50 Years Ago Today, Second Story

Last Saturday, the 13th of May, I posted my article about the day I was wounded in Vietnam. here

Because I had such wonderful responses and because a flood of memories have come back, I decide to write the next part of the story, my time in the hospitals after that pivotal day all those years ago.

As I described before, I had been shot on May 13th, 1967 and underwent surgery that evening in Charlie Med, Danang Vietnam. That following morning I woke up in a Spica cast, a plaster sheath that enclosed my whole body from the top of my chest down to both feet, with a spreader bar between my legs to keep them about 20 degrees apart, and a steel 1/8ths inch pin drilled through about 3 inches below my right knee. Happily, there was one area open in that large plaster prison that allowed me to at least an opening to relieve myself at the appropriate times. I was cluttered with tubes to drain me and IVs to fill me and life varied from overwhelming, mind-cramping pain to the blissful float of morphine and sleep.

As mentioned before, my leg was essentially powdered: it’s called a “comminuted fracture” and X-rays of my leg looked like a cloud of bone fragments where the largest bone in body used to be. Nonetheless, I was a happy young man: I was still alive, I still had both of my legs, and I was pleased with myself that little old cowardly me had done something brave for a change. I had come a long way from the days when I avoided the high school thugs who wanted to fight me after school.

Within one or two days, I was packed into an ambulance-configured C-130 to fly to the hospital at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. I was so “out of it” that I don’t remember any part of that flight. I spent about two weeks at Clark AFB Hospital, not totally there but I do remember getting all upset and yelling when I discovered Vietnamese wounded right next to me. I had assumed that they were the enemy and I was furious that they would put me right by them. A military nurse fiercely chewed me out for my attitude and that was the very first encounter of many that I would have with military nurses during my travels to recovery.

I ran into two varieties of military nurse: Navy and Air Force. The Naval nurses would point at their nurse hats with their rank stripes on them and tell us that they were officers and we would refer to them as “Ma’am”. A non-subtle signal that we were at the absolute bottom of the status barrel and should entertain no fantasies of warmth or feminine companionship, God forbid. It’s not like we were in any shape to contemplate romance but a little bit of sweetness would not have encouraged any untoward activities, however long we had been in the bush. Air Force nurses had absolutely nothing but the barest contact with us enlisted swine, leaving any contact with us to others. Both sets of nurses were very warm and friendly with the officer wounded from what I have heard but they made it very clear to us that we enlisted sorts were beneath contempt. If someone up and melts that stupid “Three nurses” statue at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial into a puddle of bronze, suspect me. Thermite would work.

I remember that it rained very hard every day while I was at Clark, exactly at 4:00 PM every day. After about a week at Clark, I was loaded on a bus with racks on either side for stretchers to go on to a plane to go to further critical care in Japan. The one thing I remember while riding in that bus was that we had one guy on a stretcher above me who said that he was a “Seal”. I had no idea at that time what that meant – he only struck me as some sort of pale, well-fed sailor and he whimpered a lot.

We flew in another C-130 and this time I was only too aware of the flight. It was a long, slow flight to Japan and our stretchers were packed tightly, one above another and I was in a bottom position. The NATO-standard stretcher above me was so close to me that the steel “foot” bar of that stretcher was only an inch or so from the bridge of my nose. It was claustrophobic, drafty, noisy and cold for what I remember to be a 12 hour flight. Sometimes I would sneeze and I would hit the bridge of my nose on that flat piece of steel of the upper stretcher and that would add to the stack of hurt I had in that little box of the bottom rack. I sneezed a lot because it was cold and drafty in that stupid plane. I couldn’t see anything except the bottom of that next stretcher, I couldn’t hear anything above the scream of the engines, and unless someone got on their hands and knees, they could see me either. It was like being in a coffin with just the far right side open for viewing. The Air Force nurses stayed at the front of the cabin and I could just see ankles. Fat ankles. To get their attention, for a pain med or to get a piss pot to pee in, I would wave my right arm frantically up and down from my place near the floor. Most of the time, they didn’t see me or maybe just ignored me. When one nurse did come to me, she didn’t bother lowering herself down to where I was – she would just stick a syringe of Demerol into my IV and go back to her conversations up front. That helped with the pain but since I was asking for the piss pot, the situation got more and more frantic for me.

I would wave my arm and same thick pair of ankles would walk up to my position and stick more Demerol in my IV. Again and again. I was lucky and didn’t pee in my cast but it was a very close thing.

I hated the designer of the stretcher racks for the C-130 aircraft. I still do. Air Force nurses will not be beneficiaries in my Will.

