by James Estep
Sometime after the new day had dawned, a doctor came by to tell me of my postop prognosis.
“You lost a lot of bone there, Captain. About two inches. That’ll never come back, so we’ll probably be looking at footwear buildup and a leg brace somewhere down the line. You also have some nerve damage.”
“What about the leg, Doc? Am I gonna walk on it, run on it again?”
“I honestly think so,” he said, “but, of course, I can’t guarantee it. We’ll be watching closely for any infection in the coming weeks. You know, you really shouldn’t lie in a rice paddy with an open wound.”
He smiled at me a moment and then continued: “Although amputation … loss of the leg, or a portion of it, is within the realm of possibility, there’s no medical reason for worrying about that at this time.”
I could not have asked for a more honest or forthright opinion. I thanked him and never saw him again.
After he departed, a chaplain from the First Cavalry Division came by, to talk to me about those things that chaplains get paid to talk to wounded soldiers about, none of which interested me very much.
Instead, I wanted news of my company. How are the wounded? Did they take Xom Dong My? What did they find? Where are they now? Who’s in command? Of course, he was unable to answer any of my questions, but he did write them down and promised to get back to me just as soon as possible. I thanked him—and never saw him again.
That night many of us on the ward were loaded stretcher to stretcher on a C-141 StarLifter to begin our long flight home. As we went wheels up,” leaving Vietnam and the war behind us—or so we all thought—my thoughts remained with Charlie Company.
Let it go, Comanche Six; let it go. It’s over!
Indeed it was. I was no longer Comanche Six. Or Comanche anything. I was just another wounded soldier.
24. War’s End Walter Reed General Hospital: 11 March 1968
March’s cold damp air felt foreign, unfamiliar, as we were carried from our StarLifter to the awaiting ambulance buses at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. It was a clear, frigid night, and the temperature couldn’t have been much above freezing, manifest evidence that the Nam was indeed behind us and we were home!
But there was no celebration, no kissing of our native soil, or screams of joy, or tears of relief. There were no wives or girlfriends, no bands, no flag-waving masses, no grateful citizenry throwing flowers at our feet—those of us who still had feet. Nor did the government that had sent us forth to do battle have a single representative, uniformed or otherwise, there to greet us on our return. Only the bus drivers, standing by idly with cigarettes dangling from their mouths and hands in their pockets, waited planeside. Once our stretchers were unceremoniously strapped into their vehicles, we began the last leg of our twelve-thousand-mile trip home.
“Where are we going now?” I asked the nurse as she rolled me into the hospital’s orthopedics ward.
“To the pit, Captain,” she responded, looking down at me as I lay on the gurney looking up at her. “This portion of the ward is referred to by its occupants as the ‘snake pit.” But don’t let that scare you. They’re a good bunch, officers and gentlemen all … uh … most of the time.”
Inasmuch as it was fairly late at night, I assumed the pit would be shrouded in darkness with its inhabitants in a sound sleep, drug induced or otherwise. After all, this was a military hospital.
As the nurse pushed the gurney through a set of double wooden doors, I saw that the snake pit was anything but in slumber. Its windows’ blinds were closed and drapes drawn, perhaps to shield the scantil y clad go-go girl dancer from any inquisitive soul who might happen by on the sidewalk bordering the building’s exterior. This very attractive young lady stood atop a table in the middle of the eight-to ten-bed ward, swaying seductively to the music of a portable radio.
While the nurse and a medical attendant transferred me from the gurney to a corner bed, I took notice of my roommates. As with the beds, there were eight to ten of them, nearly all of whom looked a bit younger than me and all of them amputees, some twice so. Those not confined to their beds sat around the table, smoking, joking, and drinking, as they watched the dancer above them trying to separate her pelvis from her lower torso. Most were dressed in standard blue hospital garb that in some cases was covered by striped robes bearing the initials WRGH on the left pocket. A couple, however, were clad in slacks and sweaters.
“Now you just make yourself comfortable and hang tight while I go get you some water and your kit,” the nurse said, departing.
