8:23 a.m. - Friday, Jul. 18, 2003
Puttin' On the Fitz
My transition from combat to the world was gradual. The helicopter that took me away from the war and from Craig took me somewhere. I�m not sure where. I can only remember that it was all tents� or at least what I could see was tents. I remember some relief from the pain when someone put my leg into a kind of metal splint that allowed them to pull the leg out straight. It still hurt like crazy, but it was something I could deal with. It wasn�t agony anymore. Then the next thing I remember is laying on a stretcher in a tent or tent-like room. There were several of us there. Maybe a dozen or so. I couldn�t see to count, and didn�t care to count. But I heard the moans and crying of the others as the lay waiting to be seen by the doctors. The only one I remember really seeing is the guy who lay next to me on his own stretcher. Up until I saw him, I had been pretty focused on myself. But this guy was burned something awful. He was hurt �way more than I was. And the effect of seeing that guy made me feel bad that I was even there. I felt guilty that I was taking up time and space. It was at the very moment I saw him that I began to stifle my own cries and groans. And that�s how the rest of my recovery was to be.

I was finally taken into a surgical area. I don�t remember much. It seemed old-fashioned.... even dirty kind of around the edges. But I wasn�t complaining at all. It hurt awfully when they put me on the table and bent my back to insert a needle full of drugs into my spine. I couldn�t believe the pain. But then, suddenly, it all went away. I didn�t feel pain, I didn�t feel numb.. I didn�t feel a thing except for a deep fatigue. I hoped they wouldn�t mind if I took a little nap.

I awoke in a metal quonset hut filled with hospital beds. I was under clean white sheets. That�s what impressed me first.. how clean the sheets were. Then I remembered who I was and looked to my feet to see how many were there. I discovered I was in a body cast. It went from my nipples all the way down to the toes of my left foot and down to my knee on my right leg. Encased in plaster, I couldn�t move even to sit up. But I could lift my head to see two legs and ten toes wiggling under the cool sheets. Having settled that question, I looked around the ward. There were other patients in every bed. They all seemed to be still. Were they sleeping? I saw no nurses or corpsmen. It was is if we had been left behind. And then I realized that there were muffled explosions going on outside the walls of the clinic. I guess I panicked. I couldn�t move in my new cast, but I needed to get on the floor. I was flailing my arms and hollering �incoming� when a corpsman stood up from where he had been on the floor. Then another one stood up as well. They held me on the bed and told me to relax. It was a mortar attack, but there were sandbags outside the walls and it would be over soon, etc. etc. And all I could think of was if it�s so safe, why are these guys on the floor? Later, I learned that this was the hospital at Phu Bai.. a Marine base not far from where I had been hit. I stayed there a few days.. I don�t know how many. Not many. And then I was flown to Japan.

I spent almost exactly a month in a hospital in Tokyo. I hated it. It was my first re-entry into the world. I laid on my back in my cast, with nothing at all to do to pass the days, except listen to the soldier across from me who had lost both legs. He cried and cried.. night and day. And there was nothing in the world I could say to him. I could only look at my two legs and ten toes peeking out of the cast and feel guilty that I had survived with so much more than he.

At night, I started having terrible nightmares. The nurses, and sometimes the doctors, would wake me up by standing at the end of the bed and pinching my toes. They would wake me up and scold me for cursing in my sleep. I would be hollering and swearing, as if I was still in the middle of a fight. It�s funny�. No one ever asked me about that. No one ever offered to listen or try to help me with my feelings. They were only upset because I was cursing and waking the other patients. More guilt for me.

Once, when I was sure I couldn�t lay another second in that bed, I grabbed the trapeze bar that hung from the metal frame of the bed. Hand over hand, I dragged myself up until I could grab the overhead frame and stand myself up in the bed. The sheet that covered me fell away, exposing my genitals, just as a Japanese cleaning woman came around the corner. Oh.. everyone was upset with me. I was put back on the bed and chewed out royally.. not because I had endangered myself by climbing around, but because I had exposed myself to mama-san. They removed the hanging trapeze and offered to tie my hands to the bed if I tried standing up again. Hmm� thanks for the offer guys, but maybe another time.

I can�t remember if I had a surgery in Japan. I think I did, but I remember little of it. I think it was there that they installed a metal rod through my shin bone to be eventually hooked up for traction. I know that the surgeon in Denver remarked on that when I was about to undergo surgery there.

