Wounded and Evacuated

Wounded and Evacuated

Hospital Stories

So now I am in Medical Holding Company (MHC) and going out to the wards to pay patients and meeting lots of people with some great stories.

The first of these I will introduce to you I met shortly after my arrival in the ortho ward. We were hanging out in the common area and got to talking. He had been in a few other wards to have treatment done prior to coming to ortho for what he hoped would be his final treatment at Brooke. He had been here also a full year so far.

He had been on the surgical ward for treatment of bayonet wounds to his stomach and chest area and bullet wounds in arms and legs.

He had been on the burn ward for treatment of burns on his back where his radio and battery had caught fire and burnt his back.

He was now on ortho to have some pins and screws inserted to make one arm and one leg stronger.

My memory of the details of his story are a little sketchy, we didn’t talk about it too much after the first couple of times and went on to discussing more current topics, but the jest of it still sticks with me even after 50 years.

He was a Special Forces sniper, part of a LRRP team and probably in SOG, but at that time SOG was not too well known about and I didn’t ask specifically. He was “over the border” (Laos) with his spotter (US) and 2 Mongs, watching the “trail”, calling for arty or airstrikes, and sniping a few leaders as the targets presented themsleves.

Unfortunatley they were discovered and ended up in a running gunfight. Although they called for extraction, they kept being intercepted and forced to turn away from the PZ. Over a 2 day running fight, they were slowly attrited by the enemy and this patient was the last one alive and he had been wounded.

At night he climbed a tree to try for some safety and a better view at dawn. But the NVA spotted him and soon had the tree surrounded and him under heavy fire. He was wounded a second time and then some rounds hit his radio, which catch fire and knocked him out of the tree.

But then rather than shoot him the NVA bayoneted him several times in the stomach and chest and left him for dead, or really to die a slow painful death.

The SOP for the LRRP team was that if they were not heard from for 48 hours, there was a designated PZ just inside Vietnam that an aircraft would fly over jost after daybreak and just before sunset, every day for 7 days.

The NVA had taken every thing of value off him, including his boots. He still had a uniform, but not much else. No map, but he knew precisely where he was and generally where the PZ was and he had 9 days to get there. He got some control over the bleeding by stuffing parts of his t-shirt into the wounds and then headed out.

He spent the next 7-8 days, walking, crawling, low crawling, moving anyway he could to get to the PZ, but was starting to think he would never make it. He was in and out of conciousness, tired, hungry, but determined to keep going.

Then as his time was running out, he was discovered by another LRRP team. They had been inserted 3 days prior to look for signs of the lost team and heard him moving through the underbrush. Almost fired him up prior to figuring out who it was. He was headed in the right direction, but would probably never made the PZ within the prescribed tiime frame, so it was a blessing that the other team found him. Think about the possibility of a small team finding one indivual in hundreds fo square miles of jungle, pretty slim.

When I first met him, he didn’t look too good. Limped, one arm wasn’t useless. All the surgeries had taken a toll and he had part of his stomach removed and weighed about 115 lbs @ 5’8″. He was hoping the surgery would give him better use of his arm and leg and let him start PT to get back his strength and weight. He was also hoping the Army would let him stay in, he wanted to make it a career (was E-6 at that time)

Over the next 4-6 months, I would stop by almost daily to visit after my rounds, he steadily improved and got where he could leave the ward and go out for the day or evening, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing as some of my other tails will show. He introduced me to other interesting people with interesting stories and helped make my stay memorable.

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