“Hi. Name’s Stan,” one of the two patients in civilian attire said, shaking my hand. “Want a beer?”
“Yeah, I’d appreciate that. Uh … name’s Jim.”
Returning to my bedside, beer in hand, he asked, “What outfit? Where, when, and how bad?”
“Cav, Fifth Cavalry. Two, three days ago, north of Hue, and I don’t know.”
“Well, Jim, you can bet your sweet ass it’s more than just superficial, or you wouldn’t be joining us in the pit. As you might have noticed, most of us are missing assorted parts of our anatomy.”
“Yeah, so I see. But you look whole,” I commented, although I had noticed he limped badly while fetching my beer.
“Ah, but looks can be deceiving,” he said, knocking loudly on an artificial leg hidden by his slacks. “Lost it just above the knee nearly a year ago. Transferring me over to Forest Glen tomorrow.” (Forest Glen was Walter Reed’s recuperation annex.)
We were briefly interrupted by the nurse’s return. She deposited my water bottle and “kit” (a stainless steel urinal and bedpan, toothbrush, soap, and washcloths) at bedside, checked my IV, plugged a fresh bottle of whatever into it, and said, “Got to get some fluids into you, Captain, and I want you to drink plenty of water. It’s good for YOU.”
“What have we here, fresh meat?” a somewhat gaudily dressed middle-aged woman said, approaching the bed.
“Jim, meet ‘Sweet’ Mary,” Stan said, grinning. “Sweetest angel in the city of Washington. Knows how to take care of us poor crippled folk, so much so she makes Florence Nightingale look like the goddamn enemy! Young lady atop the table over there, by the way, is courtesy of Sweet Mary here.”
He paused and gave Mary a peck on the cheek.
“I mean it, Jim. This lady makes Florence look like Ho Chi Minh’s old-maid aunt! So I’m gonna let the two of you get acquainted while I get back to the festivities. Hell, it’s my going-away party!”
He turned to go and then, over his shoulder, said, “Hang tight there, partner, and remember, it’s always darkest just before they wheel you into preop.”
Returning to his place of honor at the table in the center of the ward, Stan sat down, gazing contentedly at the young lady above him.
Sweet Mary was perhaps in her late thirties or early forties, a little on the chubby side and a bit overly made up. But Stan was right. She was indeed a princess in every respect.
“I know you’re in pain,” she said. “They tell me these first few days are the hardest. Would a drink help?”
“Drink? Drink of what, Mary?”
Reaching into a large vinyl-like shopping bag, she retrieved a nearly full bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon.
“Only the best for our fighting forces,” she chimed, smiling. “Water okay?”
“Water’s fine. Hell, it’s good for you. But just a tad, please.”
Using the ice water the nurse had so conveniently set at bedside minutes before, she quickly mixed a potent bourbon and branch. Then we talked, but not of the war or anything of importance. Mostly just chitchat about families and friends, likes and dislikes. In fact, Mary’s ramblings were very much like those of the chaplain, but coming from her these same trite utterances were far more interesting, entertaining.
And, I thought to myself, if our straight and true of God’s squad carried a bottle of Wild Turkey in their kits, they might very well find a whole new world in chaplain-patient relationships opening up to th
em.
Mary introduced me to a couple of my fellow patients, while others, at one point or another, introduced themselves. Later, her seductive protiage from atop the table came over, and we talked for awhile. Her name was Susan, and her bedside manner was light-years ahead of that of our chaplain brethren.
“Looks like you’re running on empty there, Jim,” Mary said. “Would you like another?”
“Uh … a tad, please.”
The evening wore on and eventually, finally, wore out. Before Mary departed, I asked her why she did this, why make these time-consuming and, I would imagine, somewhat expensive visits to the different wards at Walter Reed.
She merely smiled, winked, and said, “Well, it keeps me off the streets. See you in a week or so. Hang tight.”
Yeah, just gotta hang tight, I told myself. I’ll survive this tour; it’s no different from any other. Just another tour of duty.