The flight back to the states and Denver was a long one. Hours and hours, laying on a stretcher attached to the wall. No window, no conversations, just a bunch of broken soldiers hunkered into their own minds, waiting for each ordeal to end. We landed in Hawaii for fuel. It was night-time. I couldn�t see a thing, but when the door was opened, I could smell a million flowers. Hawaii smelled like heaven. And then some girls came in and put leis around our necks, quickly, as they were rushed for time. And then they were gone. The doors closed and we were back into our own heads again.

By the time I arrived at the hospital in Denver, I was beyond tired. How can a person get so tired laying on his back? But there was apparently no room at the inn. My stretcher and I were put on the floor in a hallway. I don�t know how long I was there, but it was a long time. I had meals there. I laid there watching legs go back and forth past me up and down the hall. I tried not to need a bedpan so I would be spared the ordeal of having a corpsman wrestle me onto the pan and hold me there while I peed.

But finally they took me and put me on a gurney� and then a bed. A day or so later, they operated on me again. I can remember that one. After the operation, they put me into a room by myself. I was in traction. I didn�t know it, but the weights were hung up on the bed frame. All I knew was that I was back in agony. I laid there the whole night, twisting in pain. I called the nurses, but they did nothing to help me. At first they would pat my hand and tell me to try to relax, but later they lost patience and just didn�t come in any more. I don�t know how I got through that. I was terrified that this would be how my recovery would go� that I�d be in this pain the whole time. I couldn�t stand it. I guess that�s what true torture is� pain you can�t stand, but you�re made to stand it anyway. I didn�t see a doctor until morning rounds. By then, I was just holding onto the bed frame and panting. Honestly.. I felt like an animal in a trap. I would have chewed my leg off if I could. But when the doctor came in, the first thing he noticed was that the weights that were supposed to be pulling on my leg were hung up on the bed frame.. and there were too few of them as well. He bent down and unhooked the bag that held the led weights and let it hang free. In that instant, the pain was gone. Just like that. It was that easy.

I�ll never forgive those nurses for putting me through that night. It was so needless. All they needed to do was care enough to look.

Well�. Eventually they found a spot for me on the ward. I was on the end, I had a window by my bed, although I couldn�t see much from where I was. But it was nice to have a corner. Somehow I felt less exposed, or vulnerable. Of course, I was surrounded again with amputees. I think most of them hated to see me with both legs, even though the left one was badly injured. My first order of business, once I was moved onto the ward was to ask for a phone. They had this kind of a cabinet they could bring to the bed and plug in for a phone call. I checked phone book for Arndts and started dialing. I didn�t take long to find Craig�s parents. I thought I could call them and just let them know that I had been with him and he was doing OK. But instead, his mom told me he had been killed within the last few days. His body came home while I was in traction. I couldn�t go to his funeral, but I did send flowers. I was devastated. I had asked to come to Denver only because it was Craig�s home. Now he was gone.

I spent six months in traction. There were few high points. Like most of the others, I rented a small black and white portable TV that could be set on a stand next to my head. There weren�t many channels.. only three or four. So I spent my days staring at the screen, at soap operas, cartoons, and advertisements. On Friday�s they issued beer. One bottle of cold Budweiser per person. There were, of course, some guys who didn�t drink beer, so with a little effort, I could get two or three bottles. Sometimes four. I saved my Darvons from the week in a dixie cup in the drawer of my nightstand. So On Fridays, I would order a pizza to be delivered to my bed, eat it while watching my TV, and then wash down a handful of Darvon with the beer. It wasn�t a great high, but it was a great help in numbly passing the time. After a couple of weeks, I made contact with Tim, a marine who�d lost a leg and was doing a land office business selling hashish from his wheelchair. This was the beginning of my experience with drugs. Tim helped me get a small pipe and some tin foil. I kept my hash �hidden� in the drawer of my nightstand. Occasionally, I�d get it out, break off a small piece and smoke it all at once. By the time I exhaled, the hash would be reduced to a fine white ash. I thought I was so smart.. smoking hashish right in front of all the docs and nurses and corpsmen. How could they not smell the sweet aroma of it all? Now I realize they most definitely could smell it. I was not the only one smoking it on the ward. They could smell it� they just, once again, didn�t care. Maybe it was compassion. Maybe they knew it was one of the few ways we were going to survive this tour in the hospital.

Eventually, I found that I could get a prolonged, mellow and safer high if I just ate the hashish. I was eating it a gram at a time. It was marvelous.

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