Terry Gould

The First Visit

May, 1969 U.S Naval Hospital Philadelphia, PA

I have never forgotten the first moment of consciousness following the car accident. The ambulance had transported me from the blacktop road leading to the Navy base in Bainbridge, Maryland to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where I awoke three days later to the stark realities of war.

I craned my neck to look around, trying to understand where I was, what had happened. I gradually took in my surroundings; the rows of beds filled with young boys lying up and down and across from me. I saw kids my own age with raw muscle and bone protruding from where legs and hands and arms used to be, faces lacerated and swollen, bloody eye sockets and bodies burned and charred.

I was confused at first, and then my entire being was hollowed out by an urgent and intense fear—a fear that I had died and gone to Hell. But the fear was suddenly flushed over by a deep and profound sense of guilt and shame.

These were Marines wounded in Vietnam. No one had to tell me. I knew it in my heart and soul. The irony and the reality lying around me were smothering me, sucking the breath from me, and I felt ashamed. Ashamed for taking an easier way out, ashamed for not being there with them. Ashamed of what these guys, these men, would think of me. Ashamed of the choices I had made. Ashamed of my decision to back out of the Marine Corps.

Someone appeared through the nighttime darkness and stuck a needle in my arm. The soothing warmth of the chemicals washed over me with a temporary relief from the pain, shame and guilt, and I slipped into the darkened nowhere land of unconsciousness once again.

All too often the restless ghosts of war shattered even the deepest morphine-induced silence. The cries of endless nightmares cursed the pitch-black air like screams for help from a darkened cave.

Sometime late into the sloth-like sleep, I was awakened by two Navy corpsmen wheeling a new arrival onto the ward. He lay immobile in the hospital bed just to my left. The only thing between us was a small beige cabinet with a black countertop at eye level.

The corpsman placed all of the Marine’s belongings, given to him by the Red Cross, in the top drawer; a shaving kit, toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, a black comb, a small transistor radio and a carton of Winston cigarettes.

“Ski, we’ve put your legs back together,” the corpsman quietly assured him. “Dr. Donnolly is the best there is. He’ll be in to see you in the morning. We’ll get you another needle to help you sleep.”

The kid responded with a tight grin and nighttime on Ward 2B fell back into its darkened loneliness and drug-induced calm.

All too often the restless ghosts of war shattered even the deepest morphine-induced silence. The cries of endless nightmares cursed the pitch-black air like screams for help from a darkened cave. Mornings never came soon enough.

When I awoke the next morning I had an overwhelming sense of loss as I once again took in the reality around me. A powdery haze floated into the square of sunlight hanging over the beds on the opposite side of the ward. The early morning morphine clogged my senses as I looked up and down and around in a slow-motion gaze.

Blurry forms emerged through large brown double doors, swinging inward and wide, as if to make way for an important guest. The doors would swing in the opposite direction; the faint, busy forms blending into the darkened corridor on the other side.

The ward and its occupants blurred in and out like fog swept silhouettes, but even the heaviest doses of morphine couldn’t block out the sounds and smells of war’s aftermath.

Ward 2B was entrapped with the stench of open, seeping wounds, layered with the sweet, persistent odors of rubbing alcohol, iodine and antiseptics. Stifling doses of aerosol freshener couldn’t spray down the ever-present fog of hospital chemicals, burned flesh, open wounds and the endless flow of blood and pain.

Three beds down to my right, I saw a kid reaching up with his one arm to grab the trapeze triangle dangling from the crossbeam of the metal bed frame. The heavy chrome chain pinged as he pulled himself up and it tightened against his weight. He lifted himself up as best he could with his one arm. I couldn’t tell if he was adjusting his butt to sit on a bed pan or to ease his burning ass from bed sores. His weight threw him off balance and he swung sideways toward the pulling of his arm. He was holding on as tightly as he could, but his hand slipped from the trapeze and he dropped to the bed like a small child from a monkey bar. He reached up and grabbed the swinging trapeze bar, did a couple of chin-ups, and let go.

The terror would well up inside a kid as his mother and dad stepped slowly toward him, about to see him for the first time; the bottom half of his legs gone or nothing left of his arms.

The hospital received a daily influx of Marines and Navy corpsmen from the fields and jungles of South Vietnam, and the military made every effort to place the most severely wounded as close as possible to their hometowns and families.

Anywhere from three to seven weeks would pass from the time the telegram arrived until the parents could walk in and see their wounded sons on Ward 2B in south Philly. Mothers and fathers, wives and fiancées, brothers and sisters would come from nearly every state east of the Mississippi River. The first visit was always the most difficult for parents and patient.

The slow walk down the ward, seeking the familiar face that left home just a few months ago; and hoping the wounds weren’t as bad as the telegram had told them. Their eyes would unwillingly spread the fear, the sadness and the confusion as they passed between the countless beds of other mother’s and father’s young boys, each step taking them closer to their own son.

I saw the sadness and the hurt deepening in a mother’s eyes as she tried desperately not to cry, but the trembling lips and sagging shoulders were unmistakable signs of the surge of emotions soon to follow.

The fathers would try somehow to be strong, to be a man, but the shock of seeing his young boy, his soldier, his Marine, wounded and dismembered was always more than any one of them could take. The terror would well up inside a kid as his mother and dad stepped slowly toward him, about to see him for the first time; the bottom half of his legs gone or nothing left of his arms. Legs that would never carry him through their doorway back home or hands and arms never again able to touch a loving face or hug a mother good-bye.

And, dear God, when the silence would finally succumb to reality, the explosion of sadness and disbelief would engulf the entire being of Ward 2B.

The silence of these reunions blanketed everyone and everything. Nothing moved. No one breathed. No sounds from anywhere. It’s as though time stood still until everyone had absorbed his share of the fear and pain and confusion. Anything to make this easier; make it go away.

Nightmares would swell up and down the ward following a first visit. Irrepressible bursts of terror cracked the darkness as land mine explosions repeated themselves and phantom pain soared through ghostly limbs, and the war came back to life again. One nightmare ignited another, and another. The nurses and corpsmen would rush from one end of the ward to the other, comforting the haunted souls with morphine.

A few minutes would pass, and Ward 2B would lay awash in a trembling quiet and wait. Wait once again for morning.