jhungary
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War Stories 3 - The Best Customer in Nam
The following is a true story my dad went though during Vietnam, he told me about it one day and now I am telling you this story.
There is this wall in my home back in Kansas, this wall of photo. This wall is full of my family photo. Photo belong to my grand father, my grand mother, my father then us. In this wall of photo, it was full of history, it have a photo of my grand father drinking beer under board avenue in Paris after D-Day, the wedding photo of my grand parent in front of a church and so on.
There was this one photo my dad always look at. it was a photo with him in Vietnam. The entire cast of Pleiku Evacuation Hospital, which is where my dad served as a Navy Corpsman or a Hospital man.
He don't talk about his time in Vietnam, only a few stories here and there when he was drunk or when he was drinking in the local chapter VFW. Not many people would talk about their time during war, I have been in one myself and as a frontline infantry, I find it hard to tell anyone what I have seen or what I have been though, when you tell someone who wasn't there, they just don't know why it happens the way it happens. To a point, I just don't bother.
My dad case is a bit different, I have no idea how or what kind of person he is before Vietnam, or as a matter of fact, before I was born, but my dad don't like to talk, period. he worked late at night and early in the morning, chances are if we saw him at home, he would be laying on his bed sleeping. I don't really know, nor can I be sure what is it that he won't share his war story.
But being a Medic (well, that's what we call in the Army) I know for sure this is a crap job, or shite duty. I can take it when you have to make choice and kill someone, but for a medic, you deal with your own casualty, people you know, people you just talked to maybe an hour ago, and now it is a mangled piece of "human" in front of you and you have to deal with it. This is not an easy job.
So, this one night I was playing late night video game, just when I was heading to the head, I saw my dad standing in front of the wall of photo and staring at the photo with him and his mate in Pleiku. I rush to the toilet cause I was really wanting to go and comes out for a glass of water before going back to my game. And he just said
"Do you know if you made this thought the night, you're home free?"
I said "What?"
Then my dad said "All you need is to hang on for 24 hours"
I was totally confused, I don't know what the hell is he talking about at the time but I did mumble something back to him while I drink my tea.
Then he said "You think you would be numb after seeing hundreds of people got torn to pieces. But something you just never forget"
"How's that?" I ask
"You would think you will never forget the first face you saw died in front of you, but then you would be wrong" My dad said
I don't really know what got in to me, but I just sit there listen to him talk while I slowly sip my tea.
See, my dad was a corpsman, he thinks that killing people is a sin so when he was drafted, he went for the non-combatant option. The job, unlike what you see in TV or documentary, a normal Corpsman embedded within a Marine unit or Naval Ground unit and fix up casualty as they goes. They look after their own unit and when their unit start taking casualty, the corpsman will just took care of those and bunch them up to a dust off and they probably won't see them again.
Working in a hospital is a whole different ball game. There, you don't need to do combat drill, nobody, well, almost nobody is shooting at you, you have 3 hot meal a day and in your down time you can play Ping-Pong or volleyball in the court, and the only thing you need to do is to save life, not in a way a doctor perform surgery, or a nurse look after their patient, but save lives nonetheless.
71st Evacuation Hospital is a combat hospital located in Pleiku near central Vietnam. The Hospital would be a equivalent of a Role 3/4 in today standard, it is a fully equipped compound that can handle anything from sunburn to traumatic amputation.
My dad's job as a navy corpsman is an exchange personnel with the 4th ID (Which based at the 71st) is to assist the medical personnel inside the hospital, works as an orderly and also provide limited medical treatment for outpatient or not so serious case.
The hospital basically separated into 4 different compound. OR/ER department, recovery ward, ICU ward and Grave Registration. There are gates and helipad to allow ambulance and dust off to bring in casualty, obviously the more serious case would be airlifted, which is actually better than being bombarded by litter or walking wounded. As least you focus on a smaller number, instead of being overwhelmed.
It is not exactly a bad gig if you look at the down time, you get hot chow, girls, sports, barbeque and beaches where you held your own little private R&R everyday (that you are not working). Things are a bit different when there is a big operation ahead and casualty would just flown in chopper by chopper. Casualty overflown is a frequent sight in this hospital, it's a frequent sight that you will see medic, nurse and surgeon bump into each other like a blinded bumblebee.
