Fourth of July Rose

I arrived at the doctor's office on time, but as usual there was a wait. I patiently sat in the reception room glancing around the room at the others gathered there. With hope in their eyes they all were seeking to find out whether they were okay or to find a cure for whatever ailed them. The nurse finally came out from her hiding place and asked me to follow her. I was weighed and my temperature was taken, procedures that seemed to be mandatory no matter what your ailment was. I followed the nurse down a corridor. She seemed to be somewhere else. She barely acknowledged my existence.

I was taken back into the suite of examination rooms and put in room number three. Room is an inadequate description - it was more like a cubicle - a space only large enough to hold a swivel chair and an examination table and that's it. I was told, "The doctor will be right with you." I waited. The air conditioner was turned up and I was feeling a chill.

Well, the "right with you" turned out to be an indeterminate amount of time. As the minutes passed, I sensed that the room was getting smaller. I looked for a clock to get a gauge on the time, but there was none. I started thinking about another time and place. As I was thinking these thoughts, I am still waiting to see the doctor.

The room was cold and small. There was nothing in the space to entertain the mind. I was alone. I felt a chill run up my back. Where was I? I am lying on a cold concrete slab. There is wire around the room and I am lying in an open space on a slab of concrete surrounded by that wire. It is night and it is cold. I have nothing to protect me against the chill. Am I still waiting for a doctor?

How did I get here? Yesterday, I arrived by convoy and was supposed to report to Recon 233. I was on an assignment to help in the deployment of some new equipment at a U.S. Army base. Now I remember - after arriving in Pleiku City, I had left the convoy and called the main base to arrange for transportation to take me to the compound. A jeep had soon arrived driven by a young soldier. We talked a little about how duty was in Pleiku. His total succinct response was, "This place sucks - man!" He didn't respond to further attempts at conversation.

That's when things went wrong. We were driving along a narrow crowded dirt road. While we were making a right turn, I watched an old man on an ancient bicycle with bent wheels and handle bars askew slam into the front of our jeep. The old man and his bicycle ended in a ditch beside the road. The collision didn't seem to do much damage to the old man, but I couldn't be sure. The driver started to drive off, but I insisted that he stop to see if we had hurt the old man. The bicycle was beyond further repair, but the old man appeared to be all right. I insisted that we take him to a Vietnamese hospital to make sure everything was ok. We ended up taking him to a hospital that served both local civilians and the military. I told the driver to return in one hour and that I would handle everything, I didn't want the soldier to get into trouble. I gave the old man some money that I am sure was equal to a half year's salary for his most able son. I left him waiting in a long line, convinced that he was all right, as I walked to exit the hospital.

That's when I saw it. That's when I first saw the sight that was to remain the most vivid image of my two and half years in Vietnam.

It was a blood soaked sheet covering a body on the dirt floor of the hospital corridor. A corridor filled with a haze of dust, flies, the screams of youth near death, and the beginnings of nightmares I was to have for years. The Fourth of July Rose-colored blood was still seeping through the sheet as I stared at the body before me. I was immobilized, my mind stopped thinking. I didn't know the person beneath the sheet, but I felt for him and all the others like him who lined the corridor, both alive and dead. Soldiers were carrying other bodies in on stretchers, they were passing me, they were bumping into me, but I could not move. I came to realize that the body under the sheet had no arms or legs. Doctors under the pressure to save this life must have hurriedly amputated limbs in a desperate effort to save this soldier, but they didn't succeed.

As I was standing there immobilized by the sight in front of me, a police officer came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. Suddenly I realized where I was after having blanked-out thinking about that young boy and the life he could have had, would have had.. However, that was not to be, the war had ended his life, and that had changed my life forever.

The police officer roused me from my thoughts and said in perfect English, "Please follow me. I have some important questions to ask you." I thought it had to do with the old man and the money I had given him. He took me into a room and told me in an irritated voice, "Please give me your passport and any authorizations you have to be in Pleiku." I knew something was going wrong when I handed over the documents I had. My passport was in Saigon and all I had was a travel document, really only a receipt for my passport from the agency I was working for and my orders to report to Recon 233. I had left Saigon in a rush, I should have known better. The Vietnamese police officer left the room. After about fifteen minutes he returned looking over the paperwork and not looking too impressed. He asked me to follow him. I was placed in the back of his jeep and one of his nervous underlings sat next to me with his rifle aimed at me. He told the driver to drive off.

We drove to his little police station and I was taken out back and he stood me in front of something that looked like a chicken coup. I asked. "Please tell me what this is all about? You can call the number on my orders and they will tell you why I'm here. Please call now," I pleaded. I received no response and was pushed into this enclosure. I was left alone. It must have been late afternoon. I had no way of telling the time. Evening finally arrived, the night mountain air turned cold and I huddled around myself to keep warm. I didn't sleep much. I had not been fed. The cold air, insect bites and the memory of that mutilated body prevented sleep. The enclosure became smaller as the night progressed. I dreamed about a body before me, a body with blood seeping out of places where limps should have been. I saw the flies landing on the limbs. I saw a young face below a sheet. I was a witness to a life ended too early for some cause I only hoped the young boy understood. For to have lost one's life so early for an unknown cause would be a travesty beyond comprehension.

Morning came and another police officer came by and took me to his office. I felt terrible. I had not slept. I hadn't washed. I wanted to be gone from this place. I was allowed to make a phone call to the officer in charge of Recon 233. He was able to verify my identity to the police officer. I was able to wash up and I was served a breakfast of rice and fish. I was then told by the police why I had been detained. The officer explained that they had been looking for several U.S. Army deserters who were dealing in drugs and stolen weapons. He had to verify who I was. He said he was sorry. I understood his problem, and told him he did the right thing. I was later picked up and taken to my assignment to a hill top outside Pleiku City.

The hill top was just that, a level plateau of about a mile square set above the dense terrain. The compound served a support function to the special forces units at Camp Holloway in the central highlands of South Vietnam. I was there to check some special listening devices. This equipment could tell you whether the noises you heard through the heavy night fog were animal, machine or man. It was part of the heavy defenses for this communications and observation site. The heavy defenses didn't make me feel secure. During my waking hours between nightmares I wandered the perimeter and talked to some of the soldiers on duty guarding the perimeter and protecting the personnel within. One of them answered my "How are you doing?" with a long diatribe on the " . . . benefits of marijuana in prolonging one's attention span and awareness during night watch." I could not believe him until further investigation made me realize that half of the troops protecting my life that night were higher than a kite on who knows what. I was anxiously waiting the completion of this task and my return to Saigon.

Each night for weeks after that assignment I again had difficulty sleeping - remembering that body. I cried during those waking hours - over the brutal nature of that war. For years after coming home I still dreamed of that body. It only stopped about eight years ago when I was going through psychological counseling. My psychologist had led me through several years of therapy which included a series of hypnosis sessions. I remember the last session of hypnosis lasting over an hour. I had cried continuously for most of that hour. I wept for that soldier and for myself for not being able to do anything at that time. I remember crying for that hour and waking after the session and finding that I had completely soaked the pillow I was laying on. After that session I had stopped dreaming about that blood-soaked sheet and what lay beneath it.

But today, sitting in this small cold cubicle at this doctor's office, I can again see that body with no limbs covered by a sheet. And the sheet was still seeping Fourth of July Rose-colored blood as it lay on the examination room floor.