My War - Installment 41

Lights were turned out early on that ward. Darkness covered everything and there was nothing to do, but lie there in the dark and smoke and think. I stared at the ceiling and thought of the men still up on the traction ward, my friends. I reminisced about how we would all lay awake at night, not being able to sleep at times; some of the guys would light farts. No one would tell anybody else when they were going to do it. You would see a match light up and then an unexpected blue flash as the methane fart gas was ignited. It was a general, and well known, rule that you should always light a fart with your drawers on; otherwise you could easily burn all the hair off of your butt. Matches were commonly used; they afforded ease of manipulation being more easily handled than a cigarette lighter. I had enjoyed watching the men on the ward cutting up and had often wanted to join them, but thought that as an officer, it might be looked down on.

Thoughts of Sandy and Emily flashed in my mind's eye. My eyes strained toward the windows looking for anything to fix on. I lay awake and dreamed of getting on a gurney and zooming pell-mell down the halls of the hospital, visiting other men and seeing what every person in the place was doing.

Before it got too late I called for a bed pan to take a dump. Going to the toilet while in a body cast can best be described by saying: it’s like trying to take a crap through a table top. Just lying on your back and trying to go is bad enough. Your butt is all scrunched together and ... I decided that I was going to try an alternative method, because I just could not go, even though I knew I had to. I continued to lay there trying to figure out just how I was going to be able to get to a real toilet. I had made up my mind that I was not going to use a bed pan again.

They must have had the same cook for this ward that we had on the other one. At least the hairy scrambled eggs made me feel at home. When one of the nurses came around I asked for a pair of crutches. She looked at me kind of funny, but said that she would see what she could do about it. In my mind’s eye I was going to use a toilet. My well planned idea was ready for first trial. I talked the nurse and a corpsman into helping to stand or prop me up beside the bed and adjust the crutches to the proper length. Without their help, I tried moving using only the crutches. It was hard, but I was managing. I was driven by the desire to not to have to use a bed pan, the curse of the bed ridden.

I made it across the room to the door of the bathroom. Then carefully and slowly I inched my way to the first stall. I was apprehensive, if I lost my balance I'd crash down like a felled tree. More than likely smashing the toilet, and would have about as much chance of getting up, by myself, as running a foot race. I gingerly swung around in the doorway of the stall and then grabbed, placing one hand on each side of the doorway. Holding on I leaned back at an angle and took careful aim. When I believed that alignment was achieved I let'r rip. Success, ah that was the most comfortable bowel movement I'd had in months. Taking a dump, something to really be proud of, one of mankind’s truly great pleasures. I pulled myself upright and then used a crutch to hook my hospital, baggy pants, PJs and pulled them up over my nakedness that protruded from my cast. I lifted a crutch and flushed my mission a success.

I was glad to get back to my bed. Although the journey had been worthwhile, it had been tiring. I rested for a time before lunch was brought in and practiced some self hypnosis assuring my subconscious that I would heal faster and do better on my next trip.

After eating, write some letters sounded like a god proposal. I pulled my pen, paper and envelopes from my bedside cabinet, then positioned my bed table over my cast covered body. The stinking lousy table had some loose bolts which made it tilt awkwardly across me, darn thing bounced up and down when I put the weight of my arm on it too. I flipped up the tilting portion of the table so I would be able to see what I was writing, placed an ashtray on the inside flat end, and lit up a cigarette, a Pall Mall, and began to write. I had only taken a puff or two off my smoke before I smashed it out in the heavy glass ashtray and continued my scribbling. Caught up in my writing I paid little attention when the ashtray fell off the end of the sloping table and clanked against my cast covered left leg. "I'll get a corpsman to brush the ashes off the bed later," I said to myself and continued as before.

I had just finished one letter and was writing "FREE" where the stamp would go (we had free mail in Vietnam, but needed stamps for mailing film and things like that) when someone on the other side of the room started yelling.

FIRE!! YOUR BED'S ON FIRE!! YOUR BED'S ON FIRE!!"

Wow, somebody's bed was on fire? I wondered how that could happen, I was too busy and too uncomfortable, with my head all propped up, to look around and see where the fire was. The fellow across the way kept yelling "YOUR BED IS ON FIRE." and I kept writing, he kept yelling so I finally looked up. Holy Toledo, it was my bed that was on fire. That's the trouble with those filter-less cigarettes, if they are not snuffed out just right, they lay there and smolder until there all gone. There was nothing I could do, so I just continued to lay there in my cast and watch the smoke and flames come up around my leg. Maybe they would fix my table. Soon there was enough, agitated, noise making that one of the staff members, a nurse, of the female variety, my preference, came running onto the ward. For some reason there were no call buttons at our beds, no alarm to bring a nurse running to help, but then I'm sure that they were not expecting jokers like me to be setting the beds afire.

