War Year (11 page)

“I have a choice?”

“Sure—you can have bacon an' eggs or a bottle o' sugar water, through another tube stuck in yer arm.”

“Let me have the bacon without the eggs, then.”

“Come on, man, just give 'em a try. You don't have to eat 'em.” He fitted a tray to the bed, loaded up a plate, and set it down in front of me, with a glass of orange juice and a glass of milk. “Want coffee?”

“Ugh.”

“Suit y'self.” He rolled the cart away, clattering like a junkyard on wheels.

Army scrambled eggs are enough to make a well man puke. I scraped them to the side of the plate and ate the bacon. The orange juice tasted like sour water, but the milk was good and cold. The medic saw I was finished and took away my tray.

I lit up a cigarette. “Got anything to read around here?” If the nurse had still been around, I would've been happy to just sit and look at her—but the medic was no prize.

“Coupla papers.” He brought over a
Stars and Stripes
and an
Army Times.
I read every word in the first one, trying to get my mind off the leg, and got halfway through the second one. Then in came another medic, pushing a cart like the one I went to surgery on.

“John W. Farmer?” I don't know who else he thought it would be; there wasn't anybody else around but the other medic. I told him I was John W. Farmer, last time I looked. “Takin' you to Ward 8.”

He wheeled me out of that nice air-conditioned room into a ward full of disgustingly well people. At least nobody else there had a tube stuck in his arm. Some of them were sitting on beds, playing cards. It was so hot I could hardly breathe.

I got a couple of Darvon from the nurse on duty, and some writing paper and a pen. I tried to write letters to my folks and to Wendy, but the paper got so sweaty the pen wouldn't work half the time. I cussed and fumed, and the nurse gave me a couple of pencils.

Those were hard letters to write, trying to tell what happened without scaring the folks to death. So I lied a little bit here and there. I stuffed the letters into envelopes, addressed them, and wrote “free” up in the corner (that was the only advantage I'd found to being in Vietnam—didn't have to pay postage).

I slept until sundown and woke up with a start to the sound of a machine gun firing. There was a TV in the ward, and the patients were watching
Combat.

Half a dozen GI's had to take a farm building full of Germans, I mean really
full,
twenty or thirty of them, talking English with funny accents. Machine guns poking out of every window. Did they call in for artillery and wait? No—the ol' sarge in charge took a grenade and crawled across the open farmyard, bullets thick as flies, and tossed the grenade in through a window. Killed 'em
all.
Guess they don't make grenades like they used to. Don't make bulletproof GI's anymore, either.

ELEVEN

I went to surgery again two days later (they had to wait until the smaller wounds were healing before they could close the big one), and stayed in Ward 8 until I could get around in a wheelchair. Then they moved me to another ward.

A week or so later, I graduated from the wheelchair to a pair of crutches. I still preferred the wheelchair, but with the crutches I could go across the sand to the PX, and out to the EM club at night for a few beers.

I pretty much settled into a routine. During the day I'd go down to the PX if I needed anything, then just lie in bed and read or write letters the rest of the day. Sometimes I'd wheel over to the next ward where they had a big percolator, and drink coffee. Every now and then I'd get into a checkers game or play some whist. It was a pretty soft life, except for the ache in my leg. I'd ask for Darvon during the day and save it, taking them all at night when I got in from the club. Otherwise, I couldn't sleep.

Then one morning they took out my stitches. I had about a hundred of them, and some were covered up with scar tissue—my leg was a bleeding mess when they were through. The doctor said that all of the wounds had healed well, and I'd be leaving in a few days for the Convalescent Center in Cam Ranh Bay, for rest and physical therapy.

Turned out I had to leave the next day, along with a lot of others. The VC had attacked a bunch of people on their way to the voting booths in Tuy Haq, and the hospital was suddenly very overcrowded. Waiting for the bus that would take us to the airstrip, I saw helicopters unloading the casualties. Horrible—mostly women and children. There was a little baby crying with an eerie scream, high-pitched as a whistle; you could even hear it over the roar of the helicopter. When two medics ran by with the baby balanced in the middle of their stretcher, I saw that both his arms had been blown off at the shoulder.

