Whatever You Say, Sir
One of the things you learn in boot camp is what your job will be in the Navy. Much like my decision to join the Navy, it didn’t require too much thought. You take a number of tests and get what you get based on your scores and perceived skill set. In my case, it was supposed to be one of three options: Personnelman, one who deals with enlistee’s paperwork (there’s no escaping the paperwork); Yeoman, like the personnelman but for officers; or Storekeeper, one who orders supplies such as food, parts for the ship, etc. — basically anything the Navy needs to keep running. A First Class Petty Officer, much like the one who didn’t send me home when I failed to make the weight qualification, told me to add Hospital Corpsman and Dental Tech to my list. “You’re not qualified for either so you don’t stand a chance of getting any of them.” While I didn’t see the point of putting them down on the list for this glaringly obvious reason, I knew better than to question the wisdom of an E-6, so I replied as I would for many years after, “Ok, whatever you say, Sir.”
The Petty Officer may not have thought that I was qualified, but someone else did. I reported to Hospital Corps School in October 1966.
Much like high school, I didn’t do well in class, but like some of my other classmates, I didn’t need to do well. Even though I was never good in a classroom, what a few like me could do well was first aid. With that skill, all I had to be was a warm body that could be trained to serve with the Marines and patch them up.
Once I graduated in January 1967, I was told by the Personnelman (the one job I’d wanted) that my entire company minus one guy would report to Montfort Point, Field Medical Service School, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for advanced training. Seemed I was going to disappoint the recruiter. I wasn’t destined for deck seaman after all.
Our platoon/company sergeant was Sgt. Rock. The name suited him. He came off like a prick, but he wasn’t half bad. He’d been wounded in Vietnam and was treated by a corpsman, so he tried his best to make something of us — so we’d at least live long enough to treat a wounded Marine like him. “God, how did I ever get stuck trying to make you pecker checkers anything like Marines.” Like being the operative word. There was a reason none of us had enlisted in the Marine Corps in the first place. In my case, I knew I could never live up to the legend, and after barely meeting the weight requirement, I wasn’t about to try. Sgt. Rock did his best. We tolerated the daylight and got drunk on cheap watered down quarter beers at the slop chute at night, at least those nights we weren’t camping out in our tents. I could never understand why they taught us to make a standard two-man tent. Never saw one after that, not in Vietnam or anywhere else.
Field Medical Service School wasn’t anything like the real Marine Corps boot camp portrayed in Full Metal Jacket. (Even though I’ve never seen the movie — can’t bring myself to watch it — I’ve heard enough about it.) Navy boot camp was a resort compared to Parris Island or MCRD San Diego according to Marines I met, but it was our boot camp. We were there to learn some basic idea of what it’s like in the day of a field Marine: marching; putting a backpack together; eating field rations; shooting and cleaning an M-14 rifle and .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol; doing night patrols on training grounds with paths worn into the country-side making it damn difficult to get lost. No one was afraid of failing, mainly because no one really thought you could. There were no tests, only jumping jacks, push-ups, and running (any benefits of this exercise were wasted on evening trips to the slop chute and one or two packs of Marlboro’s a day). We worked together to get out of there; one person who was good at something helped someone who wasn’t. There was camaraderie, and, for the most part, we had fun. For those couple of months, we were oblivious to the world beyond Camp Lejeune.
None of us talked about leaving. We had enlisted. We chose to be there, for whatever our own reasons were, which we never discussed. I consider us to be the last generation to have a sense of honor and personal pride. We were the children of the 1950’s, born to the generation who survived the Depression and the Second World War. They had ingrained in us that our sense of value and worth came from standing by our word and honoring our commitments. We signed a contract saying we would serve our country, and we took that seriously, war or no war.
In April 1967, I was off to St. Albans Naval Hospital, Jamaica Queens, New York for my last six months of on-the-job training. There, when sober enough, I worked on ward B-2. Lt. Luisa was the charge nurse for the ward. She was the one who tried the hardest to train us ward corpsmen and instill in us as much medical discipline as she could. There wasn’t that much to learn on the clean ward. C-1, which had the dirty surgery and contaminated wounds, was where you learned about the real casualties of war. For a kid who’s ultimately facing a possible similar fate, dealing with amputations, gut wounds, and the gore that Hollywood movies can’t possibly replicate is truly cruel and unusual. B-1, the plastic surgery ward, wasn’t much better. I’ll never forget the Marine whose rifle went off, blowing his chin and lower jaw away. He walked around feeding himself with a tube sticking out of his nose.