The nurse grabbed a pitcher of water, from some GI's bedside table, mine was empty, I had checked, and dumped it on my bed; the excitement was over. My mattress was changed and I got a different table, but just to play it safe I decided to do some more self hypnosis and stay out of trouble for a little while. Even while I rested word of the incident spread like wild fire through the hospital's underground, giving many a laugh I'm sure.

The next few days went smoothly, I stayed out of trouble. I spent most of my time reading, eating, practicing self hypnosis, and sleeping. I had decided that I was not going to write any more letters until I got to Valley Forge General Hospital in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. I had given everyone an indication of when I expected to be in Pennsylvania. I had told them the expected month and week. All that was left was to get there, I would be able to call any person I had a mind to on the phone when I got established there.

One afternoon a few days before I was to be gift wrapped and shipped out, the Commanding Officer of the Hospital came onto the ward with a photographer. He approached my bed and introduced himself before presenting me with a purple heart for one of the times that I had been wounded. George Washington was the person who initiated the award and a profile of his bust was on the medal on a, heart shaped, field of purple. My name was even engraved on the back of the medal. I was impressed. If I had known that I would have been in a position like I was in then, I would have tried to get written up, for Purple Hearts, for the other times I had been wounded.

The photographer took a picture of the CO pinning the medal on my hospital pajamas and then they both quickly left the ward. I unclasped the pin on the back of the medal’s ribbon from my hospital PJs and proudly placed the medal in its case. I took the silver K-wire that had been through my leg and placed it beside the medal and closed the lid; two souvenirs for the future.

Two days later I was in route again, to Tachikawa Air Force Base, on the first leg of the excursion home, only one more night in Japan. As I laid there in bed passing the time some Red Cross workers came by. I had developed a keen dislike for the Red Cross due to my experiences with them of the past half year. One of the women stopped and talked to me for a few minutes. She was friendly enough and not bad to look at either. She told me that I looked just like Doctor Zhivago, in the movie, who ever the heck he was? What ever movie she was talking about, I had no idea. She said my mustache was just like his and my dark sunken eyes, still dark and sunken from the severe blow on the head from a couple of months back. She continued for a few minutes and then left. I lay awake most of the night reading, too excited to sleep. I still had that same excitement about traveling that I always had. I was glad for that, but disappointed that I still would not be able to look out of a window and see where I was going.

The next morning we were carried out to a waiting C-141 Transport. The stretcher bound patients, like me, were stacked on racks as before. I was on the bottom again but near a door, with a little luck I might catch a glimpse of something through the door, if we stopped some place.

Within a few minutes after take off I was sound asleep; there was nothing else to do. I was not aware of how long the flight was supposed to last; I woke up one time to relieve myself. The flight nurse handed me a little cardboard urinal, which I quickly filled to the top and placed on my cast, waiting for the nurse to pick it up again. I fell asleep before it was retrieved. The next time I woke up was when the urinal dumped on me and the urine ran down, all inside of my cast adding insult to injury.

We landed in Fairbanks, Alaska. I wished that I had not been by the door. We were told that the air temperature was hovering in the low teens, low teens below zero. However it felt lower, because when the hatch was opened the cold rush of air that tumbled in on us chilled us to the bone. The only thing that covered me was a chincy little blanket over my cast and baggy hospital PJs. Being by the door, I did get to glance out. Snow was piled deeply along the taxi-ways that I could see.

There was a bright side to it all. A women's auxiliary from the air base came on board with donuts and cold, ice cold, drinks, they were even free. It was a nice gesture, even in the chill arctic air.

After refueling the hatches were pulled to and the cold flow of air was stopped as heat again started to circulate in the aircraft. What relief. We were off for Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. I fell asleep while humming Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound", I slept most of the way, my urine soaked cast had dried and I was a bit more comfortable by the time we arrived on the east coast.

We were unloaded and put into, panel truck type, ambulances and taken to waiting UH-1D Hueys to be flown out, some of us by way of Fort Dix, New Jersey, others to points closer to their homes.