As many dead people as I'd seen, as many wounded GI's and enemy soldiers… I'd rather bury a hundred rotting corpses than see that baby go by again.

The plane was an Air Vietnam DC-3, much nicer than the C-130's we usually rode on. I was the only person aboard with a crutch. (I could get along on only one by then, but there was one guy strapped to a stretcher, wearing a straitjacket. He spent the whole flight staring at the ceiling; he never moved once.)

We landed in about half an hour and took a bus to the Sixth Convalescent Center. We filed into a big building where a sergeant took out medical records and gave us sheets and pillowcases. Ain't easy to walk with a crutch, carrying an armload of linen and a flight bag.

The bus waited while we were being processed and then took us to our billets. The driver called out names at each stop; I got off at the last one.

In front of the billet was an incredible beach—from horizon to horizon just as straight as if it had been laid down with a ruler. White sand and water so blue it was almost black. Two guys were riding surfboards in the breakers.

Inside the billet was like any army barracks, beds and lockers and not much else. I flopped my stuff down on the first bed I came to.

It's impossible to make a bed, standing on one leg with a crutch under your arm. I was just about to give up when a tall Negro came to my rescue.

“Heah, man, let me.” It took him about twenty seconds to put the sheet on.

“Thanks—woulda been foolin' with that all night.”

“Yeah. Say, you got a butt?”

I handed him one and lit one up myself. “What's it like around here? Beach sure looks nice.”

“Shee-it. That all you gonna do, is look at it. Patients gotta get a pass to go swimmin'—but you don' get no fuckin' pass, 'cuz if you well enough to go swimmin', you well enough to go back to the boonies.”

Sounded like I was back in the army.

“And that ain't the half of it, man—we got two mebee three formation a day, details all fuckin' day—PT in the mornin', man, gotta run a mile ev'ry mornin'—”

“No way nobody's gonna make me run. Can't half walk yet.”

“Yeah, well, you safe long as you got that crutch. Fact, you just fall out in the mornin', push a broom around awhile. Then you free, rest o' the day.”

Well, that didn't sound too bad. I found out that it was too late for chow, but there was an EM club that opened at seven. I hobbled over there and waited for it to open.

I managed to fill up on Slim Jims and beer. Watched TV until the place closed at eleven.

Army television in Vietnam is pretty strange. They show reruns of Stateside shows, usually a year or so old. And the commercials are made by the army—telling you to keep your weapon clean, buy bonds, don't inflate the Vietnamese economy, and so on.

Seemed like I just barely got to sleep when they rousted us out of bed. My watch said quarter to six. It was still dark. I got my shaving kit and hobbled out to the shower.

It was almost worth getting up that early, though, because they had hot water. It was quite an experience, after shaving with cold water for four months. And the shower was pure heaven, even though I had to leave my crutch and hop across the slippery floor like some weird kind of bird.

The guy in the shower next to me looked at my leg. “Man, you really got fucked-up good.”

“Yeah. Landmine.”

“No kiddin'—you must be the only wounded guy in this barracks. 'Most everybody else's here for the clap or malaria.”

“What about the other guys on crutches—some case of clap they must of picked up.”

“Nah—broken legs. No other heroes.”

Hero, that was a laugh.

We had a formation at six-thirty, everybody standing around in their blue pajamas while the first sergeant read off a bunch of announcements. I heard that I was supposed to report to room 101 at 1330 for physical therapy. After he finished the announcements he said, “Cripples, fall out and get yer brooms,” and everybody who had a crutch or a cane went back into the barracks. It took us about five minutes to clean it up. Then some of the guys went to chow. I was so tired I just racked out for a few hours.

It was hotter'n hell when I woke up, about ten o'clock. There wasn't anybody else in the billet. I figured they must've gone someplace where it was cool, so I gathered up my crutch and set out to find them.

