Friendly Fire (56 page)

“Get the medic over here!” Rodriguez shouted. “Get a medic to the Prince!”

Someone else was yelling, “A light! I need a light! Get me a light!”

The Prince was screaming, “Doc! DOC! Oh, God, help me, DOC!” Aikins, who had had to run back to the sleeping area for his medical kit, was hurrying back. Cameron's senior radio operator was calling Schwarzkopf, “Black Smoke One, Black Smoke One? This is Black Smoke Six. Do you read me?”

“This is Black Smoke One,” Schwarzkopf answered.

“This is Black Smoke Six. We need an immediate dust-off. An urgent dust-off.”

Schwarzkopf had monitored Charlie Company's call for a cease-fire, but he had no means of knowing how bad things were. “Are you sure you need a dust-off? Let me talk to your company commander.” It was pitch-black. Foggy. Schwarzkopf knew how difficult it would be for the med-evac helicopter to find them.

Cameron took the hand mike from the radio operator, “Black Smoke One? This is Black Smoke Six. We took a short round. We need an immediate dust-off. We may even need a jungle penetrator. I don't know yet.”

The jungle penetrator is a basket device lowered by winch from a helicopter hovering overhead. The helicopter must hold its position and guide the basket through the openings in the jungle canopy. The procedure is dangerous and difficult and utilized only when absolutely necessary. Cameron had mentioned the jungle penetrator because he could not yet determine whether or not he would be able to get a landing zone with enough clearance for the medical evacuation helicopter to put down.

When the shell hit, Culpepper found himself lying on the ground clutching his rifle. He did not even remember how he got there. “Jesus, Schumacher! What was that?”

“An arty round!”

“What?”

“Those stupid sons of bitches!” Schumacher yelled. “They're supposed to be shooting out there, but they're shooting at us! If we'd given ourselves as a target, they couldn't have done any better.”

Polk didn't know what had happened either. He had heard and felt the shell explode, awoke to find Cactus screaming to his left, the scream a thin, metallic ringing in Polk's ears. He saw blood on Cactus' face, felt the terror hot, like fire, surge from his stomach to his chest. Polk sat up, patted his body searching for blood, then rolled toward Michael Mullen, asking “Mulligan? Mulligan, you all right?”

Michael didn't move. Polk heard only the hiss of escaping air.

“MULLIGAN!” Polk wailed, the panic rising heavier, hotter, higher through him. He saw the blood, heard the screaming and jerked himself like a puppet to his feet. Polk, babbling in terror, ran past the new 1st Platoon sergeant, Wetsel, and saw that he, too, was wounded. Polk didn't stop. He ran over the lip of his foxhole, fell to his knees and vomited over and over and over again.

As soon as Cameron finished speaking with his battalion commander, he could hear someone else calling for a medic and some light. The young company commander grabbed his flashlight and headed for the voice. He almost tripped over Staff Sergeant Wetsel. Wetsel was lying on his back, his knees tucked up to his chest, holding his bleeding left hand in his right. He was rocking back and forth moaning softly.

“Wetsel, this is Captain Cameron. Where are you hit?”

“Stomach, sir. My hand and my stomach.”

“Let me take a look.” Gently, Cameron pulled Wetsel's hands away from his stomach and was relieved to see his platoon sergeant had been wearing a flak vest. He must have been sleeping on his back with his hand across his abdomen when the shell hit. A piece of shrapnel had passed through his left hand and embedded itself in the flak vest. The shrapnel had not passed through, but it had punched his stomach with such force that Wetsel believed he had been hurt badly. Cameron started to break out a bandage, but was interrupted by Lieutenant Bayliss. “I'll take care of this one, sir,” Bayliss said.

Bayliss, the mortar platoon leader, had been trained as a medic before going through Officers Candidate School.

“Fine, Bayliss,” Cameron said and straightened up. He could hear Samuels screaming, and never in his life had Cameron ever heard anyone cry out like that before.

Abe Aikins was leaning over Samuels. The Prince's face had turned a ghostly white; his lips were curled back with pain. The moment Aikins had seen the Prince he recognized he would be dealing with a traumatic amputation. The whole lower part of Samuels' left leg was out to one side and connected to the rest of his leg by only a few nerves and muscle. Aikins wasn't prepared for a traumatic amputation, he wasn't sure he could cope with something like that. He desperately tried to recall what he'd been taught about traumatic amputations at the medics' school. He knew he would have to clamp the leg, put a tourniquet on it, straighten the leg and tape and bandage it in place. He also knew how painful that would be for the Prince, who was already in unbearable pain.