"1 year in this place you probably see hundreds, if not thousands dead boy come by" My dad says.
It hits you for the first few body pass by you, you would be surprised to see how human can be maimed and mangled in a way you can't even make out a face. But over time, it get easier and easier, you started to focus on the job, you don't think they are human, you just think they are "some stuff" that pass by you and you have to stop the bleeding or plug hole until a nurse or doctor can take over from you.
Jobs can be crazy at time, but for the people who worked there, there are a sort of way to alleviate the pressure, people joke about the patient case, the more serious the case is, the funnier the joke is going to be. Those are not but one of the measure to see things outside of what they actually are, and how they present.
For a medic working in that place, you rotate your job as you goes, there are one corner in this hospital, you can name it whatever you like, check out counter, dispatch, point of no return or whatever you can think of, officially, there are no name on that section, but that is the shittest section in the whole hospital, that's where soldier that's too wounded, too far along to save waiting to die.
At times, that part of the hospital is the quietest part of it all, where soldier tops up with morphine and simply, letting it goes, due to the proximity of the GRU, that section was chosen particularly so that soldier died there can be transfer to GRU as quickly as possible.
"The first couple of dead is hard to look at, but as you get settle in for the job, it just happens, like you are working in a packing factory for a yogurt company, you will see the line of yogurt keep coming from the assembly line. Same things happen in that hospital"
He can't remember the first man, I should say, body that came up to him, not a facial feature, skin colour or eye colour he can tell you. Just too many have come thru during his stay, body started to look all the same to him. Then you would wonder, what kind of dead he would remember?
One night, after a big Ops happening in Central Highland. My dad was rotated to this area.
That night, there were 20 casualty brought in by chopper in a single hour, not all of them can be save, the lucky on was pushed to the OR and prep for Surgery, the unlucky one were set aside and given morphine so that they don't feel much pain when they go.
Today, the section is manned by 2 Medic, my dad and an army Spec 4, 2 medic in charge of the dispatch. In times like this, doctors and nurses are all busy taking care of all other casualty that can be saved, and Medic and orderly in charge of the death room where the Medic job's basically keep pumping morphine until those expectant dies and orderlies' job is to gather the expectant belonging and push them to GRU.
In most case, those who are expected to die are too far gone, they mostly remain in a comatose states when they expires. Some are still conscious and yelling and screaming like crazy. In that case, you will need to inject some kind of sedative as well as morphine (Morphine to numb the pain and sedative to calm the person down) or in some case, just outright overdose morphine.
But on that day, one soldier stand out quite particularly as my father recall. He was hit by a concussion wave of an airburst artillery shell, and the concussion severed his spinal cord, which just snap into two, couple with internal bleeding, There are nothing much anyone can do, especially when the hospital are under siege of casualty like this.
5 Seconds, that is the time a doctor came saw him and look at his injury, 5 seconds is the time when the triage physician needed to write him off, cast him off like a thing, like when you are doing spring cleaning in your garage, the time it takes to decide whether or not you keep or throw something away.
So, a nurse came and hook him up with IV and Plasma, and then get his first shot or morphine and push him over to my dad, he hook up the IV Drips and basically just wait.
But then he talk to my dad, surprisingly lucid, tho not quite aware of what's happening around him, but he started talking.
But how do you actually break the news to someone and tell him he is dying, better yet, dead, but he just don't know about it? That's the question hover inside my dad's mine for quite some time, and eventually he come up with the solution, that is, well, simply not tell him about that.
So my dad did the round and took care the other 10, and pretty much after the IV and Morphine were injected, they are pretty much on autopilot, not much to do anyway beside checking them every 15 minutes to see, well, are they dead yet. So there are not much to do beside keep talking to one of the living dead that's awake.
"You are in a combat hospital in Pleiku, can you remember what happened?" My dad said
While he did know why and how he got here, but he obviously don't know anything else, including he is indeed dying. But this kind of quick to catch on when you are on a peaceful corner of an otherwise busy hospital.
"It didn't look good ain't it?" He said
Well, kind of hard to answer that question, but my dad did tell him the truth.
"Strange, I didn't feel like dying" he added after my dad told him there are nothing they can do. Once he bled out internally, he will be dead.
