Day of the Bomb (30 page)

As Sgt. Felder radioed the enemy’s
position to the fire base, Bill lobbed mortars, their parabola
flights calculated in his head and decimating the unseen enemy. The
first screams for help convulsed Dan’s stomach.

“Medic!”

“Let’s go.” Roscoe crawled
snakelike toward the cries, Dan copying every move. He
thought he was watching himself star in
a B-movie.

Although the firefight lasted only five
minutes before the artillery shells from the firebase routed the
enemy, the platoon suffered four wounded.

“This is your final exam, ‘cruit. Set
up triage. Tell Sgt. Felder if you need a dust off.”

Dan froze. Triage. How he dreaded the word.
His mind backpedalled to the air-conditioned classroom he had sat
in nine months earlier.

“When you got wounded you have to set
up triage,” the instructor had said. “That’s where you put them in
three spots. One is for those who can treat each other’s wounds
because they are not life threatening. The second is for those so
severely wounded that they are dying no matter what you do. The
third is for those who you can save.”

One trooper was bleeding from an arm
and a second from a leg wound. Dan tossed them two field dressings.
“Put these on the wounds. I’ll be back to check on you.”

A third soldier had a sucking chest
wound. Dan recognized it by the air bubbles escaping with the blood
flowing from the bullet hole in his chest. The fourth soldier had
massive wounds to his abdomen, noodles and ham he had eaten
swimming among bloody intestines. Choking back vomit, Dan yelled at
Sgt. Felder, who was still on the radio.

“Sarge, we need a med evac for these two
now!”

He dropped to his knees and tore open two
large field dressings and covered the exposed internal organs.
“Roscoe, give him morphine.”

His mentor injected two plastic
ampules of the painkiller into the man’s left thigh. Dan took a
piece of thin plastic paper and slapped in onto the other man’s
chest wound. He wound the straps of the field dressing around his
back and tied them tightly in a square knot. Bit by bit, movements
and sounds returned to normal speed and volume by the time the two
with severe wounds had been carried to a landing zone for the
inbound copter, smoke from canisters marking it. Dan did not stop
shaking until it lifted off with the ones he prayed would survive.
An unseen hand squeezing his shoulder made him jump.

“Good job, Doc.” Roscoe patted him on the
back. “You’re still a little bit jumpy but you pass.”

They returned to the battle scene with the
two who had helped them to carry the wounded to the landing zone.
Because Hank had found a tunnel Sgt. Felder ordered a barf grenade
tossed into the hole and for his men to spread out in a 360-degree
pattern from the tunnel’s entrance to watch for enemy using hidden
exits. Four VC came up through a hole 75 meters from the entrance,
all of them vomiting so hard that they crawled. When no more
appeared, Sgt. Felder ordered a body count. The tally came in at
twelve dead, four captured. Roscoe smiled for the first time since
the platoon had left the safety of its base.

“Thank you, Jesus.”

“Why are you so happy all of a
sudden?” Dan asked.

“Because whenever there’s
prisoners, Sarge always has us head back to base so they can get
interrogated right away by an ARVN soldier. Otherwise he would’ve
had us
go after the Cong that got
away.”

Having a headful of
lifesaving techniques had been one thing; living in this surreal
world of war where most of the
enemies ever seen were dead was another. Dan thought their
seeming invisibility to be their greatest asset and for his
platoon, its sergeant. Back at base, Dan sought him out.

“Can I talk with you, Sarge?”

“Sure.” He put down the weapon he was
cleaning, an M-16 that the troop with the massive abdominal wound
might never hold again. His sweat made his black skin glisten as he
shook some of it from his bare arms. “Water comes out of us here
faster than we can drink it.” For the first time he smiled at his
newest ‘cruit.

“How have you stayed alive all the way
through Korea and now Vietnam?”

Felder smiled. “My momma says it’s her
prayers. I say it’s my hero.”

“Hero?”

“Yeah, Willie Mays.”

“Why him?”

“Because in his prime he was drafted into
the Army and missed two seasons of baseball. Because of that he’ll
never break Babe Ruth’s lifetime homerun record. I figure he’ll end
up only with about 650 homers.”