Within a short time, I discovered Walter Reed’s orthopedics ward to be similar to any other well-functioning military organization. The doctors were without question the best in their profession, as was the nursing staff. And the nurses would do anything in the world for us—well, almost anything, although even on that score some of the alcohol rubs were pretty exciting. As in any well-run military unit, the ward’s underlying philosophy was “work hard, play hard.” The staff tolerated no action on our part that might compromise an early recovery and release. If we were scheduled for two hours of torture in physical therapy, we had no choice but to endure those two hours of pain. If we were granted a pass or placed on convalescent leave, we were wise to return to the ward on time and without having reinjured our wounds in some drunken fall.
However, we were allowed to come and go pretty much as we pleased; there were no staff-imposed curfews, visiting hours were essentially all hours of the day and much of the night, and the nurses rarely took notice of our private class VI (booze) stocks.
Time passed relatively quickly. There were the good days—those days between operations, the most mobile and pain-free time. And bad days—those immediately following an operation, the ones in which you slept with the animal pain.
Roommates came and went, some spending only weeks on the ward, others remaining for a year or more. One of those who had been there the longest was a seasoned but young infantry captain named Steve.
Although missing only a single foot, due to prosthesis problems and a nagging on-again, off-again bone infection, he was still a member of the “pit crew” a year or so after having been wounded. Ivy League educated, he was looked upon as the pit’s intellectual.
Dave, a young first lieutenant, was another of the ward’s longterm patients. Once a warrior with the famed 173d Airborne Brigade, he had lost his arms and a large portion of his face in a one-sided encounter with a “bouncing betty”—a land mine triggered to explode at chest level.
On the last day of March, a Sunday, the three of us lay in the pit, listening to our commander in chief, President Lyndon Johnson, address his fellow Americans on national television. During the course of his speech, he made two startling announcements, the first being that he had decided to unilaterally deescalate our involvement in the war, hoping this initiative would lead to meaningful peace talks.
He told us that as a first step in his strategy of deescalation, he had ordered the immediate cessation of nearly all air action against North Vietnam. He emphasized that this was but a first step and that the United States would substantially reduce “the present level of hostilities.”
“Now what the fuck does that mean?” I asked, angrily.
“Means he’s throwing in the towel,” Steve replied dryly. “Means we’ve lost the war, my friend.”
“My ass! Hey, you all been here too long. I mean, having just returned from Nam, I can tell you we’re kicking Charlie’s ass up one side and down the other. This peace talk thing ain’t gonna do anything but give Charlie breathing room to recoup.”
I paused as the two of them stared at me, seemingly unable to comprehend what I had just said. For a moment, it was as if we might have fought in two different wars. On reflection, I decided we had. They’d spent the last year or more watching the evening predictions “Of gloom and doom” on television while our country’s “vocal minority” marched on the Pentagon and across our colleges’ campuses. I had missed all of that. I, along with other recently inducted members of the pit crew, had seen our soldiers rout General Giap’s army in its last-ditch attempt to militarily turn the tables on us.
“Hey, guys, I mean it! We’re winning big time. Uh … at least before hearing our commander in chief just now, I thought we were winning.”
“Well, Jim,” Steve said, smiling, “you’re in notable company on that score, ‘cause that’s exactly what Walter Cronkite recently said.”
“Know what I think it is?” I said, still trying to grasp a glimmer of hope from the president’s pronouncement. “It’s a ploy! That’s what it is, and a goddamn good one, too, now that I think of it. Se!C, LBJ and his people aren’t dumb. They know we kicked the shit out of Charlie during Tet, know we virtually eliminated the Cong. It’s a brand-new war, one with opportunities we never had before, and he’s going for the win! In the meantime, however, he’s got this domestic mess on his back, which means he’s gotta go about this thing with a bit of finesse. So today he up and announces to the American people—whole world in fact—that all he really wants is peace, and in pursuit of peace, even though Charlie violated the Tet truce, even though they committed all those atrocities in Hue and so forth, he’s gonna unilaterally stop the bombing and invite North Vietnam to negotiate an ‘end to this long and bloody war.” See, he puts the ball in their court, and we all know that Uncle Ho ain’t about to negotiate his way out of South Vietnam, so he just keeps on fighting. Then, say a month or so from now, LBJ comes back on television and says, ‘Ma fellow ‘Mericans, I’ve tried, Lord knows I’ve tried. I’ve taken every avenue in search of peace, given our vicious and uncompromising enemy every opportunity, all in my undying quest for a just peace, but alas’. so on and so forth. Then he gets to the ‘I therefore have no alternative but to’ part of his speech and tells us he’s gonna bomb ‘em back to the Stone Age and then send in the 82d to police up the rubble!”
