Constricted:
Tightened.
Perimeter:
Outer edge of
their position.
Shrapnel:
Shell fragments
from an explosive weapon.
Fire-team:
Squad of combat
soldiers.
Ambush-detonated:
Explosion that is triggered by
a nearby ambusher.
Corpsman:
Soldier trained in
giving medical treatment.
Dress:
Bandage.
Paddy:
Rice field.
face had been so peppered with shrapnel
that I hardly recognized him. Except for
his eyes. The fragments had somehow
missed his eyes. He was unconscious and
his eyes were half closed; two white slits in
a mass of raspberry red. Sanchez looked
as if he had been clawed by some invisible
beast. . . .
I slid down the embankment and
splashed over to where the corpsman,
Doc Kaiser, was working to save Corporal
Rodella. There were gauze and
com-
presses
all over his chest and abdomen.
One dressing, covering the hole the
shrapnel had torn in one of his lungs, was
soaked in blood. With each breath he
took, pink bubbles of blood formed and
burst around the hole. . . . I tried talking
to him, but he could not say anything
because his windpipe would fill with
blood. Rodella, who had been twice
wounded before, was now in danger of
drowning in his own blood. It was his eyes
that troubled me most. They were the
hurt, dumb eyes of a child who has been
severely beaten and does not know why. It
was his eyes and his silence and the
foamy blood and the gurgling, wheezing
sound in his chest that aroused in me a
sorrow so deep and a rage so strong that
I could not distinguish the one emotion
from the other.
I helped the corpsman carry Rodella to
the
landing zone.
His comrades were
around him, but he was alone. We could see the look of separation in
his eyes. He was alone in the world of the badly wounded, isolated by
a pain none could share with him and by the terror of the darkness
that was threatening to
envelop
him.
Then we got the last one, Corporal Greeley, a machine-gunner
whose left arm was hanging by a few strands of muscle; all the rest
was a scarlet mush. . . . Carrying him, I felt my own anger, a very cold,
160
Vietnam War: Primary Sources
Compresses:
A soft bandage
that is used to control
bleeding.
Landing zone:
An area that
can be used by aircraft to
land and take off.
Envelop:
Cover or bury.
A Helicopter Pilot Talks
about Evacuating
Wounded Soldiers
In
1966
Glenn
Munson
published a collection of letters written
by American soldiers who served in
Vietnam. This book,
Letters from Vietnam,
included the following letter written by
airman Glen Kemak to his family:
It’s no fun carrying 50 or 60 guys
who are laid out on a stretcher moaning
and crying and bleeding all over the
place. It’s a good thing that I am not
home now, after all the bad stuff that
I’ve seen over here. If anyone ever
started talking about our position in
Vietnam, and burning their draft cards,
and all these protest marches—I swear I
would kill him.