We were taken for further intensive care at the Tachikawa Air Force Base hospital near Tokyo and I was put into a small ward with about eight others in the room. Most of the men there soldiers and most of those were draftees – the first I’d ever met. They had interesting stories with odd differences in culture between the service perspectives of that war. One of the draftee wounded had been shot in the stomach and was in a lot of pain. I asked him how he had been wounded and he told me that little Vietnamese girl about 6 years old and dressed prettily was carrying a basket and walked by their squad while they were on patrol. He told me that she pulled a .45 from that basket when she was next to him and pointed it at him and shot him. He said that she seemed surprised to see what happened and started to cry. I asked him what happened to her and he said “we shot her”. I remember being stunned by that – we Marines probably wouldn’t have responded that way, at least I hope not.

The guy in the bed next to me spoke to me in a quiet voice and said that he was a Marine too. He was very weak and depressed and I asked him what happened to him (I couldn’t see him very well because the cast kept me from turning left and down to look at him). He said his name was something like “Quatrefois” or something like that and that he was on radio watch in the field and that he had fallen asleep when he was supposed to be the one awake. He woke up suddenly with a man standing on his arms, straddling his chest and grinning at him. The VC shot the man next to him in the head, killing him and then he shot Quatrefois with an M-1 Carbine, one limb at a time until both arms and both legs were severed. He cried because the guy who was killed next to him was his best friend and he was his turn to be asleep and not Quatrefois. Quatrefois died very soon after – within one or two days after he told me that story.

The Air Force nurses had very little to do with us. We could hear them talking next door – about the different doctors they were dating – but even if we buzzed for them, they didn’t come. All we had were occasional visits by a doctor or two and an injured soldier who was ambulatory who would help us out. This particular soldier was skinny and odd and walked with a stiff gait and had a bandage on the back of his head. I assumed that he was one of the rear-area pogues in Japan who got hurt on liberty or something, so I was a bit pompous with him. He was friendly and cheerful despite my slightly superior attitude and readily emptied and cleaned the bedpans or changed out IVs or got us pain meds or changed the channels on our one TV (all Japanese channels: including Gunsmoke dubbed in Japanese and a war movie in which the Japanese sunk one American carrier after another – I remember think that maybe another nuke might be called for to remind them that we won). He would cheerfully smuggle Cokes to us and was the one person we could call on, what with the nurses staging some sort of boycott.

I finally deigned to ask him how he got hurt - you know to be nice to him from my lofty combat veteran perch - and he told me that he had been hit by a mortar round as it fell nearly straight down, fracturing the back of his skull and then the round hit at his feet, detonating and shearing both feet completely off. I strained over the edge of my bed to look down at his feet and saw that he was walking on rubber pads where his feet had been. God love him, I wish I’d kept his name.

After a couple of weeks at Tachikawa, apparently it was determined that I was fit to move to Yokosuka Naval Hospital. I was stacked into a converted Huey helicopter and flown to a landing pad which featured the complete superstructure of a Japanese WWII cruiser next to it. A pair of soldiers carried my stretcher from there to a bus to take me the rest of the way to the hospital. The soldier at the head end of my stretcher had a gaudy 1st Air Cav patch on his shoulder and while I was looking at that patch, he stumbled and dropped his end of the stretcher. It ripped both IVs out of my arms and I yelped with pain and he said “Take it on the chin, Buddy”. I don’t remember what I said back but I doubt if it was Christian.

In Yokosuka we had longer wards and more attentive nurses (it was easy to be more attentive than the Air Force nurses – all you had to do was walk into the room) and Corpsmen. There were also a whole lot more of us on the wards. We didn’t talk much and I remember at least one Marine died during the two weeks I spent there. I remember that it was sunny in that ward and that the elevators were tiny – for Japanese bodies, I guess – and they had to turn my stretcher diagonally in the elevator and collapse it in width to fit inside.

From there, I was taken in a large and far more comfortable C-141 fitted out with stretchers and flown to Travis Air Force Base halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento California. It was a long, noisy flight but I least I could see out and had blankets this time so I didn’t freeze. After a short stop, (just long enough to say “I’ve been to Travis Air Force Base”) I flew in a smaller plane to Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital in Southern California. The funniest story I remember about Travis concerns my Radio Operator, Cpl. Gary E. Richards. Five days after I was wounded, Richards was walking behind a new guy who opened a gate. Before he could shout “Don’t open the gate!”, the earth suddenly burst upward and Richards was thrown into the river, blind, deaf and with one broken leg and one broken arm. He floundered around in the water, drowning when someone reached into the river and got him. After his initial treatment through the usual nodes along the way, he arrived at Travis AFB on a stretcher and one of his eyes slowly opened a bit and he could see through it. The thing he saw first was a young lady in a miniskirt. With his one good arm, he frantically worked to open his other eye and thanks to the young lady with the very short skirt, he could see again!