For the next hours, they talked about a lot of other stuff, baseball, cars, religion, things to do when they got back, afterlife and so on.
"Is there someone at one you can write to, I can write a letter for you?" My dad said he just ask him that, it just randomly felt out of his mouth.
"I don't" He simply said "I got nobody at home"
"Not even a girl? High school sweetheart?" My dad ask
"No" he said
Then as most of the other have died, my dad is now focusing on this person, if we can still call him that. And he just went to sit beside him. And he said
"You can still write to yourselves"
Well, it may seems like a stupid idea, but it would be the right thing to do. I guess it is sort of a confession or some kind of bucket list thing you will only understand when yourselves is dying. For me, I don't know. But My dad did just sit by him and wrote a letter for him to himself, he did not tell me anything about this letter, only a notion that the same letter is with him when he died, and with him all the way to the grave.
But the time has come, it's been almost two hours, all other have moved on, he remains, and he still talking and well, there are no other way to say this, but they need that bed for the next batch of expectant. So, he was given a choice to end it there by overdosing morphine.
In his dead bed, the doctor break the news and tell him what a combat cocktail is, after reaffirming him that there are nothing short of a full fledge hospital can do to save him, and moving him further itself will kill him and even if it does not and he moved to a fully equipped hospital, he would be a quadriplegic even if he survive, he accepted the offer to off himself.
Before then, the doctor went to the supply room and get the cocktail, and my dad ask him what he want to do before he went down the road. He asked for a cigarette and smoke, knowingly by the end of this cigarette, he would be on the other side of this world. So my dad break open a pack and give him one and light it for him, put it in his mouth. They both wait for the doctor to return with the combat cocktail.
And then, his last word is, "Thanks" and the orderly push him to the GRU
There are probably about a thousand dead my dad seen over the period of 1 year of war in Vietnam, probably he did about hundred of dying wishes, he don't remember any of them, well, he did remember bits and pieces of each of them, how they died, or what's their hair colour looks like, but not the entire story. This one, my dad said is different, because if he forgot about any detail, then nobody will even know this person actually exist. Beside a name and gravestone number low lying in Arlington. He have to make sure this person live on, and he will never forget about this person.
The following is a true story my dad went though during Vietnam, he told me about it one day and now I am telling you this story.
There is this wall in my home back in Kansas, this wall of photo. This wall is full of my family photo. Photo belong to my grand father, my grand mother, my father then us. In this wall of photo, it was full of history, it have a photo of my grand father drinking beer under board avenue in Paris after D-Day, the wedding photo of my grand parent in front of a church and so on.
There was this one photo my dad always look at. it was a photo with him in Vietnam. The entire cast of Pleiku Evacuation Hospital, which is where my dad served as a Navy Corpsman or a Hospital man.
He don't talk about his time in Vietnam, only a few stories here and there when he was drunk or when he was drinking in the local chapter VFW. Not many people would talk about their time during war, I have been in one myself and as a frontline infantry, I find it hard to tell anyone what I have seen or what I have been though, when you tell someone who wasn't there, they just don't know why it happens the way it happens. To a point, I just don't bother.
My dad case is a bit different, I have no idea how or what kind of person he is before Vietnam, or as a matter of fact, before I was born, but my dad don't like to talk, period. he worked late at night and early in the morning, chances are if we saw him at home, he would be laying on his bed sleeping. I don't really know, nor can I be sure what is it that he won't share his war story.
But being a Medic (well, that's what we call in the Army) I know for sure this is a crap job, or shite duty. I can take it when you have to make choice and kill someone, but for a medic, you deal with your own casualty, people you know, people you just talked to maybe an hour ago, and now it is a mangled piece of "human" in front of you and you have to deal with it. This is not an easy job.
So, this one night I was playing late night video game, just when I was heading to the head, I saw my dad standing in front of the wall of photo and staring at the photo with him and his mate in Pleiku. I rush to the toilet cause I was really wanting to go and comes out for a glass of water before going back to my game. And he just said
"Do you know if you made this thought the night, you're home free?"
I said "What?"
Then my dad said "All you need is to hang on for 24 hours"
I was totally confused, I don't know what the hell is he talking about at the time but I did mumble something back to him while I drink my tea.
