Today is the 25th anniversary of the day I was wounded in Vietnam. You never actually believe it’s going to happen to you, and even as the force of the explosion lifted me off of my feet and hurled me through the air, I refused to accept the fact that my turn had finally arrived. The initial flash of pain in my left side was excruciating, but by the time I had belly-flopped back to earth, it was nothing more than a dull ache.
Then, just when I had convinced myself that I wasn’t dead and everything was probably going to be okay, my whole lower back went on fire, as if someone was branding me with a red-hot metal poker. I reached around and desperately tried to pound out the flame. When I brought my hand back up in front of my eyes, the sight of my own bright red blood terrified me.
I struggled to my knees and like a dog chasing his own tail, I spun around and unsuccessfully tried to see how bad I had been hit.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, my squad leader hurled the full force of his muscular shoulder into my chest, the way gung-ho football players do to blocking dummies in practice. The solid blow flattened me, and he screamed, “Stay down!”
The words were barely out of his mouth when another half-dozen or so rocket propelled grenades exploded into the nearby ground and filled the air with more flying dirt and deadly shrapnel. Then the L-shaped ambush we had walked into began with deadly earnest. The heart-stopping sound of AK-47 automatic weapons fire seemed to be coming from every direction, followed shortly by the unfamiliar whistling sounds of larger enemy rockets which began raining down and violently shaking the earth I was clutching. My whole body shook and vibrated as my squad leader and I burrowed deeper into the loose, wet soil and held our steel pots tightly to our heads. As I laid there next to him listening to the screams and pleas of other members of my 30-man aero-rifle platoon, a hundred thoughts seemed to race through my head, but the only one I really remember is silently asking God not to let me die half-a-world away from home.
Last night, as I sat out in the calm and safety of my own backyard patio, I was surprised at how many details I could still recall from that long ago day near a little Vietnamese village called Lai Khe. I remembered how thick and oxygen-starved the air was that afternoon; how concerned my Audie Murphy look-alike squad leader was just before we made contact; how everyone seemed to be straining their eyes and ears more than usual for a clue to our fate as we cautiously made our way to a downed helicopter; and how all the smells of that day’s fighting and dying were still locked inside my nostrils when I finally awoke from surgery in a place called Long Binh the next morning.
“You want to play the winner, Dad?” asked my oldest son as he and one of his brothers suddenly started up a table tennis match right next to me on the patio.
“Not right now,” I answered, still lost in my faraway memories but grateful for the company.
As I watched them begin leisurely bouncing a yellow ping-pong ball back and forth, I reluctantly reminded myself of history’s saddest lesson, that there has always been another stupid war for young men to go off and fight and die in, and I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of similar craziness awaits their generation. Would they, like my grandfather, be needed in a war that was supposed to end all wars; or would they, like my father, have to help civilized people everywhere get rid of another monster like Adolph Hitler; or would they, like me, somehow find themselves with a rifle in their hands humping around in a distant jungle without a clue about why they had been sent there?
“So, Dad, you going to play the winner or not?” asked my oldest son, sensing that he was just about to finish slaughtering his younger brother.
“Okay, I’ll play the lucky winner,” I said to my smiling son, fully aware of the fact that for exactly 25 years today, that person has been me.