My experiences so far were like thousands upon thousands of other Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen during the Vietnam War. It was an amazingly designed machine that took us out of Vietnam and then funneled us out through many different nodes of treatment and routes the 10,000 miles home. The government did its best to make sure that long-term treatment took place as close to your home of record as possible. The fact that there were a quarter million wounded throughout our war, it’s nothing less than miraculous that they did so well with this system. I suspect that both our allies and our enemies were astounded that we could pull it off so well. The only shameful part was that it was done completely out of the public view. We were smuggled in, in groups, anonymously, furtively as though they were ashamed of showing us to anyone.

Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital in those days was a collection of single-floor wooden temporary buildings that had been built to handle WW II casualties and because the Marine Corps never threw anything out, it was still there for us. The exterior was painted a sort of pale grey-green and the interior was a beige (or maybe just really old white) and it was unheated and uncooled and well, temporary. The hospital was in a remote part of Camp Pendleton which is in itself in a remote part of California, so visitors required a lot of time and dedication to reach us.

When I arrived, the first order of business was to remove the cast. I was strongly in favor of that because it really stank at this point. Imagine, if you will, what a pound of hamburger left outside in the sun for a month would smell like. They “bivalved” (split) the cast into a front half and a back half and then whaled away. I believe that I let out a howl that could be heard all the way to the Main Gate of Pendleton and all I got for that was a stern glare from my doctor (who, improbably enough was named Richard Kimball. He was superb doctor - I am evidence of that - but absolutely humorless and never laughed when we pointed out one-armed men) who clearly felt that violently splitting off a big cast over a mashed leg should have been borne with silent grace. Crap. Some big guy cut that transverse pin through my leg with a huge pair of shears (another indecorous howl from me) and then I was installed into a traction rig that hoisted my injured right leg up about 45 degrees and pulled on it, using a system of pulleys, ropes, and weights. That traction rig was to be my home for the next five months.

I still hurt a lot and the transition from cast to traction had set me back a bit in my progress, pain-wise. I remember that it hurt so bad at first that I could feel people walking in the next ward over and I could tell if it was a man or a woman walking. I was put into a long open ward with about 30 total – 15 on each side - in the room, all osteopathic cases. We had guys blown up by mines, victims of vehicle crashes, and many “missile” wounds (bullets and fragments). When I first got there, I noticed that no one was talking and there was a lot of moaning and calling for more pain meds. The worst offender was a Staff Sergeant directly across from me who had really gotten blown up by a mine. There was no question that he was really badly hurt but all of his sobbing and cursing was getting everyone else down.

So, I told him to knock it off –“everyone else here is hurt; pipe down”. That really set him off and he swore that he’d see me court-martialed. Yeah, OK – but in the meantime, quiet down, you’re embarrassing us. Our back and forth “when I get out of here, I’ll kick your ass” and so on kept things interesting and the whining dropped off while they watched me and the Staff Sergeant trade barbs.

Eventually, the Staff Sergeant was shipped on to a hospital in Texas and we all got to know each other. I came up with the idea that we needed more diversion – so if somebody liked Fords, I’d come out for Chevys. If somebody was a Catholic, I’d take the Protestant side and that sort of banter back and forth grew into a much more enjoyable stay. I didn’t know anything at all about sports, so I wasn’t much help there. You’d be amazed to hear the variety of interesting subjects 30 captive young men in the same room can come up with. Arguments were sort of pointless, since nobody could reach anybody else to fight it out.

My parents and my brothers and sisters came to visit me often, with my dad coming every single weekend that I was there. It was a 120 mile one-trip for him on two lane roads and it touched me deeply that he would do that for me. He’d also bring a girlfriend of mine, so his visits were highly anticipated.

We’d have Marine officers come to visit, usually on Mondays, and it was gratifying to meet and talk with the men who led Divisions and still cared enough to take the time out to come talk to us.

On one visit, Major General Lewis Fields told me that he’d looked into my record and saw that I had been a Lance Corporal for 18 months and he asked if I was a “shitbird”. I indignantly told him that I wasn’t, that “they just forgot about me”. I don’t know – maybe they forgot about me because I was a shitbird but I was proud enough of myself, anyway. The next day, he came by and promoted me to Corporal – so there.

