71st Evac Hosp-Pleiku, Vietnam - Stories

These stories are true, but the names may be
changed to protect the innocent. Besides, my memory
isn't very good any more. I haven't researched any of these for historical detail, but have lived them. Steven Streeper - Copyright, 2007

Shortly after the VN girl died, I was on duty when we got a call that a some GIs cutting down trees had been hurt and were headed for our helipad. It turned out that three of them had been struck by a falling hundred-foot tree that they'd just cut down. When the chopper landed, we unloaded the stretchers and carried them into the ER. The patient I was helping carry stopped breathing aswe put him down on the stretcher cart. Automatically, I checked his mouth for obstructions and, putting my right hand under his chin and the left under the back of his head, rotated his head to hyperextend the throat, preparatory to starting CPR. The fingers of my left hand slid into something gooey and warm...his brain. The back of his skull had been crushed and torn away, exposing the brain surface. We didn't make any further attempt at resuscitation.

After this happened, my mind just kept going back to the incident. I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. Questions about the young man filled my thoughts:
"Where was he from? What about his family? Was he married? Have kids? What had his plans been when he got back to the World? Did he suffer? ......." All night long, I tossed and turned in my bunk, finally getting up at about 4 AM and writing this poem:

The Price We Pay

Again I stand with another man's blood and brains on my hands... his body lies, slowly cooling, in front of me....someone's son... brother... husband... lover.

My mind and body are numbed by the senseless tasks they've been called to do in the name of "DUTY". In a perverted way I'm happy that he's dead so I can go back to my card game or sleep. The struggle to keep shredded bodies alive saps my strength, weakens me, leaves me vulnerable.

I must protect myself, get tough, become so calloused that nothing can hurt me any more or make me think of the dead ones.

His body lies there... growing colder... dripping... dripping... dripping... Flies land in the mess that was once his head, the center of his being. They like it there... lousy, stinkin' flies! I wave them away, but they just buzz around for awhile, then come back. Who cares anyway? This newly-dead GI sure doesn't care any more. He doesn't care... I don't care... who cares??

Clotting blood forms a dark, shiny pool on the litter, soaks through and splashes soggilyon the floor. Damn! Why does Death always have to be so messy? I'm the guy who has to mop up after the Grim One has reaped his crimson harvest... why me?

I fill out the Death Tag and tie it to his big toe, then cover him with a sheet. Now I can't see the mess he's become, at least not with my eyes. In my soul, though, he's there with the others, members of my silent, personal Chamber of Horrors.

With the toe tag, he's earned another number, or identity. He'll be catalogued, stored away in the memory tapes of some senseless computer, to be exhumed periodically when payments are made to his grieving family. What's a life worth... a very young life?? Ten ... twenty... thirty thousand bucks? That's not very much... life isn't at all expensive ... at least in money.

Balance the books... life is really cheap... how much for a life?

SP4 Steven N. Streeper
71st Evac Hosp
Pleiku, RVN
Written - July, 1969
Copyright 1969

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