Bedridden for Life.

A landmine in Vietnam lands him in a Military Hospital.

Darkness lifts through closed eyelids as a nurse snaps a switch inside the door of the ward. A harsh light invades the privacy of my mind, forcing it into the reality of day.  My waking mind refuses to note the sounds of moaning, whimpering, screams, and softly spoken expletives as the others awake. It almost takes a conscious effort to hear those common sounds.  They are so all-prevalent as to be ignored by a tortured being. Somewhat like when I was a kid living next to a busy highway, the sounds of pain and anguish are filtered out before reaching my consciousness.

Consciousness? Damn consciousness. Better to remain in that in-between state where I drift in a land without pain, without worry, without being ... conscious. Without feeling limbs that no longer exist except in some hellish hole or branch of a nameless shrub in Vietnam; hardly worth looking for or saving. Shredded flesh no longer part of a body, too peppered with shrapnel to ever think of saving, fit only for the sustenance of myriad creatures inhabiting a far-away jungle.

Consciousness? Consciousness brings only more pain, pain and realization that I will never walk, never swim ... never love. Yes, even that part of me is gone, replaced by a transparent plastic bag. The world will never be cursed with my progeny.

I wait eagerly for one of the small army of military nurses to travel slowly down our row of beds, dispensing relief, giving welcome solace to suffering objects that were once human beings. 

Between all of us we have half the normal quota of limbs for our numbers, three-fourths of the expected minds, and only a small fraction of the hopes and dreams of a normal group of mostly teenage men. And I do mean men; not boys, not soldiers, no longer simple kids. There are no children in military uniforms, at least not if those fatigues are covered with the red mud of jungle combat.

One of the women, in a clean white uniform, stops at my bed; some young, some old, but all women. No girls in this ward, not after the first few hours of seeing our pain and endless suffering. 

At least they can look forward to a break at the end of their shift, go home and hug their husbands, or get drunk as a lot of them do. We, the patients, don’t have that option. Our only solace being at the end of a needle or the sliding of a pill down a throat dry from screaming.

Being in recovery, meaning not in immediate danger of dying, I receive a handful of pills, along with a paper cup of warm water. I gulp them hastily, yearning for relief; not as much from blossoming pain as from the fruits of my own thoughts. Thoughts of living with only one arm, half-working, and no legs at all. The arm is still good, but missing two of five fingers. Land mines aren’t selective, they’ll chomp happily on anything available.

I hear it was an American mine.  That’s what I heard Sammy tell someone while they loaded me onto the chopper. Doped by morphine and a shot of illegal "H" I was still, but barely, conscious at the time. A welcome time because either shock or morphine kept the pain away. I felt I was looking up from a well, tunnel vision, as a dulled brain recorded the scene. . . . 

***

“I found a piece sticking out of Terry,” I heard, feeling my back thumping to the bare metal floor of a chopper. “It was stamped ‘Made in Detroit.’ Probably for WWII.” 

I can see it in my mind. My grandmother carefully fitting a wad of preformed TNT into a casing, hundreds of them piled up in crates at the rear of the room. Ever so carefully, she would have turned the shaped charge for a perfect fit as the casing traveled slowly down a conveyor belt to the next station to have a cap screwed on. Later the cold killer would be stacked with its fellows ... at the back of the room. 

It would have traveled, much as I had, to that godforsaken jungle. To lie dormant, waiting thirty or forty years -- patiently waiting. Recently, a fuse with safety pin had been inserted. Even more recently, safety pin removed, it had been waiting to make my acquaintance.

I lie quietly until the pills take effect, waiting for a welcome surcease of a too active thought process. The pills bring only temporary peace. I’ll float on a cloud, no pain, thoughts drifting, rarely coalescing into a viable pattern, drifting without rhyme or reason, without cohesion. . . .

***

“I don’t give a flying f**k,” SSgt. Jefferson said, staring into my eyes, smooth-shaven face six-inches from mine, “you get your a*s up on point. Thomas has been into that f*****g weed again.  He’s stoned and you have to take his turn.”

“But sarge, he’s not that high. It even helps to have a toke.  Your senses are sharpened,” I argued. “You’re new here. A lot of us do it before walking point,” I lied, not wanting the job. SSgt. Jefferson was a newbie, not yet acclimated to the way things were really done, still full of that rule book bullshit.

Hell, us older guys knew how to keep that right glow, just enough of our favorite drug or alcohol to function at peak, not enough to slow us down. He would learn, or die. But, for the moment he was both a newbie and in charge of the patrol. It’s one thing to be right, another to be dead right.

“Sarge, I only got two weeks left.  I’m too short to walk point.” A last ditch attempt to get out of it.

“And I’m new. I don’t wanna get killed on my first patrol. I want experienced men up there, and you’re it.” He turned away to recheck Thomas’s equipment. “Now get up there and go to work.”

