I was just a little kid, but I knew what was happening. The entire family stood around the bed and listened to the priest administer the Last Rights to one of my favorite people. He was ‘Uncle Sam’. Not really my uncle but my great uncle, my father’s uncle. He had come from Arizona for a visit and had taken sick. He was in the old veteran’s hospital in Memphis where his son had taken him when he could not get his breath. You see Uncle Sam had been gassed in the First World War and his lungs were ‘burnt’. That’s how it had been explained to me.

Everyone left the room when the priest finished and were standing around talking in the hall.

“I’m afraid he is not going to make it through the night,” said the doctor. The priest led the family in prayer and left after telling my father to call him about the ‘arrangements’. I forget who it was, but someone came out of the room and said Uncle Sam was asking for my dad. I followed him back into the room.

Uncle Sam was sitting on the side of the bed!

“Boy open that closet,” he said to me.

I opened the closet door to reveal his clothes. Uncle Sam always dressed like a cowboy, jeans, Western shirts and boots. At that time of my life, I wanted to be a cowboy like him.

“Bring my clothes over here. Good. Now while your daddy helps me get dressed you go find my son and tell him to bring the car around to the front door of this hospital. I’m going home.”

While I was running out into the hall to tell everybody the news that Uncle Sam was leaving, my dad tried to talk him out of it.

“I ain’t dying in this goddamn hospital and I ain’t dying today. Those fucking heinies ain’t killed me yet.” Uncle Sam had a very descriptive way of talking. My mother did not approve.

I came back into the room and my dad had him dressed.

“Go find a wheelchair and bring it in here.”

I ran off to get a wheelchair.

I returned with one just as he asked my dad where his pistol was.

“It’s at my house. I took it home with me when they checked you in.”

He grunted then both dad and I helped him into the chair. We had to pass the nurses station to get to the hallway leading to the front door. I pushed the chair as dad told the nurse Uncle Sam was checking out. She was on the telephone making a call when I arrived with him at the front door. His son was in the car at...

“Come on Captain you’re going to miss your ride.”

This black corporal (I can’t remember his name) helped me towards a waiting chopper. A Navy Corpsman jumped out and helped him get me inside.

I was taken first to Da Nang, then on to Okinawa. After a quick stop in Hawaii, I found myself back in the States. By the time I was discharged I had been operated on 4 times. I had a plate in my skull, I was missing my left eye and 17 pieces of shrapnel had been dug out of different places on the left side of my body.

When people ask about when, where or what happened the day I got hit, all I can remember is thinking about Uncle Sam and him leaving the hospital. He lived another three years! My dad said it was because he left the hospital that day, insinuating that if he stayed, he would have died. Who knows?

But my question is, why did I remember that story the day I was hit and nothing else? Maybe because getting to my feet that day and making it to the chopper was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. Did Uncle Sam feel the same way? Did that story give me the strength to stand? Again, who knows?

My brother had the best answer, “You can’t remember anything because that mortar took off the top of your head.”

He might have a point!

Epilogue

How many people remember the ‘79/80 hit protest song ‘War’? It asked the question, “War, what is it good for?” the next line was the answer, “Absolutely nothing!” I disagreed then and I still do today.

At the time I thought it strange that a black female group, The Temptations in 1979, then a black soul singer, Edwin Starr, recorded it. If it was not for the ‘War’ between the States, all of them would be slaves picking cotton! Less skip ahead a few years. If not for the 2^nd World WAR, Europe would be speaking German today and the Jewish race would be a footnote in the history books, if even mentioned! The United States would also look different. I imagine every state west of the Mississippi River would be part of the Empire of Japan, if not our entire country!

So you see, sometimes War is the only thing that will right a wrong or solve a problem, like “How do you keep a group of religious fanatics from getting a weapon of mass destruction?”