Life in the Rear
After the brief helicopter ride back to Quang Tri, Dr. Baker had a jeep waiting for him that promptly whisked us off to the Battalion Aid Station (BAS). I went inside and lo and behold the first person to greet me was Chavez, the person I had relieved so that he could move up to Company Corpsman. Stokes, one of the first to arrive at the Battalion with me, was there as well.[1] We didn’t have a Chief in charge of the enlisted. Instead we had three 1st Class Petty Officers: one for the administrative section, who dealt with things such as our Navy Service records (which were different than the Marine Corps) for the newly arrived personnel and issuing orders for travel; another who ran the supply department, supplying bandages, aspirin, and anything else needed to run the BAS; and the other one who managed the facilities, ensuring all of our buildings and transport boxes were in good working order and anything that needed to be fixed got fixed.
All three of the Chief Petty Officers looked up from their desks, and grunted “Hi”, and promptly went back to whatever they were doing.
Chavez took me to the BAS sleeping hooch so that I could pick a bunk and dump my pack and other 782 gear. I sat down and was trying to process my new reality when in walked one of the 1st Class Petty Officers, Rosenshien or something like that. About 12–13 years later I would actually run into him again while I was stationed at the Navy Hospital in San Diego in the early 80’s, only by then he’d become a Lieutenant Commander working in the Comptroller Office. Of course he didn’t recognize me then, but I could never forget him.
Rosenshien said, “Here sign this.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A page 13 indicating you received your purple heart medal.”
“I never received one.”
“Really? Shit.”
He immediately left the hooch. As I began to peel off my pack, webbing and other combat stuff, Rosenshein returned, tossed a box on the cot and said, “Ok, there’s your purple heart, now sign the paper!”
“Okey dokey.” But I first opened the box just to piss him off. I glanced at the medal and then signed the paper.
It seemed like it was going to be a long five months if this was the prevailing attitude of my superiors. If this were a play or a script for a movie, at this time it would show me sliding further into myself and away from anything slightly resembling military or humanity.
I am going to make it,I reminded myself, so I went over to Fox Company to turn in my .45 pistol. Being out of the bush meant I was officially assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Services Company, commonly referred to as H&HS. The 1st Sergeant of Fox Company who I got along with — I think he liked me as I didn’t cause any issues and usually followed orders well — surprised the shit out of me by giving me a Zippo Lighter with my name engraved on one side. On the other, it read: “To those who fought for it Freedom has a taste the protected will never know.” Fifty years later I still have that lighter. It means a lot to me. I even have that Purple Heart Medal and the memory of it being tossed on the cot.
Funny how things go in life. The way I received that medal stuck with me throughout the rest of my career. It may seem important to you, but to someone else it’s just paperwork to complete. My reward was always here is your paycheck, now move along to whatever act is next in the play of your life. As a child of parents from the Depression, that was the way I was raised. We earned our paycheck, no matter what we did. We could be hiding in a bunker in Saigon or on a ridge fighting for one’s life. We all earned the same paycheck. If you wanted a medal, you had to really earn it. A Corpsman running out of the line during a firefight to treat a wounded Marine was just doing his job, but if a Marine ran out to help Corpsman, he deserved the medal.
Some of the Marines were at the Battalion rear because the Marine Corps had a rule: two purple hearts and you went to the rear; three and you were sent to Okinawa to finish your one-year overseas tour.
Around 1600 (4PM) the BAS began to wrap up its day. People started to stagger into the hooch from the days’ work in the rear. I finally got a chance to talk with Stokes and catch up on what happened to Gus Gustafson, his childhood best friend who’d joined the buddy program with him.[2] He was killed when a mortar round struck the edge of a foxhole he was in as he tried to treat a wounded Marine, somewhere around Khe Sanh. Stokes introduced me to Howse and Smith, two Corpsmen who had just rolled in from the bush. Howse had been with Echo Company, and Smith had been with Hotel Company.
So all four combat companies were represented in a clique that was starting to form right then and there, as the one thing we all had in common other than being bush survivors was that we were unadulterated, unapologetic, all in, alcoholics.
The four of us teamed up to spend our money on any form of alcohol we could buy or get our hands on. The Marines didn’t believe in clubs, but they had converted a hooch into a sort of a bar, where you could go and buy two tepid beers per night — two unless you got someone who didn’t drink to buy their allotment and sell them to you. We had a lot of help in that endeavor most nights.
