by Dale A. Dye
Three or four other wheelchair maniacs get me involved in drag races down the longer corridors but the nurses put a stop to that when we have a particularly spectacular crash that rips a long line of sutures out of one of the racers. We sit around a big, bright room called a solarium a lot. There’s a well-stocked magazine rack in one corner and if you pull it away from the wall a little bit you gain access to a fairly comprehensive stock of porn mags and fuck-books left for the Marines by kind and understanding Navy Corpsmen.
We quickly discover that there’s a little slop-chute on the hospital grounds where enlisted patients can get beer. The Docs tell me not to drink as it will interfere with my internal plumbing which needs to mend on a bland diet, etc. Nodding with a full appreciation of their sound medical advice, I ignore it most nights and drink a lot of cold Japanese beer. After a while, I stop pissing blood so they stop arguing with me about it. Apparently, I’m a quick healer and the internal damage is a lot less threatening than initially estimated.
Sometimes I sit with some recuperating grunts on a little outdoor patio where we can smoke and watch the incoming wounded from medevac flights. We play a ghoulish game making bets on what caused the wounds we see. Angled wound in the upper body: sniper. Multiple entry wounds in a horizontal or diagonal line: machine gun. Small, clean punctures in the legs or buttocks: shrapnel from grenade or RPG. We can tell the ones that come in from Hue. No farmer tans on those guys. Their skin is marble white and shriveled from the rain and most bear pockmarks from flying brick or concrete.
When they turn us on to a room full of phones that we can use to make overseas calls, things get a little frustrating. There are a lot of wounded guys who want to shoot a lot of long-overdue shit with girls, wives, or parents, so the smart drill is to get there in the very early hours of the morning. It’s the middle of the night most places stateside and the only callers on our end are people who don’t give a shit whether they disturb the sleeping people on the other end.
A corpsman checks the records and lets me know Steve wound up at the Balboa Naval Hospital near San Diego. He gives me a number and I call around dawn in Yokosuka. It takes a while dicking around with ward nurses and waiting for transfers, but I finally get him on the line. He’s good, the arm and leg will remain attached to his body and he’s on the mend. They’ve been trying to buy him out of the Marine Corps but he’s hanging in there for a disability pension. He’s giggling about being a Sergeant, USMC, retired. He wants to know where I am, so I’m forced to tell him he’s not the only one that caught a load in Hue City.
Toward the end of an awkward conversation, he asks me if it was worth it. Sure it was, I tell him. We climbed the walls and killed the gooks. Mission accomplished and we suffered honorable wounds in the line of duty…sort of. He accepts that quietly and then wants to read me a headline from the San Diego paper: ARVN Recapture Citadel in Hue. He doesn’t say so but I can hear the giant exclamation point. And then the paper rattles and he turns a page. There’s another story from Hue and he reads me a little bit. It’s a report about mass graves that have been found on the outskirts of the city. Thousands of civilians executed and buried in those graves. Apparently, the NVA killed more than just Marines in Hue City.
We didn’t know about that, of course, and Steve says from what he can see it won’t do a thing to take the edge of the anti-war sentiment at home. There are still a lot of clueless people back there thumping the anti-establishment drums and saying the Tet Offensive is a major victory for the North Vietnamese. The war-mongering Americans deserved what they got in the fighting all across South Vietnam. When we run out of conversation, careful not to probe too deeply into what we’re both feeling, I hang up with promises to see him as soon as I can.
My next call is to relatives who are wondering why I haven’t called before to let them know how I’m doing. They seem to think there are pay-phone booths dotted around Vietnam. They’ve gotten the letter and a visit from some recruiter. They were worried sick, they tell me, and want to know when I’m coming home. Be home as soon as I can and we’ll spend some good times together, I say. But that’s a lie. What I’ll do, I decide as I wheel back to the ward, is find a way to come back to The Nam. They’ll send me to The World for a while. Orders are being cut, I’m told, but I won’t stay long. There can’t be that many volunteers to return after being wounded, but I intend to be first man in line with his hand raised.
There are stories to tell, stories from the bottom of the heap, down in the mud and the blood with the grunts, stories that will add a little luster to their sacrifice. There are stories that need to be told to counter all the bullshit that’s being foisted off on the folks at home who will otherwise never know about men like Gene Autry, Philly Dog, Willis, Reb the Southerner and thousands of others. Unless they kill me, I will get at least some of those stories told.
There it is.
About the Author
Dale Dye is a Marine officer who rose through the ranks to retire as a Captain after 21 years of service in war and peace. He is a distinguished graduate of Missouri Military Academy who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after graduation. Sent to war in Southeast Asia, he served in Vietnam in 1965 and 1967 through 1970 surviving 31 major combat operations.
Appointed a Warrant Officer in 1976, he later converted his commission and was a Captain when he deployed to Beirut, Lebanon with the Multinational Force in 1982-83. He served in a variety of assignments around the world and along the way attained a degree in English Literature from the University of Maryland. Following retirement from active duty in 1984, he spent time in Central America, reporting and training troops for guerrilla warfare in El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica.
Upset with Hollywood’s treatment of the American military, he went to Hollywood and established Warriors Inc., the preeminent military training and advisory service to the entertainment industry. He has worked on more than 50 movies and TV shows including several Academy Award and Emmy winning productions. He is a novelist, actor, director and show business innovator, who wanders between Los Angeles and Lockhart, Texas.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Dale A. Dye
Cover art copyright © 2014 by Gerry Kissell (gerrykissell.com)
978-1-4532-9281-5
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