Then he said "You think you would be numb after seeing hundreds of people got torn to pieces. But something you just never forget"
"How's that?" I ask
"You would think you will never forget the first face you saw died in front of you, but then you would be wrong" My dad said
I don't really know what got in to me, but I just sit there listen to him talk while I slowly sip my tea.
See, my dad was a corpsman, he thinks that killing people is a sin so when he was drafted, he went for the non-combatant option. The job, unlike what you see in TV or documentary, a normal Corpsman embedded within a Marine unit or Naval Ground unit and fix up casualty as they goes. They look after their own unit and when their unit start taking casualty, the corpsman will just took care of those and bunch them up to a dust off and they probably won't see them again.
Working in a hospital is a whole different ball game. There, you don't need to do combat drill, nobody, well, almost nobody is shooting at you, you have 3 hot meal a day and in your down time you can play Ping-Pong or volleyball in the court, and the only thing you need to do is to save life, not in a way a doctor perform surgery, or a nurse look after their patient, but save lives nonetheless.
71st Evacuation Hospital is a combat hospital located in Pleiku near central Vietnam. The Hospital would be a equivalent of a Role 3/4 in today standard, it is a fully equipped compound that can handle anything from sunburn to traumatic amputation.
My dad's job as a navy corpsman is an exchange personnel with the 4th ID (Which based at the 71st) is to assist the medical personnel inside the hospital, works as an orderly and also provide limited medical treatment for outpatient or not so serious case.
The hospital basically separated into 4 different compound. OR/ER department, recovery ward, ICU ward and Grave Registration. There are gates and helipad to allow ambulance and dust off to bring in casualty, obviously the more serious case would be airlifted, which is actually better than being bombarded by litter or walking wounded. As least you focus on a smaller number, instead of being overwhelmed.
It is not exactly a bad gig if you look at the down time, you get hot chow, girls, sports, barbeque and beaches where you held your own little private R&R everyday (that you are not working). Things are a bit different when there is a big operation ahead and casualty would just flown in chopper by chopper. Casualty overflown is a frequent sight in this hospital, it's a frequent sight that you will see medic, nurse and surgeon bump into each other like a blinded bumblebee.
"1 year in this place you probably see hundreds, if not thousands dead boy come by" My dad says.
It hits you for the first few body pass by you, you would be surprised to see how human can be maimed and mangled in a way you can't even make out a face. But over time, it get easier and easier, you started to focus on the job, you don't think they are human, you just think they are "some stuff" that pass by you and you have to stop the bleeding or plug hole until a nurse or doctor can take over from you.
Jobs can be crazy at time, but for the people who worked there, there are a sort of way to alleviate the pressure, people joke about the patient case, the more serious the case is, the funnier the joke is going to be. Those are not but one of the measure to see things outside of what they actually are, and how they present.
For a medic working in that place, you rotate your job as you goes, there are one corner in this hospital, you can name it whatever you like, check out counter, dispatch, point of no return or whatever you can think of, officially, there are no name on that section, but that is the shittest section in the whole hospital, that's where soldier that's too wounded, too far along to save waiting to die.
At times, that part of the hospital is the quietest part of it all, where soldier tops up with morphine and simply, letting it goes, due to the proximity of the GRU, that section was chosen particularly so that soldier died there can be transfer to GRU as quickly as possible.
"The first couple of dead is hard to look at, but as you get settle in for the job, it just happens, like you are working in a packing factory for a yogurt company, you will see the line of yogurt keep coming from the assembly line. Same things happen in that hospital"
He can't remember the first man, I should say, body that came up to him, not a facial feature, skin colour or eye colour he can tell you. Just too many have come thru during his stay, body started to look all the same to him. Then you would wonder, what kind of dead he would remember?
One night, after a big Ops happening in Central Highland. My dad was rotated to this area.
That night, there were 20 casualty brought in by chopper in a single hour, not all of them can be save, the lucky on was pushed to the OR and prep for Surgery, the unlucky one were set aside and given morphine so that they don't feel much pain when they go.
Today, the section is manned by 2 Medic, my dad and an army Spec 4, 2 medic in charge of the dispatch. In times like this, doctors and nurses are all busy taking care of all other casualty that can be saved, and Medic and orderly in charge of the death room where the Medic job's basically keep pumping morphine until those expectant dies and orderlies' job is to gather the expectant belonging and push them to GRU.