I noticed the eyes of some of my buddies as I parted concertina wire and stepped outside our encampment. Even though it was to be a routine patrol, making sure the VC hadn’t come up near our camp or planted anything during the night, I could see they were glad it was me and not them leaving the relative safety of the forward firebase.

“Hey, Terry, watch your step, man,” a friend, Turner, advised as I struggled down the embankment into Indian Country. Although they were trying to be silent, I could hear the rest of the patrol following in my footsteps.  The jungle smelled of mold and fresh grass. The first part was easy, as long as some a*****e on our side hadn’t planted a defensive mine or booby trap in the wrong place by our map. It had happened in the past.

 Eyes moving almost as rapidly as my heart valves, I walked down the berm and into a cleared area outside the base. We kept it flat and empty of vegetation, plowed so that any footprints would show. I walked about twenty yards to the side before entering the plowed section. It wouldn’t do to show any watching VC the exact point where I left base.  Of course it could be changed the next night in any case, or we might be gone by then; you never knew. 

Came the moment of truth. With the others following at intervals, I entered the jungle. There were paths, but we never, ever, used them. Paths were too easy to mine and ambush. Always shove or cut your way through. My job was to keep a very, very close eye on the ground in front of me as I wielded a machete to break a course through semi-thick vegetation.

I pretty much ignored anything in the distance, above, or to either side. Others behind me had those assignments, just as mine was the ground in front. I looked for anything suspicious, especially shiny, like a wire, or out of place, such as a candy bar �" which had killed one guy once.  He bent down to pick it up, later finding himself picked up �" one piece at a time. 

I also inspected branches and limbs I shoved or went past, since they could also be booby trapped. Point man was the most thankless job in the army. One little mistake and “Boom.”

I took no chances, on occasion using a bayonet to probe the ground, moving my head back and forth rapidly to better use peripheral vision to catch slight movements or the shine of hidden metal. I was intensely aware that at any time I could feel the “click” through my boot that meant I was standing on a live land mine. 

Oh, how I wished I had a toke or two of weed under my belt to calm me. I wondered how far back SSgt. Jefferson was? Maybe I could sneak a jolt of liquid speed from a small bottle under my shirt. The trouble was that speed would keep me going, but not ease the fear. It might even cause me to take unnecessary chances.

Time stood still as I made my way slowly, picking up the pace as I became more confident. I pretended I was alone, rabbit hunting back in Illinois and looking for tracks. In this case it was metallic or plastic tracks.

“Hey, how’s it going Terry?” 

I jerked at the sound of a loud voice behind me, froze in place, pulled back to the real world. It was the new sergeant making his way in my direction while dodging around angry grunts, “I called a break, guess you didn’t hear me.  Take it easy and relax.  I’ll send Evens up to take your place for the next hour.” He was talking to me, for some reason wanting to seem comradely.

Sweating, eyes still moving, taking time to get out of patrol mode, I sat back on my heels, the ordeal over for a while at least, and lit a Camel, taking both shaking hands, Zippo lighter braced against ayoung tree. It was from a “C” ration cigarette package; packed during and for a long-gone war, in 1942. It still tasted wonderful as I pulled smoke into my lungs.

I sat back and looked, looked at the a*****e stupid enough to yell on a jungle patrol. Any VC within a klick would know we were there.

“Man, this heat,” he continued, idly examining the trail ahead and to the sides. “Pretty country though, better than New York City, where I grew up.”

I wasn’t paying much attention, sitting back while trying to let tension flow from keyed-up flesh.  Lost in my own actions, I didn’t notice the f****r. Not until I saw him bending past me, parting tall grass to peer through branches, reaching for something ahead of us, deep in the brush.

“Hey Terry, how did this get he--.”

The next thing I knew I was on my back in the shrubbery, eyes red with blood, my own or Jefferson’s? A few seconds later I heard a spat of gunfire. It seemed like hours or seconds later before I felt the weight of someone lying across my face as they bandaged my wounds. 

I had an impression of olive-colored military bandages crossing my sight, and finally settling over both eyes. I could still smell, smell that sharp odor of fear and cordite from the explosive, permeating both clothing and flesh, mixed with the distinctive odor of jungle mud. 

There was no feeling except for the prick of a needle as I was injected with morphine, no pain, only a dull feeling of being picked up.
 
"Hold still, Terry," I heard Peters's voice and felt another prick on my arm. "This'll help some, a little Horse to ride home to the World," as he gave me a shot of illegal heroin.

My last impressions were the feel of cold metal through new tears in my uniform as I landed on the cold metal floor of a chopper. . . .

***

Now I lie like a vegetable except for one partial fist clasping a tiny paper cup. Two eyes staring into space as a drugged mind struggles to attain that welcome blankness, the kind that erases time and space, prevents and ignores the pain of broken bones, dreams, hopes, loves -- and life itself.

The End.
Charlie �" hvysmker.