Читать книгу Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally - Gus Kappler MD - Страница 15

Map of Indochina

The next day, I flew in a crowded C-130 sitting on the deck covered with steel plates to adsorb bullets and fragments and slid into the anxious grunts in front of me as the plane suddenly dipped and dove into Phu Bai Airport to avoid enemy fire while landing. I do not know who I pissed off, but as far as hospital locations went, Phu Bai was the armpit of Vietnam. A ghastly sign announcing, “Welcome to Phu Bai”, greeted me. I was now about halfway between Da Nang and Hue, up north near the division between North and South Vietnam, on the east coast not far from the South China Sea in the army’s designated I Corps.

A short, dusty jeep drive deposited me in a barren, dry, dirty, hot, ramshackle space of plywood shanties on two-foot stilts with corrugated metal roofs held in place with sandbags. The stilts were to prevent flooding during the monsoon season. Wow. I was depressed, lonely, confused, sweaty, and suffering culture shock. I had been somewhat excited about the adventure aspect of going to Vietnam, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was awake from this nightmare. I would spend a year here at the 85th Evacuation Hospital.

After walking and struggling with my gear into the center of this purgatory, a savior-like vision appeared. Roger King, a fellow resident from MCV, one year my senior in the program, greeted me with a big smile and promised that everything would be all right.

I was directed to my new home, a dusty hooch near the ammunition dump. That night as I prepared to attempt sleep, the emotion of it all overcame my reserve, and at age thirty, I cried like a baby.