Does Plaster Float?
by Larry Kirby
C
oming home lightly wounded was different for me than any of the guys who were badly hit. I had small wounds, nothing serious. No pain, no wrenching horrible ordeal. I'd been hit in the right hand and left shoulder. The shoulder wounds were insignificant and was well on the way to healing by the time I left Japan. The hand injury was however, special. I had been struck in the knuckle of my right hand pinky finger. Just bad enough to require some surgery and stitches and a short arm cast, but not enough to lose the finger. It was the full scale $1,000,000.00 wound. Took me out of Vietnam, (orthopedic injury, bone involved, you go to Japan) and because I was in my 11 month, I got my ticket home.
A real, honest-to-god million dollar wound made me a minor celebrity among the docs in Japan. They all wanted to see that it could really be done. My ward had some very special guys were there. Our leader was a kid who was hit on Ripcord by a sapper. He was missing both legs, and his left arm. He was in a body cast from his armpits down. The only time I heard him complain is when he told me that every time he exhaled, the B.O. that escaped his body cast was going to knock him out. I was his gofer, and I was proud to do it. I was the only ambulatory guy in the ward, the only one with all four limbs. We had an MP from Japan whose arm had been almost hacked off by a sword in a bar fight. Poor fuck had no status at all. He was a REMF. When his cute Japanese girlfriend came to visit, no one would talk to him again.
There was a young LT in the next ward who was totally fucked, all four limbs were either blown off or amputated. We never knew. He was in a coma, like the "soldier in white from "Catch22". One of our guys called him "the coffee table". Poor bastard. Maybe 23 and probably still didn't know what fresh hell he's someday awaken to.
After a week or so, I got orders to the states and a new set of class A Khakis. The trip home was on a C-141. Even though I could walk, I was ordered on to a stretcher and loaded with the other guys like cargo. Few things are as demeaning as having a loadmaster treat you like a pallet of bricks, and get annoyed when you look at him and talk back. Cargo is not supposed to talk back. I was on the bottom of a wall rack with guys stacked about four high. The stretcher itself was attached to the wall of the plane. There was an upside though, I had the only window. Small, maybe eight inches round, not quite circular. It was right at my head. I got to see the sunrise over the Cascade Range from 30,000 ft. Very nice.
We landed at Andrews AFB in DC. The next morning's headlines were about the Kent State killings. Guys there just wanted to know who'd be so stupid as to give live ammo to the National Guard. It's still a good question.
The next morning we were put on an Air Force D-C9 with rear facing seats to be distributed over the east coast. Mine would be the fifth stop of the 11 planned.
A military station wagon from Ft Devens drove us (the four patients got off there) to the base hospital. It was built in the 40's, a temporary building now in its 4th decade. The hallways were so long that I'm not sure you could shoot a round the length of one without it hitting the ceiling to get enough arc to make it all the way. I'm pretty sure I could not walk that far, without stopping for a mid-day lunch.
The ward held beds for 20 guys but there were just eight of us. Two guys had been with me since Japan. They were a mixture from all over the war. I was the only 101st guy. No one cared about what we did in Vietnam. It was no longer an issue. It wasn't talked about. There was just too much to focus on. This place had women and food. And phones and visits from relatives and friends. It was overwhelming.
On my second day there I was sent home on a 30-day leave. That still ranks as the best car ride ever. By the time my old man turned off Route 128 at the School Street exit and I could smell the Atlantic Ocean and I knew I was really home. I can't remember anything else that day, just sitting next to my old man, saying nothing, and feeling like I'll never have another problem as long as I lived, and the smell of salt air coming through the windows of his car.
The 30 days were a blur. I was on my way back to Devens in what seemed like 48 hours. The second day back I had to see a doc who looked at me and asked if I minded wearing the cast on my arm about three weeks longer than medically necessary. Hell no I said. Why? Because if you have just one day shy of 5 months to serve they'll let you go home. Discharged. Done in 19 months. No more Army. He then gave me a job working in his office as a patient employee, with the same status as a guy still in Vietnam. So bizarre. I gave TB tests to civilian employees heading overseas to work for the army. There were not many of them, maybe two or three a day so most of my time was my own, Having nothing to do but kill time and still being in the army was beyond weird.
My ward mates were an interesting bunch. We all liked each other and often talked into the night. Our head nurse was a dish. A long legged blonde with a face that belonged on magazine covers. She was engaged to a doctor and felt safe letting us fantasize when she walked among us. What ever she could do for us, she would. Nice kid, I hope she got a guy who took good care of her.
The lads in the ward were restless one night and one of our number had a way to deal with being cooped up on a June night. He had a car, a black shiny 68 Mercury convertible that belonged to his mom, and a place to go. Five of us piled in and headed out the gates, dressed in a ragged version of civilian clothes, with haircuts as effective as a uniform in telling anyone who we were.
First stop was a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Worcester. It the sort of place I would have been nervous about walking around in before Vietnam. Now it just seemed sweet and peaceful. The natives all spoke Spanish and looked at us with big smiles. We looked like idiots. We were idiots, but idiots with money. Our driver was there to score a bag of drugs. Pot, some hash and stuff I did not know. We next hit a gas station, and grabbed four six packs of cheap beer, chips and cheese curls. I still didn't know where we were going and did not care. We drove for over an hour and finally came to a dirt road in the woods. It went for half a mile and ended at a small lake, maybe a mile across. The car pulled up to an A frame cottage and the driver walked up to the door, pulled a key from his pocket and announced that the cabin was ours for a weekend if we wanted it.
It was heaven. Nothing about this place was military. The front of the A Frame was all glass, and looked out at the lake. Here we were getting high, drinking beer, listening to rock and roll while sitting in big stuffed chairs and eating junk food. Life was good. His brother had stocked the stereo with music we'd missed while we were gone, and stuff he knew we'd like. A real treat. The fridge was full, more beer, cold cuts and condiments.
After it got dark, a full moon rose over the lake. The water was still, glass like and tempting. The canoe beckoned. Five very stoned guys with not an ounce of sense left among them gently pushed the canoe out on to the water. It was magical. It was serene. It was insane. Each of us had a cast on some part of our body. I had only the short arm cast but there were two leg casts and one large arm and shoulder cast. We looked at each other, now a good 100 yards from shore and had the same thought. If this thing tips over, no one will ever find us. We'll sink to the bottom like rocks. Suddenly we were sober. We were a squad in trouble, and the patrol wasn't going well. We were deep in unfamiliar territory, and had to work together carefully to get home safely. We did. My luck was holding. It still is.
Larry Kirby
Charlie Company, 1st 501st