"Larry, wake up. It's time we left for Nashville."
My wife's voice shook me out of my daydream. I hadn't really been asleep, asleep. I'd just been thinking. Well I suppose I might have dozed of there at the last.
"I'm awake."
She chuckled.
"Yeah, right. You always take a nap after lunch. Get yourself up and let's go. I have things I need to do while we're in Nashville."
I don't know why I'd been thinking about that time. I usually try not to, but sometimes it just slips up on me. The Army shrinks say that's normal and that I've adjusted better than most. I know I didn't adjust by myself. She's responsible for most of what I am today.
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Lieutenant Pierson had briefed us squad leaders that morning. He'd pointed to a spot on the map about ten clicks to our North.
"Division Intel says Mr. Charles is moving people and supplies through this little valley at night. We're going out and set up a welcoming party for him."
Pierson looked at me.
"Hodges, First Platoon will take a position on top of this small hill, here. Get on the side opposite the valley and keep your asses down so you're not spotted.
He then turned to the other two squad leaders.
"Phillips, I want Second just back in the trees a little further south. You won't have much cover, but by the time the VC get to you, they should be shot up pretty bad."
"Madison, I want your weapons team on this rise that looks north down the valley. Narrow your field of fire to the valley floor and keep it low. We don't need any men taking friendly rounds. The radio operator and I will set up shop on your location.
"Intel says they start moving down the valley just after midnight. Madison, your weapons team will be the first to see them, but just sit tight when you do. Let 'em get down the valley in front of First, and then send up two parachute flares. Once those flares light up the valley, we'll waste the little bastards. If they run back up the valley, the weapons platoon will cut them down. If they run down the valley, Second will make sure none of them get away."
It was the same plan I'd heard several times since Ameson got his shit blown away and I'd been promoted to squad leader - set up an ambush and take out the enemy when he walks into it. I suppose that's what the Army taught Pierson in OCS and it sounded pretty good in the command tent. Somehow, it didn't usually work out to be as simple as it sounds. This time, it didn't work at all.
From my position on the hill, I could see up the valley. Along about midnight I thought I saw movement there. I nudged Barkley, the guy beside me, and he passed the nudge down the line of men lying on the crest of the low hill with me. I knew the last man would pass it on to Phillips and he to his men. Fifteen minutes passed and there was no more movement so I relaxed a little. That's when all hell broke loose.
I heard the bark of AK's behind me and rolled to my left. I'd just about made it to the valley side of the hill and cover when I saw muzzle flashes. Then the first flare went up. The second quickly followed, and the valley and hillside was bathed in brilliant, flickering white light.
I counted six shapes with rifles standing there. I yelled at Barkley to get on the other side of the hill, and when he didn't move, tried to pull him over. He was just dead weight.
By then, most of the squad had made it to the other side of the hill and just like me, were spraying the trees behind us with continuous bursts of rifle fire. There were shots from behind me I figured were coming from Second Platoon. A quick glance told me Second Platoon was in the same fucked up mess. In the light of the flares, I could see they were turned around and firing up hill in the direction of the VC muzzle flashes. I'd rammed another magazine in my M-16 and turned around to fire again when rounds started whizzing through the underbrush around me. We were taking enemy fire from both the front and the rear.
It wasn't difficult to work out what had happened. The movement I'd seen was probably the VC point man. He had evidently spotted the weapons platoon, and sneaked back down the trail. The VC then sent a patrol out on each side of the valley to see where we were. They'd stumbled onto First Platoon because we were pretty much in the open on our side of the hill. The AK fire had alerted Second Platoon, and they started firing into the valley before they realized they were taking fire from the rear. About that time, the VC on the other side of the valley opened up. In a few seconds, both platoons were taking fire from both front and rear. Our ambush had become a crossfire with us in the middle.
It was Madison's weapons team that saved us. Williams, the M79 guy, started putting grenades on both sides of the valley as fast as he could load and fire, and the M60 team started spraying rounds just over our heads. Just as the second flare burned out, I saw the VC running. At the same time, something slammed into my left leg. It was like somebody hit me with a sledgehammer. I don't remember screaming in pain, but Johnson, the medic, said that's how he found me in the brush.
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I really don't remember much about the rest of that night. I heard Johnson say he'd given me morphine for the pain, had bandaged my leg, and I'd be walking around in no time. I knew that was a lie. I'd heard him tell other guys the same fucking thing and they'd died a minute or two later. He also said the lieutenant had called for a medivac. I prayed that wasn't a lie.