“I didn’t even know he was in the
Army.”

“He didn’t make a big fuss; he just
did his duty. So who’s your hero?”

Dan pursed his lips. “My dad, I guess. He
died in the Korean War.”

“Army man?”

“Navy.”

“Did he die in the invasion at Inchon?”

Dan blinked. “No. He got appendicitis. The
infection spread too fast.”

“I bet that’s what inspired you to be
a medic. So you could keep others from dying like your dad died.
You did a good job out on patrol. Roscoe said so.”

“Sarge
, how long is this war going to last?”

“Forever, now that China’s blowing up
A-bombs too.”

***

Dan only took one ride on a chopper. After
a fierce fire fight on his twenty second patrol, he thought the
dust off would be routine: load the one severely wounded who was
bleeding from an artery onto it and wave goodbye. But the copter’s
pilot had other priorities.

“Get on board, doc.” He yelled over the
thump thump thump sounds of the spinning rotors.

“Huh? I can’t leave my platoon.”

“My medic is shot up bad. He and your
wounded man might both die before I can get this bird back home.
Get in now!”

Dan glanced at the crumpled figure
behind the co-pilot’s seat as the helicopter’s gunner pulled him
aboard. The wounded medic smiled weakly as Dan stretched him out on
the cold steel of the bouncing copter.

“Thanks, man. I’m hit in my back. Can’t
reach it to stop the bleeding myself. I…” He passed out.

The gunner fired his last belt of
bullets from his .50-caliber as enemy bullets ripped new streams of
daylight into the fuselage. Twenty minutes later the air ambulance
touched down at a field hospital and the gunner jumped out and
kissed the ground.

***

The following month Dan took a three-day
R&R to Hong Kong. He bar-hopped with a Marine that had flown
there on the same plane from Saigon.

“Man, I don’t know how much more I can
take.” Dan’s fourth drink loosened the pent-up fear. The fifth
bared his soul. “We got this new platoon sergeant. Sgt. Felder was
cool. But this new guy…” He stared into the shot glass to conjure
up more words.

“A by-the-book man more interested in body
count than his own men?”

Dan looked up. “How’d you know?”

“Listen, kid, it’s SOS all over. It’s even
worse in the Marines. Some of our sergeants and officers are so
gung-ho that it’s scary. Say, I know what you need.” He handed Dan
a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke.”

“This ain’t no ordinary smoke.”

“Opium joint? Man, that’s
addictive.”

“Nah. I just put some heroin in with
the tobacco. If you just smoke heroin, you can’t get hooked.
Besides, they invented heroin to help morphine addicts out. Best of
all, no one can smell it.”

“Really?”

Dan continued the habit once back at
his fire base. He kept telling himself he would quit before going
home. But then a VC mortar shell exploded ten feet from where he
was patching up a wounded comrade. The shrapnel embedded in him
earned him an early end to his tour.

***

He was still fading in and out of
consciousness as they loaded him onto a C-118 Air Evac bound for
Clark Air Base, Philippines. Its four engines’ drone drowned out
most of the cries of pain from the patients lying on the tiers of
litters, monitored continually by Air Force nurses.

“How you feeling?” The one assigned to Dan
asked as he awoke from a morphine induced dream.

“Where am I?”

“On the way to Clark’s hospital for
surgery. Hang in there.”

***

After ninety percent of
the shrapnel had been cut out, Dan kept requesting more morphine
for the residual pain. A doctor making his rounds shook his head
as
he read Dan’s
chart.

“You use heroin in
Vietnam, son? You’re getting enough morphine that you should be
asleep or at least out
of it
right now. I think you already had a tolerance before you started
getting morphine after your wounds.”

“What?”

“I think you want more morphine because
you’re going through withdrawals from the heroin you used to
use.”

“I just smoked it so I couldn’t get
addicted.”

“It doesn’t matter if you inject it, eat
it, snort it, or smoke it.”

