Leeches
by Doc Dave Pfeifer
W
hen ever we went thru water,rivers rice paddies etc.(which
was all the time),we had to check for leeches.They had a habit of
getting in to the damndest places to suck blood.
Usually the space between the top of your boots and the bottom of your
pants.But they could be anywhere and you couldn't always feel them,so a
visual check was necessary.
Well, we had a 2ndlt for plt leader an no one liked him.
He was always bitching an complaining about someone.
This one particular day we had been in and out of water all
day.After wading thru a stream about waist deep,we came
out and one after another stripped down to check for leeches.The lt
yelled 'doc-doc', and when I ran over to him,
he had his pants down around his ankles, and was pointing down.Well on
one of his testicles was a leech getting bigger than hell from the blood
it was sucking out.
There were two ways to get rid of leeches;1.to lite a cigg
and put there cherry of the cigg up against the leech and it
would drop off to get away from the fire.2.The other way was to squirt it
with that rancid ass mosquito repellant they gave us.The leeches would
clamp on with two little fangs to
puncture the skin, and then they secreted a anticoagulant
to keep the blood from clotting, so they could go on draining the blood
all day.If you pulled them off the fangs stayed in an the blood kept
flowing for a long time.The trick was to make them let go voluntarilly
and the closed right away.
Therefore ,either the insect repellant or the hot cigg did
the job.
So as I neared this lt,these thoughts went thru my mind quickly, along
with this, lt. was asking me to take care of this leech on his privates,
and I resented he didn't take care of his personal stuff like the other
guys did.I remembered how he was an asshole to the guys too.
So,loudly I said lt thats easy to take care of, we'll just hit it with
bug juice and I proceded to cover his entire genital area with the nasty
stuff.Sure enough the leech curled up and dropped off.The lt yelled
thanks doc, and pulled up his pants and moved out.
In about 15 minutes he was yelling and jumping up and down that he was on
fire, doc-doc, you got to do something.
I told him he must have gotten some kind of infection form the leech.So I
medivaced him to the rear, and they gave him
a three day stand down.
The guys all cheered and when he returned he was real quite and stayed
away from me.I'm not sure if he ever figured out what happened,but he had
a lot of problems after that, especially when he found out his shot
records were lost.
Doc Dave
Medic, Vietnam