I knelt beside him and yelled for another medic. I took a bandage off my belt, opened it, and tried to remember what to do with a chest wound. Put the plastic from the packing next to the wound, I thought, when Bratcher yelled from the bushes, “The man’s dead, Lieutenant! Get off the fucking trail!”
“He ain’t dead!” I yelled as I placed the bandage on his chest.
“He ain’t breathing no more,” Bratcher said right above me.
Dirt and dust were settling on Goss’s eyes, but he was not blinking. He stared vacantly off in the distance, his mouth open. I knew by the smell that his bowels had emptied as his body relaxed in death.
“Get off the trail, Lieutenant,” Bratcher insisted.
I stood up and turned to look at the radio operator, who was lying half on and half off the trail. A bullet zipped by in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye, up the trail, I saw a VC rise up out of a hole.
I had reached a point where nothing was making much sense. I had been absorbed in moving out to help Pete—and then the mine blast and Goss dying and the radio operator lying dead and rounds coming down the trail. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion as adrenaline surges overloaded my mind. Trying to focus on each separate event, I saw things in flashes, as if my surroundings were illuminated by a strobe light. The VC was still coming out of the hole. I started to turn and look at him, but then I thought about Pete and getting to him and I looked down at Goss and I turned back to see the radio operator’s feet lying out on the trail and I started yelling at myself: Think!
Think! Think!
Another round whizzed by in front of me. I turned back around so that, for a fleeting moment, I was looking up the trail. Then I clearly saw the VC standing up in the hole near a ditch and aiming his rifle at me. Bratcher was in the bushes beside the trail, and I dived toward him. I saw the muzzle flash from the VC’s gun.
A searing pain in my buttocks brought me to my senses. In mid-dive, I knew that I had been shot. Bratcher grabbed me by my fatigue jacket and pulled me into the bushes while Duckett’s men opened fire down the trail.
A medic crawled up. Bratcher said he was okay; the medic should look after me. Lying on my stomach I took some deep breaths, pulled off my web gear, and undid my belt. When I pushed my pants down I felt blood collecting between my legs.
Woolley knelt down beside me. “We’re going to move out, Jimmy, and try to get to Pete’s platoon. I’ve called a medevac. You’re going to be all right. Sergeant Rome will take your platoon.” There were heavier mortar explosions now, in the distance to the front of us.
“Get to Pete. Hurry,” I said as I looked up.
The medic worked on my buttocks. I could not see what he was doing, but he moved off soon without a word and started treating other wounded, including Bratcher and Beck. I felt weak as the adrenaline faded. My butt felt like a knife had been plunged into it.
Later, the less badly wounded in my ragged group carried the more seriously wounded to the edge of the field and went back for the dead. Beck carried Goss in his arms.
In time a medevac helicopter landed near our purple smoke. It was almost completely loaded with other casualties when it landed and could only take the two most seriously wounded from our group. Bratcher and I were the last to leave, with the dead, a couple of hours later. As we lifted off, we saw rows of men in body bags by the edge of the field, close to where Peterson’s platoon had been hit. I knew that Peterson was in one and I felt like crying.
At a medevac clearing station, Maj. Gen. Jonathan O. Seaman, commander of the 1st Division, came through and passed out Purple Hearts to us. Later, at what must have been the most impersonal, the most insensitive aid station in Vietnam, I had my wound cleaned and stitched. Beck and Bratcher had their wounds treated and were discharged to return to the battalion base camp. I was admitted to the convalescent tent next to the operating room.
The next morning I was aware of the trucks before I opened my eyes. Air brakes hissed as the tractor trailers came to a stop. When the trucks started out again, they whined in first gear and then, after a pause, more whining as the driver shifted into second.
I shared the tent with six men who were talking amongst themselves, undisturbed by the trucks. The sides to the tent were raised and only the mosquito netting was between me, lying on a cot in the corner, and a busy intersection of two dirt roads. Heavy olive-drab transfer trucks were passing, one after another, throwing up billowing clouds of dust. It was barely past sunrise and I was already covered by a thin layer of dirt.