Typical of a traumatic amputation, Samuels' leg practically bled not at all. The hot shrapnel had “cauterized” the wound, and the shock had made the veins retract. Aikins filled a syringe with morphine. He knelt down and began to talk gently to the Prince, tried to soothe him, explain what he would have to do. At the same time he was thinking that the doctors would have to operate and did not like to do so if the man was under morphine. Aikins knew if he gave the Prince the shot now, it wouldn't take hold for another half hour or forty-five minutes. The dust-off helicopter would have evacuated the Prince and had him in the hospital by then. But Samuels was in such pain; he was screaming so terribly. Aikins gave him the shot.

The men over in the 3rd Platoon's area still did not know what had happened. Sergeant Webb had run through, pushing the men into their foxholes. They had remained still for a while, but now they wanted to know what had happened. Culpepper, cradling his M-16 in his arms, had crawled to the machine-gun pit and dropped down inside.

“Be quiet!” the men were told. “Hold it down!”

Culpepper heard for the first time the strange noise and did not know what it was. It wasn't screaming, exactly. It sounded more like a laugh. A very high-pitched laugh, and he asked, “What's going on?”

No one answered. They were all hearing it, too. It wasn't a scream of pain—at least, it didn't sound like any scream of pain anyone had ever heard. It was too high. Like a horror movie, Culpepper thought, except worse. He wondered whether somebody was kidding around. Perhaps the shell had hit so close the men in the 1st Platoon were making jokes. But the laugh suddenly changed pitch, and Culpepper, able now to identify the different sounds, could hear the men calling for medics, the groans of the wounded, and even before their 3rd Platoon's leader came to tell them, knew that the company had been hit and men hurt bad.

Aikins was kneeling on either side of the Prince's leg. The 1st Platoon's medic ran up. He had been directly under the shell and dazed, too. Each platoon had its own medic. Aikins was the medic for the headquarters section, and counting Lieutenant Bayliss, Charlie Company had five trained medics in all. “I'll work on the Prince,” Aikins told the 1st Platoon medic. “You go check on the others, and when you're through, come on back.”

Captain Cameron was relieved to see that his men had responded properly as soon as the shell hit. The platoon leaders and platoon sergeants had seen that the men had taken cover in their foxholes. The only people in the open, other than the medics, were the young lieutenants who were moving among their men, calming them down, assuring them it wasn't an attack, that they had taken a short round and the artillery had ceased firing. Cameron moved to Samuels to see if he could help.

Cameron hated seeing the Prince wounded. It could be pouring down rain, the company had not received any hot meals or mail for three or four days, Samuels would have been assigned some dirty detail, and still he would smile and tell Cameron, “Fetch my chariot! The Prince must be off!” When a company had someone who could make light of the worst in Vietnam, Cameron believed that man worth his weight in gold. Cameron knelt beside Samuels and spoke to him, tried to comfort him. Aikins said, “Goddamn it, hold him down!”

Samuels was trying to push himself up to see his leg, and Aikins didn't want him to look. He had not known it was Captain Cameron who had knelt beside him. Cameron took Samuels' shoulders and gently eased him back.

Aikins couldn't tell whether the blackness of Samuels' leg was dirt, dried blood or burn. He had clamped the upper thigh, and there was nothing left to do but straighten out the leg. Slowly, carefully, the medic slid his fingers underneath the Prince's calf and gently moved the leg forward.

Samuels screamed again.

“I know it hurts, Prince,” Aikins said. “It can't be helped. Don't you worry. You'll be all right. I've just got to straighten out your leg. It's almost there … just a little more.…
There!
” Aikins reached inside his bag for some tape.

“Anything I can do, Doc?” Kleeman asked. He was one of Samuels' friends from the 1st Platoon.

“Yeah, Kleeman, good,” Aikins said. “You hold the tourniquet, and keep it tight.”

“Right,” Kleeman said, “Howya doing, Prince?” he asked, giving the tourniquet a twist.

Samuels howled with pain, “Goddamn you, Kleeman! Not so tight!”

“Got to,” Kleeman said. “The Prince must not bleed.”