I even got a visit from Lieutenant General Victor “The Brute” Krulak, who hit his head on the edge of my traction rig. I told him that we needed to put a “rotating red beacon on that thing – you’re the third General Officer today to hit his head on it”. That was a bad move. You have NEVER been chewed out unless you were chewed out by the Brute. I learned that I could lie at attention.

The battle between us and the nurses continued. Every single morning, they’d wake us at 0530 and the student Corpsmen would come into the ward and they would train on how to start IVs, take blood, etc. on all of us, both arms. Those new Corpsmen were an untalented bunch and every day we had missed veins, arteries squirting, bones nicked, and needles bent into us. Our arms looked like heroin addicts’ with a bad aim. Our nurses laughed at our complaints and said “look at the big, bad Marines who aren’t afraid of bullets but are scared of little bitty needles”. That was annoying.

Nurse Lambe was the Head Nurse and as always, she introduced herself by pointing at the Lieutenant Commander’s stripes on her hat and telling us that she was an officer. She developed a habit of waking us for our morning needlefest by whipping off our blankets in our unheated ward. I passed the word to everyone later that night to take their pants off under their blankets. Nurse Lambe knew that there was a conspiracy by the time she ripped away blanket #4 and saw yet another naked young man. The practice of removing blankets as a way of reveille was stopped.

I went through several operations to graft new skin over the holes in my leg. They took the skin for the grafts from the front of my left leg which eventually closed off the open part but left me with two sore legs at once. Bit by bit, over the months, the pain dropped off and despite being fully anchored to my bed, a surprising amount of freedom was possible. I went from Demerol (which we referred to as “Mr. Demerol”) to Darvon which seemed to less effective than aspirin but I suppose it was designed to lessen the chances of addiction. I talked one of the Corpsmen into giving me crutch, which I hid between my mattresses. He didn’t ask me what I needed it for, though I’m sure that question went through his mind. I waited until the nurses were off duty (about 6:30 in the evening) and the duty Corpsman went to sleep (usually 8:30 or so) and then I pulled that crutch out and I used it to pole me and my bed away from the ward and down the central hall. I’d visit the snack bar vending machines, call my girlfriend on the pay phone and sometimes visit other wards to look for my friends. Before daybreak, I’d gondola my bed back in place and nobody was the wiser.

I thought. Soon, several others in my ward got crutches and when evening rolled around, beds were traveling up and down the halls, like ghost ships prowling the sea. The most popular place to visit was the ladies’ ward. Eventually, we got caught: one guy poled his way outdoors down a ramp and then couldn’t get back up the ramp, so he was right out there in the open when the nurses came on duty. Most people have no idea how inventive young men can be when not watched carefully.

I had a small Japanese TV of my own as many of the guys did and daytime TV in the mid-60s was horrible: bad cartoons, lame game shows, and soap operas. What I wanted to watch were the evening shows, the news, movies, documentaries but we had to shut the TVs off at 8:00 sharp. Needless to say, I’d try to watch TV later and developed a way of doing it. I’d turn the sound way down (no earplugs in those days) and I’d darken the screen so it barely showed and then watch whatever I wanted. But one evening Nurse Lambe was working late and I heard her loud footsteps heading toward our ward. I quickly reduced the sound to zero and darkened the screen – but didn’t turn it off because they took a while to warm up in those days. Nurse Lambe walked past me and then stopped. She walked up to me a shook my shoulder to wake me (since I was pretending to be asleep) and she said “Rick – why is there a light on in the back of your TV”. Thinking fast, I said “Pilot light, Ma’am” and I think that she would have accepted that answer if everyone didn’t start laughing. She rolled my TV to her office for that night.

Men healed up and left the ward, new people were rolled in to replace them and the ward was a home of sorts for all of us. We had a daily routine of tests and treatments and doses and sometimes surgeries but the life in the ward remained friendly and sometimes entertaining. The young guys there were from all over and everyone had their stories.

One guy had been riding “shotgun” for a Combat Engineer dump truck when a burst of fire hit him in both sides of the chest and killed the driver. The truck rolled down an embankment and flipped on its side, throwing him out of the truck on the ground, the driver’s body over his. The VC came to the wreck and checked him and driver out to see if they were dead. He held absolutely still while the VC went through his pockets and took his watch, then one of the enemy put a rifle up to his leg and fired. He was able to suppress his reaction and they still thought he was dead – then a burst a fire hit the VC squad and the squad of Marines that killed them found him and “flagged down” a passing Huey helicopter to get him to the hospital. He did lose that leg while we were there.

