Just before I wrote this

As I settled down, my thoughts went back to another day in 1967 when an errant 81mm mortar round caused 15 medevacs in our patrol that was already under fire from the front and rear of our column. My overly-alert brain had thrown the rest of me to the ground and as I hit the dirt, the explosion swept its surroundings while the conscious part of me realized what had happened.  

As I sprung to my feet and ran over the still-smoking crater, I saw a Marine supine, struggling to breathe, cut in half at the waist. 

I saw a man propped on one arm, head down,groaning like an animal with his front teeth dangling by a thread, twisting in a slow rain of blood drops. His heel was gone. His hand had a large notch of palm missing. 

One guy was complaining of a headache. He had a small hole in the base of the back of his head, where the neck joins just beneath the helmet. He kept complaining until he collapsed. 

The casualties begin to run together as the Birddog spotter fired white phosphorus rockets into the treeline and Marine Phantoms shook everything with their very close air support. 

When the choppers had carried off the wounded and dead and the other corpsman, Danny Dow, who kept two Marines alive on the trip to Delta Med in Dong Ha, I gathered 7 of the 15 M-16's and we made our escape through a swamp. I was stunned by what had happened. 

I was imprinted permanently by this and many other similar incidents that enter, uninvited as I worked or drove or tried to sleep or as dreams that supersede other significant events of my life. They cut in at the head of the line. 

They take more than their share. They are vivid. They cause physical reactions in me, like tachycardia, sweating, jumping out of bed, fear, avoidance of others...

When will it end?

Additional Locations During Vietnam: Con Thien, Cam Lo, Dong Ha, Ca Lu, Camp Carroll