The other things I remember are the whomp-whomp sound of a Huey, the sound of breaking tree branches and Johnson throwing himself on top of me. He wrote to me when he found out which hospital I was in, and told me the chopper pilot had dropped the bird straight down into the valley and used the metal tipped rotor blades of the Huey to carve his way down through the canopy. Johnson had used his body to protect me from the falling debris.
The rest of the night and following day are a blur. The shrinks tell me I don't remember much because that's my way of coping. I couldn't say if it's that or if I was just too doped up to know much about what was happening.
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I woke up in a field hospital where the doctors were able to stop my leg from bleeding. They didn't want to do more because we'd gotten hit pretty bad and they had other casualties in worse shape than me. They gave me more morphine and put me on a chopper for Saigon. In Saigon, they looked at me and decided I needed more than they could give me. They gave me another shot, and put me on a plane to Japan.
That first day in Japan is a little blurry too. I was put in a bed until a doctor could look at me. Once he did, they shot me up with something that put me completely out. I woke up sometime that night and my leg hurt like a bitch. The nurse on duty heard me groan, and quickly came to my bed.
"Try lay still and give me a minute. I'll give you something for the pain and then you can go back to sleep."
I'd had about enough of being doped up so much I couldn't see what was going on around me.
"No, it's not that bad. I'll try to tough it out."
She shook her head.
"You shouldn't do that. The doctor amputated your leg and you'll have a lot of pain at first. I've seen it before, too many times."
I couldn't say anything. They'd cut off my leg? At the time, I thought I'd rather have died out there in the bush instead of losing my leg. I was instantly mad at the doctor who did it, the nurse who told me about it and the asshole doctors in Saigon who could have saved my leg if they hadn't been in such a fucking big a hurry to get to the movie theater. I was making plans to track them all down and beat the fuck out of them when I felt a prick in my arm and everything started getting fuzzy.
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A different nurse woke me up. An older man in a white coat was standing beside her. He smiled a forced smile.
"How you doing, Sergeant Hodges?"
How was I doing? How I was doing was I was mad as hell and I really needed to beat somebody to a bloody pulp. His fake smile only made it worse.
"How the fuck do you think I'm doing? How the fuck would you be doing if some fucking doctor cut off your fucking leg."
His voice then wasn't the voice of a doctor talking to a patient. It was the voice of an officer talking to a junior enlisted man. He wasn't smiling either.
"Sergeant, I'll thank you to watch your language around my nurses. You need to understand a few things, too. First, you didn't have much knee joint left. I couldn't make you a new one and there wasn't enough left to put the old one back together. Second, if I'd left your leg, you'd have had about twenty pounds of lower leg that would just hang there. You couldn't stand on it and you couldn't use it to kick me in the ass like you're wishing you could right now. I took it off so you'd have a chance to walk again. You can do that if you have balls enough to try."
He shrugged.
"Or...you can lay there and feel sorry for yourself. We'll let you heal a little and then send you back to the States. Your mama can take care of you then."
That last statement pissed me off even more. Nobody had taken care of me for a long time. I didn't know how yet, but I wasn't going to have that happen again no matter what.
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I stayed pissed at everybody and everything during the day. At night I felt sorry for myself. I'm not ashamed to say I cried a few times, too. How the hell did they expect me to feel anything else? The life I'd dreamed about before was gone and I didn't know what I could do now. I'd planned on becoming a carpenter when I finished my enlistment. I wouldn't be doing that now, and I sure as hell wouldn't be playing any more softball.
It got a little better after a couple days because the pain eased up a little, but that just gave me more time I wasn't doped up and could think. I spent that time using the crutches they gave me to move around the hospital and think of more things to feel sorry about.
After three weeks, they sent me to the VA hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. It was close enough to Franklin my mom and dad could have come to see me, but soon as I got there, I called my dad and told him I didn't want to see any family. It was a selfish request brought on by a whole lot of self-pity, I know, but I couldn't face them just then.
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It was in Nashville that my life started changing again. I'd just gotten settled into a bed when they dragged my pissed off ass to a room where a technician in a white lab coat made a cast of my stump. The technician explained that was so they could custom make a socket for my artificial leg. He also took some measurements of my other leg.
I hadn't really had time, what with being pissed and feeling sorry for myself, to think much about an artificial leg. I figured the Army would probably do something like that and I wasn't sure that's what I wanted. When I was a kid, I'd known a man who had one. It was made of wood and leather, and he used a thing like a thumbtack to hold up the sock on that side. I decided if that was what I was going to end up with, they could take that wooden leg and shove it up their ass. I'd just keep using my crutches.
