young.
A tour of Nam is twelve months; it is like a law of nature. The medics, though, stay on line only seven months. It is not due to the good will of the Army, but to their discovery that seven months is about all these kids can take. After that they start getting freaky, cutting down on their own water and food so they can carry more medical supplies; stealing plasma bottles and walking around on patrol with five or six pounds of glass in their rucksacks; writing parents and friends for medical catalogues so they can buy their own endotracheal tubes; or quite simply refusing to leave their units when their time in Nam is over.
And so it goes, and the gooks know it. They will drop the point, trying not to kill him but to wound him, to get him screaming so they can get the medic too. He’ll come. They know he will.
“We get a distorted picture over here in
Japan. We see the guys after they’ve been
fixed up a bit and acclimated to their
injuries. Over there it’s a kid suddenly
full of holes. You’re faced with the stark
reality of it—not just a sick patient, but
a dying healthy kid who’s just been blown apart.”
Chief of Surgery
Staff meeting
U.S. Army Hospital, Camp Zama, Japan
4
Final Pathological Diagnosis
T HE CHICOM MINES THE VC and NVA use are plastic. They hold ten pounds of explosive charge and three pounds of fragments. They can be pressure-detonated, and the explosive charge can be set for whatever pressure is wanted—a tank, a jeep, a truck, or a person. If the mines are placed right they can blow an engine block through the hood or turn over an APC. Since the bombing halt, though, there have been enough to waste a few on recon patrols.
This one must have been a pull-release. It blew after he stepped off it—throwing him ten feet into the air. When the medic finally reached him, his left leg was already gone, and his right leg was shredded up to his thigh. The blast had seared through the bottoms of his fatigues, burning his penis and scrotum as well as the lower part of his abdomen and anus. The medic gave him morphine and started albumin. A Dust Off was called in, which took him to the twenty-seventh surgical hospital near Quang Tri, where they took off his testicles and penis, explored his abdomen, took out his left kidney and four inches of large bowel, sewed up his liver, and did a colostomy and right ureterostomy. During the procedure he was given twenty units of uncrossed O-positive blood.
After three days at the twenty-seventh, he was evacuated to Japan via the Yokota Air Force base. From Yokota he was taken by chopper to the U.S. Army hospital at Camp Zama. His left leg was removed by a left-hip disarticulation, and his right thumb and left index finger were sutured. There was not enough skin to close his surgical wounds completely, so his stumps were left open. Despite antibiotics, his wounds became infected. The fourth night in the ward he tried to kill himself. On the sixth day his urinary output began to diminish, and the laboratory began culturing bacteria out of his blood stream. On the seventh day his fever hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit; he became unconscious, and seven days following his injuries he expired. His body was then transferred to the morgue at Yokota airbase for shipment back to the continental United States.
FINAL PATHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS
1. Death, eight days after stepping on a land mine.
2. Multiple blast injuries.
A. Traumatic amputation of lower extremities, distal right thumb, distal left index finger.
B. Blast injury of anus and scrotum.
C. Avulsion of testicles.
D. Fragment wounds of abdomen.
E. Laceration of kidney and liver, transection of left ureter.
3. Focal interstitial myocarditis and right heart failure.
A. Left and right ventricular dilation.
B. Marked pulmonary edema, bilateral.
C. Marked pulmonary effusion, bilateral (3000 cc in the left, 1500 in the right).
D. Congestion of lungs and liver.
4. Patchy acute pneumonitis
A tour of Nam is twelve months; it is like a law of nature. The medics, though, stay on line only seven months. It is not due to the good will of the Army, but to their discovery that seven months is about all these kids can take. After that they start getting freaky, cutting down on their own water and food so they can carry more medical supplies; stealing plasma bottles and walking around on patrol with five or six pounds of glass in their rucksacks; writing parents and friends for medical catalogues so they can buy their own endotracheal tubes; or quite simply refusing to leave their units when their time in Nam is over.
And so it goes, and the gooks know it. They will drop the point, trying not to kill him but to wound him, to get him screaming so they can get the medic too. He’ll come. They know he will.
“We get a distorted picture over here in
Japan. We see the guys after they’ve been
fixed up a bit and acclimated to their
injuries. Over there it’s a kid suddenly
full of holes. You’re faced with the stark
reality of it—not just a sick patient, but
a dying healthy kid who’s just been blown apart.”
Chief of Surgery
Staff meeting
U.S. Army Hospital, Camp Zama, Japan
4
Final Pathological Diagnosis
T HE CHICOM MINES THE VC and NVA use are plastic. They hold ten pounds of explosive charge and three pounds of fragments. They can be pressure-detonated, and the explosive charge can be set for whatever pressure is wanted—a tank, a jeep, a truck, or a person. If the mines are placed right they can blow an engine block through the hood or turn over an APC. Since the bombing halt, though, there have been enough to waste a few on recon patrols.
This one must have been a pull-release. It blew after he stepped off it—throwing him ten feet into the air. When the medic finally reached him, his left leg was already gone, and his right leg was shredded up to his thigh. The blast had seared through the bottoms of his fatigues, burning his penis and scrotum as well as the lower part of his abdomen and anus. The medic gave him morphine and started albumin. A Dust Off was called in, which took him to the twenty-seventh surgical hospital near Quang Tri, where they took off his testicles and penis, explored his abdomen, took out his left kidney and four inches of large bowel, sewed up his liver, and did a colostomy and right ureterostomy. During the procedure he was given twenty units of uncrossed O-positive blood.
After three days at the twenty-seventh, he was evacuated to Japan via the Yokota Air Force base. From Yokota he was taken by chopper to the U.S. Army hospital at Camp Zama. His left leg was removed by a left-hip disarticulation, and his right thumb and left index finger were sutured. There was not enough skin to close his surgical wounds completely, so his stumps were left open. Despite antibiotics, his wounds became infected. The fourth night in the ward he tried to kill himself. On the sixth day his urinary output began to diminish, and the laboratory began culturing bacteria out of his blood stream. On the seventh day his fever hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit; he became unconscious, and seven days following his injuries he expired. His body was then transferred to the morgue at Yokota airbase for shipment back to the continental United States.
FINAL PATHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS
1. Death, eight days after stepping on a land mine.
2. Multiple blast injuries.
A. Traumatic amputation of lower extremities, distal right thumb, distal left index finger.
B. Blast injury of anus and scrotum.
C. Avulsion of testicles.
D. Fragment wounds of abdomen.
E. Laceration of kidney and liver, transection of left ureter.
3. Focal interstitial myocarditis and right heart failure.
A. Left and right ventricular dilation.
B. Marked pulmonary edema, bilateral.
C. Marked pulmonary effusion, bilateral (3000 cc in the left, 1500 in the right).
D. Congestion of lungs and liver.
4. Patchy acute pneumonitis
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