Five minutes
later Dan was transferred to a ward set
aside for addicts. Two of them helped him ride out his withdrawals,
which lasted four days. Each afternoon a Red Cross volunteer
checked on him.

“You’re looking a lot better.”

“Thanks.” Dan took the magazine she
offered. “Why do you do this? Things that dead for teens here on
Clark Air Base?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Why’d you go
to Nam?”

“Good question.”

They laughed. Two days later Sandra asked
him to a dance at Wagner High School, which mystified Dan. “I
thought you had a boyfriend.”

“He dumped me.”

***

Dan’s doctor agreed to a pass from the
hospital “only because Sandra will be a good chaperone. No monkey
business.” He wagged a finger in Dan’s face. “That includes
alcohol.”

The occasion was informal
with music by Filipinos who called their band d’Sparks. Still on
crutches, Dan hobbled into the dark concrete gym and shuffled more
than danced to covers of the day’s hits: the nonstop D-D-C-D bass
line of
Sunshine of Your
Love,
madness of the
Door’s
When the Music’s
Over
, and Blue Cheer’s thunderous
remake of
Summertime
Blues.
He tried to thank Sandra
for letting him relive his high school days as she drove him back
to the hospital.

“You think we could do something together
again?”

“I’d like to but I’m flying back to the
States next week.”

“But you’ll miss your graduation with the
class of ’68.”

A tear rolled from her eyes. “I’m pregnant.
That’s why my boyfriend dropped me. I’m going to live with my
grandparents to have the baby.”

“You going to keep it?”

“I don’t know yet. Listen, before I leave I
need to introduce you to my friend. She can show you around
Luzon.”

***

After having endured weeks of
physical therapy and drug tests to check if he had returned to
heroin, Dan welcomed the introduction to Sandra’s friend. A
dark-eyed, dark-haired Filipina whose bronze skin seemed to glow,
she acted as his tour guide as she took him by bus to the history
and nightlife of Manila, the mountains and rice terraces of Bagio,
and the white sand beaches and crystal clear waters of Long Beach
and San Miguel. By their third trip to Manila, they were in love.
Now using a cane, Dan pointed it at the sign above a bar alongside
one of Manila’s side streets.

“Joe’s Place. Sounds interesting. Let’s
check it out.”

Inside, one wall was filled with photos,
all faded. Dan blinked as he surveyed the faces of American
soldiers who had fought during the Philippine War of Independence
at the turn of the century.

“That’s my Grandpa Hank!” He turned to the
bartender. “You have a magnifying glass?”

The wiry man smiled as he passed one to
him. “I bought it because so many have asked over the years.”

“Thanks.”

Dan studied the tiny print along the bottom
of the photo. “It says H. Richmond’s Going Away Party. That proves
it.”

Teresa squeezed his hand. “You know what
that means?”

“No.”

“Now you have to write your mother and tell
her about it. And us.”

Dan smiled crookedly and nodded. His letter
home rambled but Sally cherished it:

April 29, 1968

Dear Mom:

Sorry it’s been a while
since I wrote. I guess I’ve been sort of busy. The last few months
have been a blur ever since I almost got blown away. Things are
going well with my PT. The therapist says my leg is getting
stronger.

But the big news
is that I saw a photograph of Grandpa
Hank in a bar in Manila. It’s called Joe’s Place. What a
coincidence. Now I wish he was still alive so I could talk with him
about the P.I. This place is something else. Now I finally
understand why Jason loved Monkey Island so much. These Pacific
Islands are like paradise, especially compared to Vietnam and
Madisin.

I guess the other news is I’m getting
married. Her name is Teresa. Her dad runs a clothing factory and
wants me to be his sales rep in the States. But I’ll be staying
here in the P.I. for at least six months. It’ll take a while to get
Teresa’s visa. The Army liaison officer here at Clark is really
cool and is setting up my discharge papers so I can get out
here.

Love,

Dan

Sally cried as she read the letter. She
smiled as she wrote her reply:

May 9, 1968

Dear Dan:

I’m happy for you and
look forward to meeting Teresa. Remember Jason’s friend, the
private eye Lance Ivers that you met when you went to
Disneyland?