“Get used to it, man,” said one of the soldiers from the other end. “It goes with the territory here. But look on the bright side, it’s better than the fucking field, right?”
I lay on my stomach most of the day and thought about Peterson. I remembered when we first met in OCS, Pete’s exhausted face during the eleventh-week run when he kept saying, “We’re going to make it, we’re going to make it, we’re going to make it,” and then a few days later when Pete’s friend scared us into thinking Pete was going to be paneled. I could see Pete’s shock as the man came to our door and just stood there. For days thereafter we said, “Oh no, Mr. Death, get away from our door. Get away!” Other memories flashed through my mind—our nights drinking in that honky-tonk bar in Junction City, laughing together, racing our sports cars over the prairies of Nebraska, sitting on the top deck of the USNS Mann on the way to Vietnam, talking about the past, wondering about the future. Ours had been a rich, robust, and trusting bond. He was my best friend, ever. Now he was dead.
Then I thought about the insurance policy, and not sending in my change-of-beneficiary form. I felt tremendous guilt. Pete had been so trusting and I had been such a heel. “Pete,” I said under my breath, “I promise to you, wherever you are, that when I get that check, that I’m sending it to your Momma. Please forgive me.”
More trucks hissed and whined outside and dust continued to settle on my bed. The men joked and talked loudly among themselves at the other end of the tent.
I felt so terribly lonely.
I recalled how Pete and I had silently shared the sorrow of Patrick’s death a few days before, how we had walked alongside each other as my platoon headed back toward the perimeter, and the pain in his face later that same day when he came back in with his dead. The last time I saw him he was lifting his M-16 in the air as his platoon went out of sight to recon in front.
Every word I had heard over the radio when I switched it to the battalion frequency came back to me. Pete’s platoon was wiped out. “The lieutenant’s dead,” the platoon sergeant had said. The platoon sergeant, himself to die within minutes, had eulogized my best friend with the noise of battle in the background: “The lieutenant’s dead.” Pete was so proud of his commission. Maybe it was the way he would have wanted to go, but for me, I had never felt such sorrow.
I tried to write a letter to his parents that day, but it was blubbering nonsense. I crumpled it up and threw it toward the trucks outside.
That night after supper the medic came down the aisle of cots. He was humming and had a gigantic needle in his hand. “Needle time, Parker, show me your fanny.”
I reacted angrily, without thinking, telling the medic to stick the needle up his own ass.
The man walked away but soon returned with a medical corps major.
“Specialist Wallace says that you are very uncooperative,” the major said with a frown, “that you refused to let him give you your tetracycline shot. It is not helpful if you act like a child. You can understand that, can’t you? We won’t stand for any more outbursts. We have too much to do to hold the hands of everyone here.”
He was right, of course. After he left the medic jabbed me with the needle and I yelled.
About midmorning the next day Terry Mulcay, the battalion headquarters company commander, walked in. I yelled out a greeting, happy to see a familiar face.
He sat on a nearby cot and handed me some mail. He told me the battalion had secured th
e area around Cu Chi before being replaced at night by the 25th Division. Some VC had popped up in the middle of the substitution of forces and fired off a couple of rounds. The 25th Division, new to Nam, returned fire with everything they had. It was a helluva show outside Cu Chi that night, he said.
Our battalion was now located in a defensive position near the Cambodian border. It had taken heavy casualties, and he named some of the men killed. I waited for Peterson’s name but sensed that Mulcay would name Peterson last, out of respect for our friendship, or so he could offer his personal condolences.
He didn’t mention Pete.
“Pete? Pete wasn’t killed?” I asked incredulously.
“Nope,” he said.
I knew before the word was completely out of his mouth that Pete was alive. Happiness surged through me—incredible joy. Peterson, that son of a bitch, wasn’t dead. He was alive. That son of a bitch!
