Chapter 3

On the long flight back to Viet Nam, I thought a lot about my visit with my cousin Raymond the last time I was home on leave. He was on the police force and he kept telling me that with my experience in the military I'd make a good cop. He took me down for a tour of the police station. It was interesting and he introduced me to a lot of his buddies. They seemed like a solid bunch—guys I'd like to have covering my back.

I had a nice talk with his Lieutenant and while we were in there Ray got permission for me to do a ride-along with him and his partner. His partner turned out to be a tall red-head with more freckles than there were gooks in Viet Nam. She wasn't pretty, but she did have a cute face. She looked a little overweight, but I suspected a lot of that was muscle. I thought I wouldn't like to meet up with her in a dark alley.

Not too much happened, but they talked to me a lot. They explained why they stopped a certain driver, but let others go. I heard some stories that raised the hair on the back of my neck. From Anna, Ray's partner, I heard more raunchy stories than I'd heard in the Army.

Before I left town I went back and filled in the paperwork, and was assured I'd have no problem getting in. The lieutenant did tell me, "Make sure you stay drug free. Some of that shit takes months to get out of your system. Also be careful not to get your foot shot off." He added the last with a laugh and it never occurred to me that he was somewhat prophetic.

I went back to the same clerk that had helped me figure out my options, and started over again, now that I was going to complete my tour in Viet Nam. With the Colonel having been rotated back home because of his injury, his replacement had brought his own radio operator with him. Sniper school was off the books now, so I had to take what was available. I was assigned to Division Headquarters, working with all the units to make sure they had the right radios at the right time, and to coordinate with the maintenance group. It was fine for a few months, but then I got bored. I asked to be transferred back to my regiment.

I guess I thought I'd be back with my buddies, but they were mostly new guys. I was promoted to staff sergeant and made a team leader on a rifle squad. I had two riflemen with M16s, one guy with a M79 Grenade launcher (and a .45 caliber pistol), and one man with a Browning Automatic Rifle. The squad leader carried the radio, but most of the time he gave it to me 'cause I knew it better (and because he knew the Cong always tried to kill the radio operators).

This was an E5 slot and the squad leader was an E6 slot, Sergeant First Class. Normally SFC was used for platoon sergeant, but for some reason that's the way it was here in paradise. We were still doing mostly search and destroy missions, and it wasn't a lot of fun. The VC had learned the hard way they couldn't handle the massive firepower of our units in large set pieces. They just nickel and dimed us to death. There were more traps than ever before, and they destroyed morale. Even when we never encountered the enemy we still had regular casualties.

The VC had figured how to do a quick ambush, and then fade away in the jungle or deep grass. To keep us off balance, when they had a clear superiority of force, instead of fading away they would hit us a few minutes later from the sides. When we were ambushed we would drop to the ground. We would carefully get up. Usually we would send a scout out to find out where they had gone, and the tendency was to relax, have a smoke and take care of anyone that had been hit.

When they had a bigger edge on us, that's when they would hit us again. They knew the jungle so well that it was their biggest weapon. A couple of months after I was back in the field our squad leader was killed when a helicopter was shot down. They put me in charge of the squad since I had the most time in combat situations. The first sergeant told me, "I can't do anything now because you don't have enough time in grade. When you finish your tour I'll do my best to get you promoted to E6, but I don't know if it will fly."

I didn't know then that I would never finish my tour. I thought about Mel a lot. The times we made love stayed with me, a series of videos I would run through my head during the darkest times. But I would always come back to her betrayal. Some days I didn't care if I got killed or not. I guess I was depressed about the entire situation. I was risking my life each day "for the folks back home." Then I would think that I was doing this to protect Mel and her fiancé. Damn!

My world turned to shit a couple months after I took over the squad. We were taking a rest stop. We were in the middle of two other companies. The platoon leader called for a meeting of the NCOs in his group, the platoon sergeants and squad leaders. I started to walk back on the path we came in on, but I needed to take a dump. When I finished I noticed another path that looked to be shorter—because I had stopped I was late for the meeting. I had to cross a shallow stream. As I got to the middle I felt a slight resistance in front of my left boot. I had time to think, "Oh shit!" and didn't know anything else until I woke up on a hospital ship, the USS Repose.

I was heavily sedated and it was only gradually, over a period of days that I was able to think clearly. The surgeon didn't beat around the bush—I guess he had done this so many times it was automatic. "Your left foot is gone. There was nothing to put back together. You have severe lacerations on the lower parts of both legs, but we hope with time they will clear up okay. Your surgery was at the hospital in Chu Lai. You were sent here for observation and stabilization before being sent stateside. I believe you are being shipped on to Fitzsimons Army Hospital. That's in Aurora, Colorado, just outside Denver. There you will get your rehabilitation and therapy, and get fitted for a prosthesis."

"Doc, which one is it?"

"Which what?"

"Which foot did I lose."

"Oh, it was your left. It looks like our repair of the stump will allow you to wear prosthesis in a few months. We get all too many that are just too mangled to repair." He said that like he was fixing a flat tire on my car.

The clerk at battalion HQ stopped by to give me some of the stuff I'd left in my locker.

"I had to guess what you might want; the rest of it I shipped to your permanent mailing address."

I thanked him, and asked, "Do you know what happened? I remember feeling something pulling against my boot ... then I was here."

"Yeah, the VC place grenades along likely paths across or along streams. They embed two stakes under water on both sides of the creek or stream with a grenade tied to one and the safety pin partially removed from the striker lever and tied by trip wire to the other stake. It your case it was across a marked trail crossing the stream. They usually do this in heavily foliated jungle so there won't be much light. I hear they are almost impossible to see."

He wished me luck, and then someone came in from the administration office to tell me the plans for my move to CONUS (Continental United States).

"You'll going directly to Denver, and you will stay there for an extended time. On your release you should be able to live a somewhat normal life. I'm talking out of school here, but you will most likely wind up with a forty per cent disability pay, and lifetime care at VA Hospitals."

At the time I wasn't interested in the disability pay, and later I was to find out it wasn't worth all that much anyway. I would gladly pay them twice what they paid me if I could have my foot back. I had two days left before shipping home, and all I had to occupy my mind was lay around and think. I was lying in my bed wondering where my life was going. I knew I no longer could be on the police force. Who would want a one legged cop? As I lay there I thought about Mel and what might have been.