Shawn Inmon - The Vigilante Life of Scott McKenzie

The number of those “killed in action” had peaked in 1968 and had fallen substantially by the time Scott first put his boots on the steamy, muddy ground of Southeast Asia. Declining death tolls or not, American soldiers, especially poor and black American soldiers, were still dying there every day.

Scott had always been a fast learner. Within the first few months in country, he learned that even with the might of the U.S. military behind them, this was a frustrating and nearly impossible war to wage. They were fighting an enemy that appeared then faded back into the jungle at will. He also learned that those above the rank of Sergeant often risked the lives of their men based on orders from those higher up, without asking questions. More than anything, he learned there was a brotherhood with his fellow grunts. They believed they had the guy on their left and the guy on their right, and that was all they needed.

Each of them had been plucked from their homes and dropped into an unknowable war zone ten thousand miles away. They lived in constantly shifting, temporary conditions, and all knew that they were not guaranteed another sunrise. They had no one but each other to rely on, so that’s what they did.

In April 1970, just a few weeks after being deployed, Scott was part of an advance patrol, walking along the razor’s edge between rice fields and jungle. All was quiet, which was rarely a good sign. Scott never saw the soldier whose shot hit him just above the right collarbone. He was jerked around by the impact and was hit twice more before he could manage to fall to the ground. His M16 went one way, his helmet another. He crumpled like a string-cut marionette.

Around him, the chaos of a brief but intense firefight reigned. Scott felt removed from it. He lay mostly on his back, blinked up at gray skies and felt warm drops of rain hit his face. An explosion of pain raced through him and destroyed his ability to think. He gasped for breath, but couldn’t get oxygen into his lungs.

I thought if I got hit, I would be numb. Goddamn, this hurts.

He blinked the raindrops away, which were mixing with his own tears.

I don’t want to die.

Scott McKenzie laid in the mud and muck and waited to see if he would live.

The ambush ended as quickly as it had begun. After one final burst of smoke and gunfire, quiet settled in. Seconds later, Private First Class Bruce Teller leaned over him.

Of course. The one guy I had an argument with. Sorry, Teller. I didn’t mean it when I called you an SOB during that card game.

Teller pulled out his knife and cut Scott’s shirt off. A year earlier, Teller had been driving a forklift in a warehouse, now he was doing field triage.

He leaned into Scott’s face. “It’s okay, brother. You’re hit, but you’re going to be okay. We’ll get you out of here. Congratulations. You got your ticket out of this shithole.” He pulled two doses of morphine out of his kit and jabbed them into the fleshy part of Scott’s arm.

Tears leaked from the corners of Scott’s eyes.

Brother. Thank you, brother. I don’t want to die.

They were less than a mile from their encampment, so Teller and Jepson stood guard over Scott while Abramson and Sawyer ran back to get a medic and a litter. Two other men in the patrol had been hit, but there was no need to hurry, not for morphine or a medic. They would only need stretchers to return their bodies.

While Jepson stood watch, Teller pulled the dead men close to Scott. Their race was over and they both looked peaceful in death. One man’s glassy eyes stared straight at Scott.

The field medic arrived and dusted him with powder designed to keep infection at bay and dosed him again with morphine. At that moment, as shot up and ragged as he was, he felt fine. Ninety minutes later, Scott was back in camp.

Teller’s words cycled through his brain over and over.

Congratulations. You got your ticket out of this shithole.

The moment the bullets tore into and through Scott’s body, he started on a nightmare journey that lasted longer than he could have imagined. In many ways, it was a journey that began in this lifetime and finished in another.

First lying in the muck, and then later, while being treated back at camp, he focused on the idea that he was done. He had survived. His experience in the Vietnam War had been brief, but the echoes would last for many lifetimes.

Scott’s journey started on a stretcher, then moved to a small riverboat, which picked up half a dozen other wounded men while they floated downstream to a landing zone. There, he was picked up by a Huey medical evacuation helicopter. Many areas of the U.S. military operated inefficiently in Vietnam. Two areas where it excelled were moving fresh bodies in the front door while dropping the wounded men onto an assembly line out the back door.

The Huey dropped into a tent hospital in Da Nang, where Scott was finally looked at by a doctor. The surgical team talked about Scott like he wasn’t there. The first doctor who looked at him said, “This one’s not going back out there. Get him into surgery.”

An unseen hand placed a mask over Scott’s face.

Mercifully, he was finally out.

When he came to, many hours later, he was once again on a Huey, this time being flown to rendezvous with the USS Sanctuary. The Sanctuary was a floating hospital, filled with a minimal crew, wounded men, and a medical staff charged with keeping the men alive during the voyage.

The trip from South Vietnam to the USA took fourteen days. Rough seas added seasickness to the ghastly wounds many men had suffered. Despite the efforts of the staff, blood and vomit pooled underfoot. The smell was so bad that Scott longed for the funk of living in a tent with a dozen unwashed men.

For fourteen days, Scott told himself that he just had to hang on. As soon as they got to port, he was sure life would be better.

This showed both Scott’s optimism, which hadn’t been completely beaten out of him yet, and his penchant for being wrong.

Life would not be better for Scott McKenzie for much longer than the length of the voyage.

While he was still at sea, Scott received his Purple Heart, as did every wounded man on board. It was presented to him, then tucked away with his comb and toothbrush—his few remaining personal possessions.

The Sanctuary docked in San Francisco on May 1, 1969. It was exactly six months since he had sat in his grandparent’s living room and watched his birthday jump up as the first number called in the draft.

In San Francisco, he was transferred to a VA hospital. Aside from lacking the constant threat of seasickness, it was not an improvement over conditions on the Sanctuary . The doctors and nurses did their best to treat and rehabilitate the wounded men. It was a case of too many men wounded too badly, and too few medical professionals to properly deal with it all. The overall cleanliness of the hospital was subpar, and although they weren’t professional healers, the orderlies performed many of the medical duties. The orderlies were like any of the guys in the infantry—putting their time in, waiting to get back to their real lives. Of course, serving stateside, they had the advantage of not being shot at on a regular basis.

Scott was still in terrible condition when he arrived at the hospital. His wounds had become infected on the voyage, despite the best efforts of the nurses and doctors. There was some doubt as to whether he would pull through or not, as well as whether his damaged right leg could be saved. He did and it was, but the infection set his recovery back by six months.