It felt great to be flying in a helicopter again even if I was in a horizontal position on the bottom shelf. There is a totally different feel to flying in a helicopter, which I had always found exciting. Being excited about being in the air, and in a helicopter, reminded me of one day when I had our recon platoon leader along on a scouting mission. He had expressed a sincere interest in seeing what it was like and how reconnaissance was done from overhead, so-to-speak. He rode with me during one of the periods when there was a lull in the action. The ground units were not being used very much, it was between the 506 action and the LZ Bird massacre. He was a little nervous from the moment that we had taken off, but I just figured that he had some butterflies and that he would soon settle down. Well, he never did. He complained that he felt like he was hanging on a string in a basket, and that he was a sitting duck, being out in the open; there was nothing to hide behind, nothing to even jump into, or at for cover. Once during the flight we had been shot at and he really started to moan.

"I don't see how you guys can do this. You'll never get me up here again. I'll be happy to stay on the ground."

I reminded him that he was the one that had requested the opportunity to come along, and that I could not just abandon the mission because he was uncomfortable in the H-13. He finally did settle down somewhat. But, he never asked for another ride. His short trips in the Hueys were enough for him, he said. Of course my feelings were just the opposite. I wouldn't trade the flying for anything. It beat walking any day.

We landed at one of Fort Dix's med evac pads and were met by, a panel truck, ambulances again. Some medics jumped from the ambulances and began to unload us. On the bottom layer as usual, which meant that the medics would have to lift me and my cast to the top level, which was the third level in the ambulance. They must not have taken notice to my cast. They grunted and groaned as they lifted me out. With much effort, they got the head end of the stretcher on the top shelf and slid me in. There was only one problem; they had not pushed me in far enough. My feet, at least from where I was looking from, were at least two inches outside of where the door would be when they closed it. I noticed this small discrepancy, unfortunately, just as they were in the process of slamming the rear doors. I yelled, but too late, the door crunched shut on my feet, both of which I was incapable of moving. I yelled again but to no avail. The medic operating the door, thinking that the door just didn't close properly, slammed it again and then he must have hit the door with his shoulder. Great, this was like a bad scene from an old cartoon and besides, it hurt. I managed to get his attention after a few minutes of yelling and the problem was rectified, to my great relief!

After a short ride we were at the hospital. The building was quiet impressive, a multi-storied structure which could easily have been a modern civilian facility, from all appearances. I was unloaded, placed on a gurney and wheeled to one of the upper levels of the main building. There I was placed in a semi-private room, no less, all to my amazement. There was no one else in the room; the whole place was mine. Fantastic! There was a nice color TV on the wall, remotely controlled, and the bed was electrically operated. I could raise the head or foot of the bed with the flick of a switch, or move it anywhere in between. It would not do me much good to have the bed go into the curved shaped recliner position, because I could not bend at the waist. I could adjust the height of the bed with another switch. There were just all kinds of neat things to be amused with; it was definitely a first class operation there at Dix.

It had been mid-afternoon or there about when the C-141 had arrived at Dover and it was then creeping up on supper time. If the food was as good there as the accommodations it would, most assuredly, be a good place to spend the weekend. I just hoped and prayed that Valley Forge would be as first class as Fort Dix was.

Supper came and I was equally astounded by the food. Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and the whole nine yards. I thought that, per chance, I had been unconscious in a coma for a number of months and there was a holiday or something that I was unaware of.

It was even easier to eat there with the electrically tilting bed I could position myself comfortably for eating. I enjoyed my meal while swilling down REAL chocolate milk, real as opposed to reconstituted or powdered milk. I topped off the meal with pie and coffee. I felt like a king, it was good to be home. The nurses were good looking too.

After supper a short nap was in order, after having basked in the luxury of the hospital's food and finery. When I woke up I flicked on the TV and enjoyed my first American TV shows in over seven months. English was actually being spoken. I watched show after show straight through the Tonight Show. Then the late movie came on and then the late-late movie. It was a strange coincidence that the late-late movie was one about Valley Forge Hospital. The movie was based on facts or on I true story one or the other. The name of the movie was “Bright Victory, first release in the United States on 31 July 1951. The story took place at Valley Forge General Hospital after the end of World War II. Valley Forge had been a blind rehabilitation center toward the end of and after War. The plot line dealt with how men dealt with disabilities that they knew would linger for the rest of their lives. The main character was Sergeant Niven, I believe, and had been nominated for two Academy Awards and many other film awards.