Samuels' head fell back. He felt himself slipping into shock and, opening his eyes to fight it, found himself focusing on the 1st Platoon medic working on Leroy Hamilton less than a foot away.
“Hamilton?”
the Prince whispered.

“Don't worry about him,” Cameron said. “I'm going to see how he is, myself.” As Cameron rose, his place was taken by Chaplain Duigood.

Cameron came to Specialist Fourth Class Ivy, the 1st Platoon leader's radio operator. Ivy had suffered a massive wound in his back and lesser wounds on each hip. A medic had already stripped Ivy down and rolled him over onto his stomach. “Ivy,” Cameron asked, “are you all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Ivy said. “I'm okay.”

Cameron looked at him in disbelief. The hole in Ivy's back was large enough for Cameron to have pushed his fist through. Ivy's rib cage showed, a portion of his spine and intestine had been bared, and yet Ivy was absolutely coherent. He wasn't moaning, crying at all. “I'll be all right, sir,” Ivy said, twisting slightly to see the captain's face. “You go ahead, and take care of everybody else.”

Leroy Hamilton had suffered the worst wound of all. He had been torn open from his left armpit down to his hip. He was alive, but unconscious, and a medic was trying hard to bring him around. The shell must have exploded just behind Hamilton. The impact had blown him out of the foxhole and left his legs completely untouched. As the medic attempted to cover Hamilton's wound with a dressing, part of his intestine spilled out onto the ground.

Samuels was asking Aikins how bad his wound was. “Will I be able to walk?”

“Sure, Prince. You'll be okay,” Aikins said. “I won't kid you, it's bad. But you'll be able to walk again.” Aikins knew Samuels would lose his leg, but he lied to prevent him from going into shock.

Samuels was biting his lip to keep from screaming while Aikins taped his leg. “There's just one more thing, Doc,” he said.

“Yeah? What's that?” Aikins had done everything he could for Samuels, and he straightened up.

“Will I be able to waltz?”

“Waltz?” Aikins laughed. “Sure, Prince, you'll be up and around in time for the coronation ball.”

“Hey, Doc?”

Aikins felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Captain Cameron was leaning over him. “You'd better take a look at Leroy Hamilton. He's hurt real bad.”

Samuels twisted to look. The medics were still hard at work on Hamilton, and the awfulness of Hamilton's wound and the realization that if the shell had hit five minutes earlier instead of Hamilton in the foxhole it would have been himself combined to cause Samuels such terrible anguish and grief that he had to look away.

Hamilton was now on his back. His eyes were open, but when Aikins touched his arm, he felt that Hamilton's body was already cold. Aikins didn't understand how that could happen so fast. Shock? Loss of blood?

“Abe,” the 1st Platoon medic was saying, “I think I'm still getting a slight pulse.”

Aikins moved his fingertips to Leroy Hamilton's neck. He tried to find a pulse, too. If there was one, it was too faint for Aikins to detect. “Well, try mouth-to-mouth on him again,” Aikins told the medic. He didn't think there was much that anyone could do. As the medic tried breathing air into Hamilton's lungs, Aikins placed more bandages on the wound. But the wound was so huge, he didn't see how Hamilton could survive. “Keep working on him,” Aikins said. “Maybe you can bring him around.”

“Doc,” someone else said. “Mullen's been hurt, too.”

At first no one had known about Michael. Only Polk had realized Michael had been wounded, but Polk had been too sick to talk. The others had thought Michael was sleeping since he hadn't moved. Aikins grabbed his flashlight and hurried over to Michael Mullen's sleeping position. Another medic had already pulled up Michael's shirt to expose the wound. Aikins could see where a tiny crescent-shaped piece of shrapnel had cut through Michael's back and entered his heart. His body was still warm, and Aikins wasn't sure, but in the dim glow of his flashlight, it appeared Michael might still be breathing. He laid a clean dressing across Michael's wound and rolled him over onto his back. There was no exit wound, and Aikins tried giving Michael mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He kept working over Michael for a few minutes, then straightened up and felt for a pulse. There was none.

Aikins applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation again and kept at it. Michael wouldn't breathe, and Aikins still couldn't find any pulse. He saw that the, 1st Platoon medic was still working on Hamilton, heard the medic tell Captain Cameron, “I don't think he's going to make it. I'm not getting a pulse anymore.”