Another Marine, Tom “Tex” Lesher (who I knew from Boot Camp but he was never anywhere near Texas – he just liked to be called “Tex”) was blown up when his truck drove over a large mine and besides the broken legs and hips he got, he also got an elaborately powder burned face that resembled Maori tattoos. It was like all of his facial features were in permanent shadow, from the bottom up and honestly, it improved him.

At some point, a Marine was brought into the ward who had some broken bones and very badly burned hands – they looked like curved, black claws and he had an armed MP guarding him. Later at night, I asked him why he had a guard and he told me that he was going to be court-martialed for murdering his Captain after he recovered. He said that he had been a crewman aboard a CH-46 helicopter and the captain was an officer who didn’t fly often, preferring more administrative duties and according to him had a reputation for cowardice among the troops. They were flying fairly high up when they were hit and the engines started to burn. CH-46s burned easily and enthusiastically, so the crew in the back yelled over the interphones to hurry up and get down on the ground as fast as possible. The Captain ignored them, preferring I guess to get further into friendlier territory before landing. The fire raced forward inside the aircraft and one by one, the men in back burned up. Finally, the Marine said, he was burning and the helicopter finally hit the ground, hard, and he tumbled out. The Captain was untouched but when he exited the cabin, the Marine said he pulled his pistol and killed him, the last thing he would ever do with those hands. He was moved within days and I never learned his name or what happened to him.

Another helicopter crewman was brought into the ward who told me that he was up for the Medal of Honor. He told me that he was on a medevac flight and as the Marines were carrying casualties to his helicopter, they were hit by a storm of gunfire and the stretcher bearers were all wounded and down. He said that he couldn’t traverse his machine gun far enough over to suppress the enemy fire, so he ran out of the helicopter to try to get the casualties himself. He told me that he was shot five times, covering one of the men with his body, like human flak jacket to protect him. He was moved soon and I never found out his name (or I just can’t remember it) and I don’t know if he ever got an award. It certainly sounded like he deserved it.

When the run up to the 1968 Tet Offensive began, we received the first casualties from battles near Hue City and one of them came from my artillery battery, Bravo 1/11. He described the ambushed convoy he had been in, remembering in exact sequence of who had been hit and where. He told me that the convoy commander had been killed by over 15 shots and that the only reason the survivors lived was an army administrative unit manning a pair of “Duster” tracked 40mm twin-barreled antiaircraft guns came to their rescue and overwhelmed the enemy attackers.

We occasionally got entertainers to visit us in the ward and the ones I remember were Nancy Sinatra (a very personable lady who gave us pictures of herself in a bikini), Carole Burnett (very warm and attentive), and Jim Nabors (a really nice guy). I guess that there weren’t a lot of people that came in to see us but those few that went to all that trouble were deeply appreciated.

I was feeling a lot better and I was sure that I could just undo my traction rig and just walk out of there. No pain at all now but my doctor – that same humorless Richard Kimball – insisted that I still had a ways to go. My family visited often and one time that I remember the best was when my dad brought several sisters and brothers and they essentially flooded the place. My sister Barby was 17 at the time and she was very popular with the guys of the ward (as was my pretty sister Susie but she was only 15 and off limits). At some point Barby came to me crying and she told me that one of the Marines grabbed her chest and held her. The Marine was somebody I knew from his visits to the ward – a guy named Perry Rosen - and shortly after I had calmed my sister down and she had gone to find dad, Perry came into our ward and sat in a chair about three feet to my left. Worse, he bragged about “copping a feel” on my sister and smirked at me.

He should have paid attention to what I was doing: I had been building a small model plane on a lap tray and I had just dumped all of the parts on my lap. With my right hand, I pulled myself up using the grab handle on the traction rig, then I swung out towards Perry’s chair and pulled him towards me. Then I swung that metal tray into Perry’s face hard enough to bend it into a “V”. He started to stand and I hit him again going in the other direction to the back of his head, more or less bending the tray back straight. He stood up, roaring with rage and came at me. I hit him with the full contents of my piss pot and soaked him from head to waist.

Now he spluttered with dripping rage and started to come after me and just that second Nurse Lambe grabbed him in a hammerlock and yelled “don’t you dare hurt that poor wounded man!” It was starting to like Nurse Lambe. She was fun.

