I was stable enough to travel a few days after my surgery, so I was transferred first to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh and then to a hospital at the Tan Son Nhut airbase in Saigon. I stayed in each of them for a couple of days. Then finally to 249th Evacuation Hospital in Camp Drake outside of Tokyo, Japan. I stayed there until December 3, 1968.
The 93rd Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh
During the Vietnam War the 93rd Evacuation Hospital admitted 73,023 patients, treated 9,353 battle casualties, and had over 232,581 out-patient visits.
Tan Son Nhut Airbase outside of Saigon
249th Evac Hospital in Japan
One of those stops, I don'’t remember which one specifically, I was transported to the airport in a bus set up like an ambulance.
As they were loading me on the bus, the tube that ran from my catheter to the bag, got caught on something pulling it most of the way out, but not all the way. I screamed bloody murder which of course, caused everyone to stop dead in their tracks.
The nurse came over frantically asking “WHAT’S WRONG! WHAT’S WRONG!”
“The catheter! The (insert expletives here) catheter!” I could barely breathe it hurt so much, so that was said rather quietly and breathlessly.
The nurse pulled back my covers and saw what had happened and quickly inserted the tube back into my bladder. When she did that the pain almost stopped. Then (insert expletives here) came forth from my mouth in a never ending tirade. I’m sure they all felt badly for what happened, but I was pissed and made that perfectly clear.
During the first ten days or so I was wounded, my wounds were cleaned and flushed out with a saline solution a few times a day in an to attempt to prevent infection. The larger wounds were packed with a sterial packing to keep the wounds from starting to heal and close. The process to clean them was very uncomfortable if not done carefully. The wounds were fresh and nerve ending were exposed. If the medic or nurse clening them got too rough with the Q-tips when cleaning them out, it also hurt tremendously. Everyone was very careful and the few times it started hurting, they backed off and gave me a chance to rest. I was also drugged up pretty good so that helped a lot. Except this one time in the hospital in Tan Son Nhut the Evil Nurse Kratchet got a hold of me causing more (insert expletives here) to spew forth from my mouth.
Evil Nurse Kratchet must have been having a bad day or something because she comes over and tear’s off with the bandages, rips the packing out of the wounds, of course it sticks like hell to my wounds and hurts removing it if you don’t flush the wound with the saline first and go slow. Then Q-tips rammed into my wounds. Guess what I did? (insert expletives here), lots of them.
(Okay, maybe she didn’t do it exactly like that, but you get the point, it hurt a lot if they weren’t very careful.)
“Hey, take it (insert expletives here) easy! That (insert expletives here) hurts!
That out burst quickly got the medic assisting the nurse to stop her and the doctor to come over to see what was wrong. “Get this (insert expletives here) away from me, she’s (insert expletives here) killing me!” I yelled. The doctor sent her away and told the medic to finish up. The rest of my time there I never even saw her again.
A day or two later, I was loaded onto a medevac plane with a lot of other people for the trip to Japan. We were packed in like sardines just like in this picture. There were also seats for people that were ambulatory on the opposite side of the plane.
I don’t remember very much else about this week or so because I was drugged up pretty well. I do remember that during the flight to Japan, a nurse, another cute one and also a brunette as I recall, helped me eat a boxed lunch with fried chicken, something like a meal you’d get at Kentucy Fried Chicken. I couldn’t sit up, and could only use my right hand because my entire left arm and hand were bandaged so I needed her help.
I will always remember how nice it was being fed by that pretty woman, no matter why she was feeding me. Laying there looking up at her and into those very pretty, caring eyes. Knowing I had made it out of that God forsaken country alive and was on my way home again. That plane may not have been the one I arrived on, but it was a plane taking me back to the 'World' none the less. I was going home and was very, very happy.
2 comments:
I was one of the corpsmen that drove the bus and carried you to a bus and a chopper to go to the hospital in Japan if you were there in 1968-1969,, It made me sad to see all the injured people that was shot up and burned.
I was wounded on 8 Nov 68, so I saw one of you guys soon after that. There were seven of us wounded that night. I know at least one of them was going back to the World, maybe even a few more that you gave rides to. Thanks for the ride. I was in different hospitals for three months before being stationed at FT Meade MD. A few months after I was there, I had a small follow up surgery at Walter Reed in DC. I was in a plastic surgery ward which was a real wake up call for me. So many men that had amputations. The guy in the bed next to me had a head wound and lost an eye. Some of them had been in the hospital for over two years and maybe longer. So sad to see the results of the war the politicians ran.
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