Went about a block down the main drag when I heard these monster air conditioners chuggin' away. It was the library. Sure enough, it was crowded—there were only three seats left. I found a bunch of books of cartoons and sat in the cool until noon, just diggin' it.

There was a formation at 1300, but we cripples didn't have to go to it. So I put off chow until about 1230, then walked over to the mess hall.

It was hot as a steam room in the mess hall. Can't complain too much, though. Since I had a crutch, I didn't have to stand in the line; I just sat down and a Vietnamese girl brought me a tray full of food. Not bad, either, by army standards; two hamburgers, french fries, and a salad.

After chow I wandered over to 101, the physical therapy building. It was air-conditioned there, too—but pure torture. I spent an hour lifting weights (little sandbags) with my bad leg, hurt like the very devil. They gave me a Darvon for my trouble and I limped back over to the library.

I felt better after sitting in the cool for a while, so I decided to go out and explore some. Would be a great place if you had any money to spend—snack bar (with pizza), big PX and a gift shop—but I only had eleven dollars, and I decided to save it for beer. That would be 110 beers, a couple of weeks' worth.

I wound up in a big recreation hall run by the Red Cross. They had all kinds of games and stuff. Played a few games of checkers with a Red Cross guy named Jerry. He beat me every time, but in return he told me how I could get some money—there was a man from the Fourth Division who could get me up to twenty bucks a week, that'd be taken out of my pay later. I decided I could afford a pizza tomorrow.

There was another formation about sundown, but all that happened was that the first sergeant called out the names of the guys who'd be leaving in the morning. Then he let us go to chow (which was pretty fair beef stew).

For a couple of weeks I did pretty much the same thing every day. Kind of made the rounds between the library, the Red Cross center, physical therapy, chow, and the EM club. Sometimes I'd hang around the PX and read the magazines. Not real exciting, but sure beat the hell out of being a combat engineer.

Then my leg got better and they took away my crutch. That made all the difference in the world. The next morning I couldn't fall out after the first formation, and I had to take PT.

The first exercise was jumping jacks, you know, where you jump up and down and swing your arms around—like a guy who's on fire and trying to put himself out. No way in hell I was gonna try one of those.

The guy who was leading them glared at me all through the exercise and, when they were finished, yelled out:

“Whatsamatter, soldier, you on vacation?”

“Have a heart, Sarge, I just started walking yesterday.”

“So you don't think you can do jumping jacks.”

“That's right, Sarge.”

“What
can
you do?”

“Dunno, Sarge.”

“Try twenty pushups. Right now.”

That shouldn't have been hard; I was doing eighty every day in Basic Training—but I could only do twelve, and had to fake the rest of them, with everybody watching. A month in the hospital can really put you out of shape.

Had to fake most of the other exercises, too, except for the arm twists. And when they got out on the road to run their mile, I just limped along behind at a slow walk. A different guy was leading the running, and when he saw me lagging behind, he dropped back.

“Somethin' wrong with yer foot, fella?”

“Just got off a cane yesterday.”

“Well, fall out and go to chow. Don't sweat the run.”

First nice thing anybody had done for me in some time.

The work formation was right after chow. I got assigned to a sandbag detail, one of those jobs that never ends. Since we had more empty sandbags than we could fill in a week, we just took it as slow and easy as we could.

At 1300, I went to my physical therapy appointment. Didn't even think about the 1330 formation. But, since I wasn't a “cripple” anymore, I was supposed to be there. And people who skip the midday formation get put on the next day's shipping roster.

I didn't find out until the next morning, when the first sergeant called out the names of the people who were leaving. Instead of going to PT, I limped into the orderly room. The only guy there was a private, reading a comic book, feet stuck up on a desk.

“Hey, man.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell me what the fuck I'm doin' on the shipping roster today?”

“Whatcher name?” I told him. He looked at a clipboard, hanging by the desk.

“Says here, ‘AWOL 1330 formation.' Musta been yesterday—what, did ya skip out?”

“No, man, I couldn't make the fuckin' formation; I had a physical therapy appointment.”