I don’t speak for anyone other than myself when I say I didn’t drink just to drink. What I liked best was drinking until I passed out. No dreams. I hated dreaming. Dreaming meant nightmares of faces of those that I couldn’t help, memories of laying in the dirt with a wounded Marine who was gasping for air as I cut a tracheotomy with my dirty scalpel so that he could breathe and him not breathing anyway. I remember one dream where I was walking on a beach at night, quiet, peaceful waves hitting the beach. As I caught sight of a bonfire in the distance and walked towards it, there were Hartman, Keller, Paige, Grist and others around this bonfire waving me over, “Hey Doc, come on over, bring some beer.”
Around this time was when the olfactory hallucinations started — infrequently at first, Gunpowder and Roses. If I was mad, upset, or angry it was gunpowder, happy then it was roses. These lasted for 20 or more years until they slowly subsided, but they started there. As some might suggest, I was a fucking mess. None of us spoke of these things. As far as I knew or cared to know, I was the only one who had these episodes. Not only did no one care (they had their demons too), but the general reaction would be, “You’re a medical person. Physician, heal thyself.”
The following morning, I found out where the chow hall was for my first breakfast in the rear. It was an actual place to eat with metal utensils, metal trays, and metal cups, with actual cooked food that was hot. I had powdered eggs, bacon, toast, something like milk, and hot coffee. What a feast. I felt as if I could’ve been in Henry VIII’s palace it was such a banquet. I couldn’t wait to lunch and supper. My god what a life. It was one I had almost forgotten about since I figured there was a good chance I would never eat like this again. But I did, so life was grand, and I was determined to enjoy it as best I could.
I showed up at the BAS with the others, but I was new to this garrison type duty. I inquired about what I was expected to do while I was there. Another one of the 1st Class Petty Officers, again with the no name, told me, “I’m not sure, what are you good at?”
“Damn that’s a loaded question,” I replied. I looked around to see what, if anything, appealed to me. So I sat on my ass in a corner and watched what everyone was doing. There was a 2nd Class Petty Officer, no name, assisting Doctor Bounds (the newly arrived Battalion Doctor) with sick call. He was also pulling the medical records from the box they were stored in and doing the sick call check in.
It looked easy enough, and after about 10 minutes of being bored, I asked him if I could help. He looked at me stunned. I later found out he wasn’t well liked by others in the BAS for the simple reason effeminate people were not welcome in the macho world of the military. Gays were in the military but definitely maintained a low profile. And even if some of the effeminate personnel weren’t gay, they would have a tough time being labeled as anything but by some dumb ass red neck. The stigma of being friends with an effeminate person could cause you to be labeled as one, so most just avoided them altogether.
In any case, he welcomed my assistance in the logging in of the sick and injured. In addition, he told me I could take over the care and maintenance of the medical records so that he could focus on the overall care of the sick call area and concentrate on patient care.
I began to learn that life in the rear, while nice because no one was shooting at us, also brought a new feeling that was not very comfortable. People come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and attitudes in the military. I found a sampling of all of them at the BAS.
There were people who were suspicious of everyone else thinking they must be doing or selling drugs. Vietnam was a cesspool of drugs, and you could get anything you wanted from pot to heroin. I hated drugs. I hated them despite my alcohol dependency. I tried pot, but didn’t like it. For me it was an expensive and messy cigarette without the filter. I just stuck with alcohol and Marlboros.
Then there were the people who had been drafted into the Corps and still hated and resented what had happened to them. Blacks who hated me just because I’m white, whites who hated blacks because they’re black. I hated the racism that was around every corner. You didn’t see it in the bush — everyone needed each other to keep each other alive. Yet when we were in the rear, you would see two bush buddies physically fighting just because of the color of their skin.
My senior year of high school we integrated with O’Bannon High School, the all black school in the county. These students came in, and we all said hi to each other. It just didn’t seem like a big deal. The kids from O’Bannon were all similar to us just different color, dumb kids, smart kids, but we were all High School Seniors wanting to get the fuck outta town — and we did. It went as smooth as any one could hope.
I wish the military had been that easy with integration, but there were some hardcore assholes on both sides of the color barrier. Self-imposed railroad tracks — us on this side, them on the other. There were a lot of people who thought similar to me; if we can get along we can get out of this shithole alive and maybe learn something to take back home. Life in the bush was not so complicated; life in the rear, while safer, was not as much fun as you would have thought.
[1]Merry F*@&in Christmas https://medium.com/war-cigarettes-and-san-miguel/merry-f-in-christmas-2844a258a5e4
[2]Merry F*@&in Christmas https://medium.com/war-cigarettes-and-san-miguel/merry-f-in-christmas-2844a258a5e4