“He was one of the first ones hit in his platoon,” Mulcay said. “Took a round in his right shoulder. It knocked him back, and as he was spinning around, he took another round in the same shoulder from behind. The first one took out most of his shoulder bone, and the one in the back took out a lot of meat and muscle, but he’s okay. He’s going to live. I just saw him in the 93d Field Hospital. He’s heading back to the States tomorrow or the next day. No more war for him.”
Peterson was alive. That son of a bitch.
Later that morning on the way back from the latrine, I shuffled down to a Jeep ambulance parked in the shade at the rear of the tent. Behind the wheel, Private First Class “Richardson” [alias] was reading a Playboy magazine.
“Howyoudoing?” I said in my best “good ol’boy” tone.
The driver looked first at my face and then down at my gown.
“Okay,” he said.
“Where’s the 93d Field Hospital?”
“It’s about twenty-five miles from here. Nice, very nice-looking nurses there. Round-eyed beauties. Got me some lady friends over there. Why?”
I said, “I got a friend there, too, who’s heading back to the States tomorrow. We’ve gone through a lot together.”
Richardson continued to look at me.
“No problem in driving over? You can just get on the road and go? Can you go there, Mr. Richardson?” I asked.
“Well, you’re supposed to have an armed escort. When we’re carrying people back and forth, we get an MP (military police) detail to come along, but it’s no problem. Only once in a blue moon does anyone ever get shot at.”
“What do you think about us going, you and I, over to the 93d? Who you got to ask? You got to ask anybody, Private Richardson?”
“You got any war souvenirs? VC flags, guns, that kind of thing?”
“Nope,” I said, but I had hope. This guy had a price. This guy would go.
Suddenly I had a thought and left without a word. In the ward I bent over awkwardly, pulled my fatigues from under the bed, and took the Purple Heart medal General Seaman had given me out of my pants pocket—dried blood was on the box—and carried it outside to Richardson.
“General Seaman gave me this Purple Heart,” I said, opening the box as if it were very special, “and I’ll give it to you if you take me to the 93d today. Twenty-five miles there, I’ll spend an hour with my buddy, and twenty-five miles back. No problem. You’ll have an interesting day, I’ll have an interesting day, and you’ll get a real trophy for the rest of your life. What do you say?”
Richardson examined the medal closely. He finally looked up and around to see if anyone was looking.
“Okay, go get dressed, we’ll go.”
“Get dressed?” I asked.
“You ain’t going like that, with your ass sticking out of that gown, are you?”
“No, I reckon I’m not,” I said, knowing that the only clothes I had were the bloody fatigues I was wearing when I was wounded.
Specialist Wallace, the needle man, watched me as I came back in and shuffled to my cot. I smiled at him, the fatigues at my feet. He must have noticed a change in my attitude and thought something was up. He started toward my cot.
“I wonder,” I asked in a friendly tone, “if there is a shuttle that runs from this aid station to the 93d Field Hospital? You know, a bus or something?”
“You can’t just check into any hospital you want to, you know. You’re here, you belong to me, I’m going to make you whole again. You can’t make no reservations at the 93d.”
“No, you don’t understand. A friend of mine is there, leaving tomorrow for the States. Got shot up pretty bad. Need to see him. Just over and back, that’s all. Shuttle?”
“No shuttle. The doctor has ordered bed rest for you until your wound has healed. Even if there was a shuttle, you couldn’t go. You can’t even sit down.”
“What if I were to catch a ride? Say, a helicopter ride over and back? What do you think? Would the major go along with it?”
“No,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Would you please go ask him? Just ask him if I could get a pass to go to the 93d. That’s all.”
“He’s going to say no,” Wallace assured me, but he turned and walked out of the tent.
After dressing in the latrine and slipping on my boots—the laces had been sliced by the hospital staff when I arrived—I shuffled down to the ambulance. The stitching hurt when it caught in my pants. Richardson started his Jeep and I walked around to the passenger side. Suddenly I realized that the corpsman was right—I couldn’t sit down. I went to the back and painfully climbed up. Some of the stitches came loose and blood ran down my leg. As I crawled onto a stretcher behind the passenger seat, the bleeding stopped.