One other guy I’ll always remember came in on a Sunday. The hospital was overwhelmed by a group of wounded Marines from Vietnam, and I was assigned a double amputee. He’d stepped on a landmine and lost both legs below the knee. One of my tasks was to wheel him to X-ray on a gurney. When we arrived at the desk for the X-ray, the nurse looked at him, then at the X-ray request form, and informed me I was an idiot for neglecting to complete it. I merely indicated he was a double amputee. “How tall are you?” She asked the Marine.
A credit to his immeasurable sense of being and humor, he replied, “I’m not sure now. I used to be 5’8.” The nurse looked back at the paper, her face as red as her dyed hair, and didn’t say another word. He remained my patient when I was assigned to C-1 so we got to know each other over the next four months, and he’d maintained a great sense of humor like he’d shown when he was admitted. I never saw him after he went home on convalesce leave. He committed suicide.
Being young, naïve, and a product of my generation, I didn’t get what went on in the psych ward. No one talked about depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or any post-traumatic anything. My few times down there covering lunch breaks consisted of making sure no one hurt themselves or others and that they didn’t run away. Sounded easy enough, except no one prepared me for the discomfort of the stare, the look that perhaps indicated: “You cannot un-see what has been seen, you cannot un-hear what has been heard, you have no idea, no movie or training can prepare you for what is in your future.” There was one guy who sat and stared at me for an hour straight. And every time I would see him doing the Thorazine shuffle, which was whenever the psych patients had to get in line for their anti-psychotics or other meds, he would stare right at me.
There’s something about physical wounds that make them seem more real than the invisible, psychological ones that lead someone to shut down or literally lose their minds. One I was taught to fix, the other I was taught to ignore. It’s nearly impossible to wrap your head around emotional and mental issues let alone articulate them. I don’t blame these men for losing their minds. God knows I almost did.
Even though it came out of World War I, from what I remember, it was during World War II that shell shock was brought to the fore by General Patton when he famously (or infamously) slapped a soldier in a hospital who had no obvious wounds calling him a coward, not realizing the soldier had been in intense combat for several days and had psychologically reached his limits. In Korea, combat fatigue was not mentioned too much.
We received little or no training in the treatment of or how to handle people with this unusual disorder. After serving in Vietnam, soldiers, sailors, and Marines were just sent home, like my patient who killed himself. No warning was given about potential issues or where to go for assistance, just a kick out the door: bye, thanks, see ya, good-bye, ta ta, have a good life.
My time at St. Albans motivated me to become an X-ray technician. One afternoon, my friend Moore, who wanted to be a laboratory technician, and I decided to put in for advanced training. We filled out the requisite paperwork (always the paperwork) through the ward services department (they must have got a chuckle out of that), then proceeded to the Personnel Department. The Chief Personnelman looked at our paperwork and laughed till he almost cried. He promptly tore up the papers, threw them into a trash can and in a very loud voice informed Moore and me, “You know where you’re going. I know where you’re going. Everyone in this hospital knows where you’re going. If and when you come back, the Navy will be glad to send you to any school you can qualify for. Until then, don’t piss off any more of my fucking time.” Obviously it still hadn’t registered in our heads exactly where we were going.
In August 1967, I received my orders, 1st Marine Division, Republic of Vietnam. The consolation prize was that it wasn’t the 3rd Division. At that point in my life, having served at St. Albans Naval Hospital, I was convinced no one rotated out of the 3rd — you left mutilated or dead.
By December 1967, my secret dream of being sent to serve on a ship was never realized, so I packed my orders and records in my sea bag and reported to Travis Air Force Base. My sea bag never arrived with me, which meant I couldn’t get on my scheduled flight with my friends from Great Lakes, Camp Lejeune, and St. Albans. I arrived in Okinawa after them and stayed there for a week, being the only sailor among a bunch of Marines who wouldn’t let me forget it.
Like I said, I wasn’t so great at thinking things through, but this wouldn’t be the first time I’d get lucky either. My friends had already been sent off to Vietnam, and most of them had been assigned to the 5th Marines. The 5th Marines are the most decorated regiment for a reason, and they were the first ones to enter Hue City in what would be one of the worst battles fought, where most of the men I went to school with were either killed or wounded. I guess you could say I was stupid and lucky.