I paused, letting their subtle laughter subside, and then asked, “Well, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” Steve asked. “I think you’re either grasping at straws or out of your goddamn mind!”
I noted that our newly assigned, legless helicopter pilot didn’t share in our assessment of the president’s announcement or my fantasies regarding the reason for it. He lay there with stony tears on his cheeks and mumbled, as if to himself, “Then what was it all for?”
Our commander in chief’s second startling proclamation was that he would not seek his party’s nomination for another term as our president. This was fine with us.
One pleasant early summer afternoon, I awoke from a short nap to find Captain, exSergeant Major Cooper, dressed in hospital garb, sitting in a chair next to my bed.
“Hi there, Big Jim,” he said, grinning.
“Well, sonofabitch!” I said, astonished at seeing him. “We heard you bought it just after getting that iron coffin company of yours.”
“Nearly did. Charlie put one right through the center of my chest. Missed the ticker by a quarter of an inch, missed my spine by ‘bout as much. Collapsed a lung and tore up some other stuff. But, shit, Charlie should’ve known he can’t kill a captain, ex-sergeant major! I mean, he’s dusted off quite a few sergeant majors and a whole slew of you captains, but I’ll just bet he ain’t never yet got a captain-sergean’t major!”
“Well, I’m just happy as hell to see you … uh … Top.”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling uneasily, “don’t really know what happened to Russell. Heard he bought it up in the A Shau.” He paused, visibly shaken, then with uninvited tears forming in his eyes, added, “He was a hell of a good officer. Tw
ice the officer I’ll ever be.”
After an uncomfortable lull, I said, “Well, shit, how the hell you doing? Look great!”
“Feel great, Jim. It was touch and go for a while in the Nam, but once I went stable and they decided I wasn’t a candidate for Arlington’s marble orchard, they shipped me out to the Philippines. Spent some time there, and then, after I raised some sergeant major-type hell in Angeles City one night, the medical powers decided it was time to forward me to Walter Reed for ‘additional tests.” Got in yesterday.”
“Super! They got you in the pit here?”
“Naw, ain’t nothing orthopedic ‘bout me. I’m upstairs, just a stone’s throw from Ike, as a matter of fact.”
“Great!” I replied, smiling. “Ex-president of the United States and ex-sergeant major of the best goddamn outfit in the Army up there rubbing elbows.”
“Well, we ain’t exactly that close yet, but give me a couple days, Jim. Hell, always wanted to talk to Ike, wanted to ask him how he got us out of Korea so quick after becoming our commander in chief. Thought I might be able to pass this info along to our present commander in chief, who don’t seem to have a fucking clue ‘bout how he’s gonna get us out of the Nam.”
“Yeah,” I replied, “think we missed a good bet by not taking it to North Vietnam right after Tet. Hell, we had Charlie on the ropes …”
“And going down for the count, Jim,” he chimed in. “But we didn’t have to invade the north to win. Didn’t have to change much of anything. All we had to do was lock old LBJ in a woodshed somewhere and keep plugging away at Charlie, north and south, ‘fore he had a chance to get his second wind.”
“Well, I agree. But maybe … hey, what do I call you now, anyway?
Sergeant Major is hardly appropriate.”
“Call me Coop, and there ain’t no maybe about it. If we hadn’t thrown in the towel, if we’d kept bombing up north—really bombing ‘em—if Uncle Ho thought we were still in there for the win after the losses he suffered in Tet … well you can bet your sweet ass the peace delegation in Paris would have been talking ‘bout something besides the shape of the fucking table!”