In most case, those who are expected to die are too far gone, they mostly remain in a comatose states when they expires. Some are still conscious and yelling and screaming like crazy. In that case, you will need to inject some kind of sedative as well as morphine (Morphine to numb the pain and sedative to calm the person down) or in some case, just outright overdose morphine.
But on that day, one soldier stand out quite particularly as my father recall. He was hit by a concussion wave of an airburst artillery shell, and the concussion severed his spinal cord, which just snap into two, couple with internal bleeding, There are nothing much anyone can do, especially when the hospital are under siege of casualty like this.
5 Seconds, that is the time a doctor came saw him and look at his injury, 5 seconds is the time when the triage physician needed to write him off, cast him off like a thing, like when you are doing spring cleaning in your garage, the time it takes to decide whether or not you keep or throw something away.
So, a nurse came and hook him up with IV and Plasma, and then get his first shot or morphine and push him over to my dad, he hook up the IV Drips and basically just wait.
But then he talk to my dad, surprisingly lucid, tho not quite aware of what's happening around him, but he started talking.
But how do you actually break the news to someone and tell him he is dying, better yet, dead, but he just don't know about it? That's the question hover inside my dad's mine for quite some time, and eventually he come up with the solution, that is, well, simply not tell him about that.
So my dad did the round and took care the other 10, and pretty much after the IV and Morphine were injected, they are pretty much on autopilot, not much to do anyway beside checking them every 15 minutes to see, well, are they dead yet. So there are not much to do beside keep talking to one of the living dead that's awake.
"You are in a combat hospital in Pleiku, can you remember what happened?" My dad said
While he did know why and how he got here, but he obviously don't know anything else, including he is indeed dying. But this kind of quick to catch on when you are on a peaceful corner of an otherwise busy hospital.
"It didn't look good ain't it?" He said
Well, kind of hard to answer that question, but my dad did tell him the truth.
"Strange, I didn't feel like dying" he added after my dad told him there are nothing they can do. Once he bled out internally, he will be dead.
For the next hours, they talked about a lot of other stuff, baseball, cars, religion, things to do when they got back, afterlife and so on.
"Is there someone at one you can write to, I can write a letter for you?" My dad said he just ask him that, it just randomly felt out of his mouth.
"I don't" He simply said "I got nobody at home"
"Not even a girl? High school sweetheart?" My dad ask
"No" he said
Then as most of the other have died, my dad is now focusing on this person, if we can still call him that. And he just went to sit beside him. And he said
"You can still write to yourselves"
Well, it may seems like a stupid idea, but it would be the right thing to do. I guess it is sort of a confession or some kind of bucket list thing you will only understand when yourselves is dying. For me, I don't know. But My dad did just sit by him and wrote a letter for him to himself, he did not tell me anything about this letter, only a notion that the same letter is with him when he died, and with him all the way to the grave.
But the time has come, it's been almost two hours, all other have moved on, he remains, and he still talking and well, there are no other way to say this, but they need that bed for the next batch of expectant. So, he was given a choice to end it there by overdosing morphine.
In his dead bed, the doctor break the news and tell him what a combat cocktail is, after reaffirming him that there are nothing short of a full fledge hospital can do to save him, and moving him further itself will kill him and even if it does not and he moved to a fully equipped hospital, he would be a quadriplegic even if he survive, he accepted the offer to off himself.
Before then, the doctor went to the supply room and get the cocktail, and my dad ask him what he want to do before he went down the road. He asked for a cigarette and smoke, knowingly by the end of this cigarette, he would be on the other side of this world. So my dad break open a pack and give him one and light it for him, put it in his mouth. They both wait for the doctor to return with the combat cocktail.
And then, his last word is, "Thanks" and the orderly push him to the GRU
There are probably about a thousand dead my dad seen over the period of 1 year of war in Vietnam, probably he did about hundred of dying wishes, he don't remember any of them, well, he did remember bits and pieces of each of them, how they died, or what's their hair colour looks like, but not the entire story. This one, my dad said is different, because if he forgot about any detail, then nobody will even know this person actually exist. Beside a name and gravestone number low lying in Arlington. He have to make sure this person live on, and he will never forget about this person.
