was the number of veterans who were planning to vote for Kerry over Clark. My suspicion is that veterans can identify more with lieutenants than with generals. Moreover, with the momentum generated by Iowa and New Hampshire, many vets told me that although Kerry might not be their first choice on issues or personality, they were more interested in voting for someone who could beat Bush in November.

Late on Sunday, just before we were about to leave for the Super Bowl party at the VFW, Bill Dulling informed us that his pollsters had detected a narrowing point margin between Kerry and Edwards. Pumped up with enthusiasm, the Band of Brothers voted to stay with Bill an extra three days to make phone calls through the election. As I had an all-night drive ahead of me, I stayed at the party only long enough to take a few pictures and have a drink with former U.S. senator Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam vet who is one of John Kerry's strongest supporters. Leaving at the end of the first quarter, I caught the remainder of the game on the radio and missed the real action on the field and the half-time action on stage.