In December 1967 I was measured for a steel leg brace that would fit from my hip bone to my foot, attached to one of my dress shoes. They detached all of my traction rigging and attached a drill motor to that pin in my leg and just undrilled it right out (there was a burr on the pin from the cutting, so it “rifled” the hole in my leg). They put the brace on me, attaching the leather straps and I carefully swung my lower body off the bed and with help from Corpsman “Ski”, carefully began to stand. I was finally there, standing – free of the bed, free of the network of pulleys and ropes, free of that pin in my leg!

But I started to feel light headed and then dizzier and I told Ski that I was going to faint. Ski was one of those navy Corpsmen who was even more gung ho than any Marine and he even had a high-and-tight Marine haircut, so he told me with a growl “you’re not going to faint; keep trying”. I looked at him intently then fainted. I came to in my bed and realized that it was going to take a step-by-step process to build up my strength and my heart again to get back to the vertical world. One of the funniest memories of when I first stood was when Nurse Lambe came up to me and looked into my eyes and said softly “Rick – you’re so tall!” OK, so maybe I won’t melt that nurse’s statue after all.

I was told by Dr. Kimble that I’d never walk well again but I did learn to walk well. He told me that there was no way that I’d ever run again but after a couple of years, I did run again. I think that doctors are taught to tell young guys like I was, that something isn’t possible, just so we’d try harder to make it possible. I wasn’t entirely done with the hospital, though: as an “ambulatory” patient, you were put to work in the ward, cleaning and mopping and helping out. Dr. Kimble had me photograph him during his operations to record his work. I was allowed to go on liberty up to home near Los Angeles now and my khaki uniform flapped like a flag in the breeze on me because I only weighed 106 pounds at that point (I’m 5 foot ten, no matter how tall Nurse Lambe thought I was). I got dropped off at the San Clemente Gate and then I tried to hitchhike from there to L.A.

I stood out there on the freeway onramp for hours, with my leg brace and crutches. Cars would slow by me, look at me, give the Peace sign (two upraised fingers in a V) and then flip me a center finger. Finally some young guy in a red MGB sports car showed up and asked where I was going, then told me to get in. Easier said than done: my right leg was a straight, steel-reinforced plank and the Brits designed that car for little-bitty Brit midgets or double amputees. After a lot of sweat and struggling, I finally got in and stowed my crutches next to me.

We rode quietly down the road for about ten or twenty miles and the young man driving asked me how I broke my leg. I told him that I got shot. He asked me “where”, so I pointed at the center of my right thigh. He said ”no – what country?” I said “Vietnam” and he rapidly slowed his car and then stopped on the edge of the freeway and said “get out”. I struggled again to get out of that little car and he left and I was alone there, with cars racing past me. I crutched myself to the next offramp and then hitched a ride back to Camp Pendleton and the hospital. I was exhausted and I hurt again, so, so much for my first liberty.

My next liberty went better and I was able to get all the way to my girlfriend’s house in Burbank. I traveled in civilian clothes this time., so I didn’t run into any trouble. I guess everyone thought I was hurt doing something worthwhile, like playing football maybe. I enjoyed my liberty a bit too long (don’t get any ideas: it was at the girlfriend’s parent’s home and VERY supervised), so when I got started hitchhiking in Burbank it was 0200 and I was running very late to get to the L.A. bus station and then back to Camp Pendleton Hospital by 0600.

I stood on that Lankershim Boulevard corner for a while and absolutely nobody came by, hostile or not. Then a police officer passed me once, and then came back and turned his red lights on and stopped next to me. He got out and asked me what I was doing there. It’s hard to imagine what kinds of crooks hang out at street corners with crutches and steel braces, but I’m not a highly-trained law enforcement officer. After I showed him my I.D. and told him that I was trying to get to the bus station, he had me get into his car and drove me a few blocks to where another police car was parked – a long, low LAPD freeway cruiser. When we pulled into the parking lot, a young women got out of that cruiser and was clearly getting herself decent, buttoning her blouse and trying to stay inconspicuous. My first cop talked to the cruiser cop and then he told me to get into the cruiser. We got up on the freeway and this new cop was a large, wide-faced casual sort of guy and he asked me questions about what I was doing in Burbank and then about my part of the war and my injuries. Then he said “Aw, screw it – you won’t make it back in time” and picked up speed rapidly (there was a large speedometer above the center of his dash) up to 125 mph and kept it there, red light on and occasionally hitting the siren to chase away anyone in our path. It was a little disconcerting that he drove the whole way with one hand on the steering wheel while facing me the whole time, asking questions – but we didn’t hit anybody. He drove me all the way to the front door of the hospital, God bless him.

