3:38 p.m. - 2002-01-21
war stories
03/05/00

What I wanted or didn't want didn't really count for much out there. Our platoon was going to assault the village. For our part, craig and I would work together. He would fire on the village while I ran ahead to whatever little cover I could find and threw myself down on the ground. Then I would fire while he ran up to me and beyond to the next spot. Assuming one of us didn't get killed, we would just kind of leapfrog this way until we got to our objective. I didn't have a good feeling about leaving the safety of the embankment. But then I never had a good feeling about exposing myself to gunfire.

Mankind has created some wonderful sounds. Music, mostly. But there's a sound that's more wonderful to me than and symphony. It's the life-giving sound of the main blades of a UH1E 'Huey' helicopter as they whop-whop through the air. Although there are far fewer of them flying today, I can still identify a huey from the sound alone. As we heard the order to move out on our assault, I could hear the hueys coming up from behind us. I knew then that we would have a chance of success. The helicopters would fire rockets and miniguns while we made our assault. That was good.... but it was bad too. We had obviously discovered more than a few VC in a remote village. We were attacking an NVA stronghold. That's why the helicopters were there.

But as it turned out, none of this mattered a bit. I had just adjusted my pack and topped the embankment while Craig was firing when I felt someone hit me right across the back of the knees with a baseball bat. At least, that's the impression I had. It knocked my legs right out from under me and threw my onto my back. It was disorienting and maddening. I couldn't understand who would play such a trick while we were in the middle of a serious business. I sat and looked around but no one was close. No one was laughing. I laid back again, thinking... trying to figure out this puzzle. Suddenly, it occured to me that I may have been shot. I sat up again and looked at my legs. How had I missed it the first time? My left leg was at an odd angle and there was a huge bloody hole in the thigh of my pant leg. That's when the pain began.

Women bear children through pain, and there are just a few who never tire of telling men that they don't know pain until they have a child. I guess I can understand that but, with all due respect, I think I know a little bit about pain. As the shock of the round passing through my muscle, bone and nerves began to subside, the pain came over me in waves that simply took my breath away. I had to scream something, so I started screaming 'medic!'. I was enveloped in a cocoon of pain; my mind turning inward upon it. It just hurt real bad.

Craig was there. Every time he touched me it seemed the hurting kept on doubling. It never got smaller, only bigger. But he touched me anyway. He tore the compress bandage from the strap on my field gear and pressed it onto my wound. It felt like a lightning bolt was striking me over and over. Then a medic appeared kind of miraculously out of the dark fog around my eyes. I heard him telling me it was OK, that I would be OK. I didn't believe him for a second. I know he gave me a shot of morphine, but I didn't feel it go in. And it didn't stop the hurting. At best, it semed to clear my head a little bit, becasue I could hear the medic shouting to someone that we had to get these men out of here.

Suddenly, I realized that there was no way out. I imagined myself, in this condition, being drug back through the filth and mud of the river behind us. I knew it would kill me. And I knew I was bleeding to death on the spot where I lay. I understood in a very calm and convicted way that I was dying. It helped me lose any fear of death I had left. I wasn't scared. I only felt a great sadness as I realized I had had only eighteen short years to bring me to this place. I was sorry for the things I was going to miss.

But it seems like there was little time for this kind of thinking. The medic vanished as mysteriously as he had appeared, but a couple of other guys came and helped Craig manhandle me onto my poncho. I was in a very bad mood and had no patience at all about this. I screamed in pain and begged them not to take me across that river. That seems like the only thing I could think of.

Apparantly, the assault had failed. There was a lot going on, all up and down the embankment. A lot of shooting. A lot of shouting. It seemed mostly unimportant to me. Like a dream from which I would soon awaken. Maybe the morphine kicked in, because laying there on my back, I could see the huey gunships as they made their turns, circling around for another run on the village. I was getting dreamier.

My dreaming came to an abrupt end. When I felt the four corners of my poncho grabbed by four men. They yanked me off of the ground and ran with me. It hurt too bad to even to scream. I was blacking out, but I felt them throw me onto the embankment, climb up and then grab me again. Half carrying, half dragging, they hustled me to a helicopter that had landed there on the flat ground. THe doors on both sides were open, or had been removed. In one of the doors, facing the village, was a gunner, firing a machine gun non-stop. The floor of the chopper was already greasy with blood. My tormentors threw me into the huey so hard that I slid across the floor and halfway out the other side. The gunner grabbed me and was still struggling to haul me back in as the pilot lifted off and sped out of there.

Halfway upside down, my head hanging out the door, I turned to see Craig standing alone as the other guys ran back to the riverbank. He was just standing there, watching me go. It was the last time I would see battle and the last time I ever saw Craig.

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