Vietnam--page 3
pink plastic tub, my dark hair plastered to my head; and one with my mom and I together, wearing tie-dyed shirts and sitting in a hammock. Next is my little sister, Melissa, holding a snoopy doll in her kindergarten photo, with a shy gap-tooth smile. Then there are more recent photos of our whole family camping, and on family trips to art museums, and at birthday parties. In some of those photos, Daniel was probably the same age as the boy my dad saw. I knew how much he loved us.
He put his hands back on the steering wheel and began to talk steadily again.
Anyway, I got out of there early. Not on purpose, though—some guys were blowing off their own fingers or toes to get sent back—mine was an accident. It happened on a pretty good day, well, one that started good. We had been dropped by helicopter into a base camp out by some bombed-out buildings. They had flown in hot food for us, which was a rarity, and we were going to spend two nights there. I had just been assigned midnight guard duty in the tower, which no one wants to do. No one wants to be up there in a fifteen-foot watchtower in the middle of flat land, because it’s an easy target. So I wasn’t looking forward to that but it was all right because at least we had hot food and shelter.
There were about three or four of us standing around and eating in a broken-down building with our packs and ammo, and it was dusk, just getting dark. We had one of these crude lamps we made, which was just a can with two holes punched in it filled with kerosene, and a shoelace or something used as a wick. I remember I was eating canned fruit, and the light from the lamp got dim. This kid from
“Is that why you always take us camping?” I interrupted for the first time.
“What?” He seemed a little flustered, as if he’d forgotten I was listening.
“Do you always take us camping and teach us how to build fires and how to swim and all that in case we’re ever in the Army?” I thought of our camping trips, and all the things he taught us: how to recognize poison oak, how to climb trees, and how to tell which way is north.
“No,” he frowned, “None of you are going to be in the military. I take you camping because I like it, and because my dad took me camping. Don’t you like it?”
“Yes.” I loved it. I enjoyed getting dirty and catching lizards, and having my dad tell us funny stories in the tent at night so we wouldn’t be scared.
“Good.” He looked relieved, as if he had been afraid I’d tell him that I secretly hated camping. I was glad to make him happy. He took two A&W root beer bottles out of ice chest and handed one to me before continuing his story.
Anyway, Cherry went up to the lamp and I didn’t know what he was doing at first. Then I saw he was holding the kerosene and was about to pour more into the lamp to refill it, but the lamp was still lit! I stepped forward and said “No” and tried to stop him, but it was too late. Just as I stepped forward he splashed the kerosene onto the lamp, right toward me, and it exploded all over me. It was about ninety degrees outside and very humid, so I wasn’t wearing a shirt. When that kerosene exploded on me my skin caught on fire. My chest and abdomen were in flames. I ran right out the door and dove into a big mud puddle to put myself out. I remember the guys ran outside to me, and they were all freaking out. I stood up and my hair was singed, and the first thing I said was “I’m okay, but get the ammunition out of the building,” because the building was still partly on fire and there was a lot of ammunition in there. So they went and got it all out, so it wouldn’t explode and kill someone.
I stayed calm, even though I could smell my burned skin, and went over to the lieutenant who had assigned me the midnight guard duty, Lt. Brown was his name, and I saluted him and said “Sir, I will be unable to perform guard duty tonight, because I have been burned”. He was just staring at me like I was crazy, standing there saluting him with my chest all muddy and burned and my hair singed. He sent for a helicopter and I was Medivaced out of there to a military hospital in Cameron Bay, Vietnam.
The explosion left me with second-degree burns covering 20% of my body. It was excruciating, just really painful. I could only lie on my back, and they had to put a little frame over my body to hold the sheets away from my skin. Every day a medic came in to scrub the dead skin off my burns with a rough sponge and cover them with fresh salve. That was the worst—it hurt like hell--and my wounds weren’t healing because it was so hot and humid there. Eventually they Medivaced me again, this time to a military hospital in Japan where they were sending injured troops, called Camp Zama.
My first day there they put me in a bed right next to a guy whose arm and one leg had been blown off in some sort of explosion, and he was badly burned. He was wailing nonstop, just screaming “IdontwanttoliveIdontwanttolive” over and over. I woke up the next morning and the medics were folding up the sheets on his bed. When I asked where he was, they told me he had died during the night.
When I was healed up enough I was able to start walking around a little. One day I walked all the way down to the other end of the room, and saw that the guys down there were the worst. There were people who were burned on 80-90% of their body, with their lips burned off and their skin blackened. A lot of them were missing arms or legs, or both. It was bad. The medics would feed them and give them baths in special water to help them heal, but they were barely alive. There were always a lot of priests down on that end, walking around and talking to those guys. I could only bear to go down there a couple times, because I just couldn’t handle it.
He paused, with a faraway look on his face. I noticed that he hadn’t even opened his root beer, while I was just about done with mine. As I took the last swig and clunked the empty bottle onto the floor of the car he seemed to notice the same thing. He opened his and took a long drink. He seemed a little dazed.
“Where was I?”
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