A week or so before Christmas, I was transferred to Support Company, 14 Area, Camp Pendleton which was an artificial unit where they parked the recovering wounded as well as men getting out of the brig. Kind of shows you what esteem our Marine Corps had for us. The bunch of us recent escapees from the hospital were being evaluated to see whether the Marine Corps would keep us in or to discharge us. The “Brig Rats” were in that barracks to await their next assignment or more likely awaiting some sort of less-than-honorable discharge and we were at their mercy. They stole us blind and there was very little we could do about it. The recovering wounded were missing limbs, or like me in braces with crutches, or missing an eye, that sort of thing where the Brig Rats were, well physically fit criminals. They stole everything I owned, including the pathetic few souvenirs that I had and when the Marine Corps gave me a document to go and get fitted for more uniforms, they stole those too after I got them.

We were used for slave labor, as it seemed that the Marine Corps considered us little better than malingerers, for all that wonderful bed time we had had. Our company commander was a Captain Steele, a ramrod-straight, shaved-headed athlete who hadn’t been to Vietnam and clearly resented us for our having been there. Think that I’m exaggerating? He used to have us fall out for formation every Saturday morning for inspection before he would approve any liberty. Liberty, if we got it, was from noon Saturday until 6:00 PM Sunday and since we were still located in the bowels of that very large base that was a long ways from any fun stuff, we were limited in dwell time. Standing in formation was torture for us because wherever we had been injured still hurt. I clearly remember one of my fellow Marines starting to bleed from a leg wound that reopened while we were standing there while Capt. Steele slowly moved down the ranks inspecting our haircuts and uniforms. I helped that guy get back to the barracks and helped him stop the bleeding. He went back to the hospital.

As “slave labor” we were farmed out to was everything from grass mowing to cutting up the pervasive ice plants (which are quite heavy: they’re filled with water) to pulling butts (targets) at the Regimental Rifle Range. That last one was really great fun for us recovering victims of bullet wounds. What could possibly be more invigorating than hearing that high-pitched crack of bullets hitting targets just above our heads, over and over? After all, it’s exactly the same sound those bullets made hitting us. I remember shaking violently for hours afterward.

Another fun duty was serving as a chaplain’s assistant during the weekends. That was despised because it meant that you had to work weekends, helping the chapel crew change the chapel over from Jewish services to Protestant to Catholic to accommodate those different faiths. Easy enough duty, just no fun.

My sergeant in charge of me called me in and told me that I was assigned to Chaplain assistant duty for three weekends in a row, Christmas, New Years and the weekend after. I told him that that was crazy – I hadn’t been home for leave for a while – and Christmas? I said that I’d happily do one, just pick one but why all three? He just told me to do it, since that meant nobody else would have to be stuck.

It’s a little-known fact that every Marine, no matter how lowly in rank, has the absolute right to see the Commanding General and have his case heard. It’s called Request Mast and you do have to go through your Chain of Command but you cannot be denied that right.

So I requested mast to see our Platoon Commander, a very new Second Lieutenant who I had only seen around once before and he listened patiently to me and nodded. So I requested mast to the next step in the chain, Captain Steele. As I mentioned before, he didn’t like us and he bristled with barely-restrained fury at the gall I had, coming to see him with my sniveling complaints.

So I requested mast to see the Battalion Commander. Needless to say, Capt. Steele’s face turned even redder and he went from furious to hopping mad but even he couldn’t deny me that right. He was sure that the Colonel would take care of me so he hissed his approval and tossed me out of his office.

As far as I knew. I had never seen much less met the Battalion Commander but I was grimly ready to face him. I arrived at the appointed time and was ushered into his office, a wood-paneled affair with crossed US and Marine flags behind him. He received me with stern silence while I told him of the situation and my disagreement with it. He told me to sit in a chair along the die wall of the room and told me to keep my mouth shut. I sat in that chair and I saw him speak with the Sergeant Major for a few seconds and then return to writing something on papers on his desk. After a half hour’s silent wait, Captain Steele, the Platoon Commander and my sergeant all entered the Colonel’s office and in smart precision and stood three across at the center of the Colonel’s desk. I noted with hope that the Captain was carrying the duty logbook.

The Colonel asked Capt. Steele why this Marine – pointing towards me – had duty at the chapel three weekend in a row, since he noted that the logbook only showed one different person per weekend. Captain Steele told him that “it’s a new program, Sir – we’re implementing it so that once a Marine has served those three weekends in a row, they’ll never have the duty again”. Considering that none of us would every spend more than maybe six weeks in Support Company, that was ridiculous and I wanted to say so but I kept my mouth shut.

