Bumpadrum
01-06-2007, 09:11
A short I wrote about my last 10 days in 'Nam and my month long leave at home in Detroit in 1968.
Working on the screenplay.
Somehow posted chapters reversed.
At that point the war was over for me. In a manner of speaking. I had spent more than 11 months in country, and had remained relatively unscathed. True, there was the incident with the recoiling howitzer, a shot to the knee that resulted in a week’s stay in a field hospital and my first taste of narcotics. And there was the booby-trap. But that was months ago, and I was fully recovered according to the Doc’s. So there I was, a short-timer in the relative safety of our fire base camp on the DMZ. Just a few days until rotation back to the world. I had even started to allow that I might make it out alive, a proposition that I had abandoned sometime before. That’s why I was so surprised when I was cut in half as I walked to the mess tent. My last conscious thought was “ I’m too short to be killed by a sniper.”
When I woke up I found out that I was not cut in half, in fact, I hadn’t even been shot. I was back in the hospital being poked and prodded by a regiment of doctors and nurses who acted like I wasn’t there as they discussed my predicament. Apparently I had “...just keeled over and they threw him on the next medi-vac chopper. No external wounds, not an o.d.”.
I spent the next few days on a liquid diet fortified with morphine while the combined medical talent of this God forsaken mildewed green canvas hospital finally came to the conclusion that I suffered from “blood poisoning”, caused by the use of fecal matter and urine in the aforementioned booby trap. The rotten bastards couldn’t kill me up front so they **** and pissed me down. Anyhow, the staff at the field hospital had done all they could for me, and it was decided that I would be flown to the U.S.S. Repose, a hospital ship out in the South China Sea. Later, as I lay in my bunk cradled in a soft cocoon of narcotics, a thought finally surfaced: I was done! No more ambush patrols. No more fire missions. No more search and destroy. My personal body count may have peaked; I might not have to kill anyone anymore. I was going home.
But first, the hospital ship.
Working on the screenplay.
Somehow posted chapters reversed.
At that point the war was over for me. In a manner of speaking. I had spent more than 11 months in country, and had remained relatively unscathed. True, there was the incident with the recoiling howitzer, a shot to the knee that resulted in a week’s stay in a field hospital and my first taste of narcotics. And there was the booby-trap. But that was months ago, and I was fully recovered according to the Doc’s. So there I was, a short-timer in the relative safety of our fire base camp on the DMZ. Just a few days until rotation back to the world. I had even started to allow that I might make it out alive, a proposition that I had abandoned sometime before. That’s why I was so surprised when I was cut in half as I walked to the mess tent. My last conscious thought was “ I’m too short to be killed by a sniper.”
When I woke up I found out that I was not cut in half, in fact, I hadn’t even been shot. I was back in the hospital being poked and prodded by a regiment of doctors and nurses who acted like I wasn’t there as they discussed my predicament. Apparently I had “...just keeled over and they threw him on the next medi-vac chopper. No external wounds, not an o.d.”.
I spent the next few days on a liquid diet fortified with morphine while the combined medical talent of this God forsaken mildewed green canvas hospital finally came to the conclusion that I suffered from “blood poisoning”, caused by the use of fecal matter and urine in the aforementioned booby trap. The rotten bastards couldn’t kill me up front so they **** and pissed me down. Anyhow, the staff at the field hospital had done all they could for me, and it was decided that I would be flown to the U.S.S. Repose, a hospital ship out in the South China Sea. Later, as I lay in my bunk cradled in a soft cocoon of narcotics, a thought finally surfaced: I was done! No more ambush patrols. No more fire missions. No more search and destroy. My personal body count may have peaked; I might not have to kill anyone anymore. I was going home.
But first, the hospital ship.