Richardson jerked the Jeep into gear and I grabbed the stretcher like a rodeo rider. On the open dirt road he floored the accelerator and whipped around the first turn without braking. My legs flew off the stretcher and I ended up half on it and half off. Screaming in pain, I yelled for Richardson to stop while I got back on the stretcher.
“Personally, my friend, I’m not that interested in getting there, you know, real, real fast. Fast is good enough. So you don’t need to speed just for me, and the VC weren’t that good a shot anyway, they only got me in the ass,” I told him as I crawled back up on the stretcher.
Back moving again, we did not go slower, however, and we hit bumps with jarring thuds. Passing a slow-moving truck, Richardson whipped out to the left and I was slung off the stretcher again. Finally he stopped and tied a strap around my legs. Back on the road, he went as fast as he could, playing chicken with oncoming traffic all the way to the 93d Field Hospital. He parked, asked for my friend’s name, and went into the administration building.
When Richardson was gone, I tried to reach down and undo the broad strap holding my legs, but as I turned around and stretched out my right arm, a stitch popped. I yelled from the pain, jerked my arm back, and threw the stretcher off balance. My upper torso fell to the floor and the stretcher turned on its side, although the foot end stayed on the bracket because of the strap around my legs. I was trapped, tied upside down in the ambulance.
“Aaaaaauuuuuuugggggg,” I was moaning when Richardson returned.
“You’re dangerous, you know that?” he said quietly. “You sure you didn’t shoot yourself?”
He helped me out and gave me the number of Pete’s ward. He said he would meet me in Pete’s Quonset hut in a couple of hours.
I found the right building and straightened my bloody, dirty fatigue uniform as best I could. Smiling, I walked in.
Classical music was coming from speakers on the wall. Concrete floors. Bright lights. Clean sheets. Metal bed frames with thick mattresses. Pretty nurses. Air-conditioning. Smiling people.
Pete was halfway down the aisle on the right. A nurse was sitting on the edge of his bed writing a letter for him. His right shoulder was covered with thick bandages. Sitting propped up, he was watching the nurse as she wrote. His hair was wet and combed.
“You son o
f a bitch,” I said softly.
He looked up, his face expressionless, and then he smiled.
“Well, goddamn,” he said after a moment. “You look like hell.”
“I’m alive, though,” I said and shuffled around the bed to grab his left hand.
“This guy is a good friend of mine,” Pete said to the nurse as he continued to look at me. “Can you look after him?”
They brought in a rolling dolly and squeezed it alongside Pete’s bed. When the nurse noticed my fresh blood, she insisted on looking at the wound and had my pants down to my knees in a matter of seconds. I said that I thought she had undressed men before.
While I lay there talking and laughing with Pete, she called for a couple of corpsmen and they restitched my wound.
Pete showed me the bullet taken out of his shoulder, which he kept on a bedside table. Someone produced some champagne, and we drank it from bedpans, even though glasses were available.
A doctor came in and wanted to know if I was registered in that ward. I explained that I had just come over for the day from Division, which he took in stride and then he left.
Pete and I talked without stopping.
Finally I said, “Pete, I have something to say about that insurance, something that I’m terribly, terribly embarrassed about—sorry about.”
“What?” Pete asked.
“I, ah, I, ah …” I couldn’t get it out.
“What the hell is it? I know it’s something ’cause every time that insurance came up, you’d look away or change the topic. What is it?”
“I never sent in my change-of-beneficiary form. If I died, Mother would get the money.”
Pete looked at me without expression.
“But I want you to know, Pete, I want you to believe me on this, that when I thought you were dead, I made a solemn oath to send the insurance money to your mom. I swear. And I am so glad that I won’t have to do that.” I looked away. “I am so glad you’re alive.”
Pete smiled and looked away. Finally he said, “I got a letter from the insurance agent right before we left base camp. Our policies were canceled. War zone clause or something. His company doesn’t write policies on people who swallow swords or go fight wars.”
Last Man Out Page 15