The Colonel told Captain Steele “Why, that’s excellent – I like innovation” and Captain Steele beamed but he said, “instead of that Marine trying it out, I want you three to do that duty, Christmas, New Years and the weekend after instead and when you’re finished, I want you to come back to me and tell me how it was, OK?”. “You’re dismissed” he said and they filed out. The Colonel had me stand in front of his desk and said “you don’t remember me, do you? I used to come to your ward in the hospital every Monday to see how you were doing. It’s really great to see you standing there”. He called in the Sergeant Major and in a little impromptu ceremony, promoted me to sergeant and gave me orders to the Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin California, so I could be closer to my family.

The Marine Corps in those days had its problems but justice could be had. I remembered the results of my only Request Mast through my long career in the Marines and I always made sure I listened and did the best I could for my troops.

I guess I should ask my Brother how he was treated by the army nurses - he was wounded about a year after I was. He was army EOD back then, so it’s nothing less than a miracle the we got him back.

Who knows? Maybe they were wonderful - sure hope so.

Another literary masterpiece — I can’t thank you enough for generously taking the time to write it and share it with us. I didn’t want it to end, and I anxiously await the next installment, if you are so inclined.

Such richness to the stories, with humor and heart, and connected with a humble realness that will stay with me for a long time.

This is publishable work, not only in print but as a film, or at the very least it is a slam sunk for the next popular podcast. Storytelling is making a huge comeback through podcasts, and it is becoming big business. I don’t mean to cheapen your experiences by suggesting there is profit potential, but this work has great value. The writing is superb and the stories are important and compelling.

I hope the writing process is not too painful for you as the memories come flooding back. But I suspect you are finding value in the process of crafting each paragraph. I like to think you are even enjoying it, since developing quality writing is an intensely creative and fulfilling thing.

I think I speak for many here and for those who will read your work in the future: It is time well spent. Thank you, and please carry on.

I found the disdain for Vets from the Vietnam war challenging. For the life of me I do not understand it. I was just a child during the time. I just don’t get it.

_____________________

True to the culture of the time, the peace-niks were considered heroic free thinkers while the soldiers were considered unthinking drones. Heroism came from fighting the system not fighting for the system. The media turned the soldiers all into baby killers as they pulled out all stops to support the communists and North Vietnam

Brother, that is one great story! Thanks! Nothing is better for the mind then the retelling of a great story!

I’m glad you wrote this down. You Grandchildren will cherish the stories you have written!

Gunner Terry L Walker

I note that you write with some grim sense of humor injected, so I hope you'll pardon me for picking up on the following statement in your riveting account:

You’d be amazed to hear the variety of interesting subjects 30 captive young men in the same room can come up with. Arguments were sort of pointless, since nobody could reach anybody else to fight it out.

Sooo... they were testing prototype internet forums even back then?

Okay Chainmail...

You’ve got Us Hooked !
Bring It on “Home”
Part Three.
Out of The Hospital...
Career...
Family...
Future at writing Children Books...

Who Knows??

Will be checking Back
Thanks.

It means a lot to me that you enjoy my writing. All I’m trying to do is to share these experiences while I still can.

There are so many distorted/false/biased accounts out there that the real record of part of our history may be completely lost if we don’t do the hard work to compile it.

I hope more of us write of our experiences, all of them. All of us - you too.

We were targeted by the Left back then. As we started out, the country back us - after all, it was JFK and LBJ ho launched into that war.

The Left, guided by the old Communists and Socialists using the old "Ban the Bomb" organization and others like it, built a framework of opposition umbrella organizations like the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ) and The New Mobe to plan and organize mass demonstrations and political action. Throughout the war, those orgaizations were in contact with the enemy and their allies - the Soviets and Chinese - and received money, materials, and guidance from them. At one point there was a regular flow of Leftist operatives back and forth between Hanoi and here.

Eventually the Democrat Party and the media joined this direction and part of their message was that all of us who fought there were "genocidal murderers" and "baby killers".

As I'm sure you are aware almost all of us returning vets had one or more incidents of harassment.

Now, of course, they deny that it happened and push the myth that pro-enemy demonstrations were just a "spontaneous reaction to an unjust, illegal war".

No, it was anything but spontaneous. And those organizations still exist in newer forms and form the skeleton of the anti-Trump organizations.

Apocalypse Now...

The Hollow Men

describes a Facet.

But I was a radioman given a chance to be
ParaRescue..
Decided I liked three hots and a bunk.

Denny Was Right!

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