Barry Sadler: The Eternal Mercenary

Nha Trang, Vietnam, 1970…

A flight of three Dust Off Med Evac helicopters was bringing in the remnants of an infantry platoon that had been ambushed a little south of Nui Ba Den two hours before. The Cong had really ripped their ass on this one, but had screwed up by hanging around a little too long-long enough to get caught between a unit of the First Cav and a company of South Korean Rangers. The copters were bringing out the broken and dying humanity that had been the American platoon; the dead and wounded Cong were left to become part of the mud.

Such are the benefits of a modern nation's technology: the Americans were even now being placed in an air-conditioned hospital clearing room at Nha Trang where rosy-cheeked young nurses could tell them how brave they were and how proud they made the free world with their noble sacrifices. (And on occasion the nurses might sacrifice a little of themselves by sleeping with such wounded heroes-but only, of course, if they were officers…)

Colonel Robert Landries, tall and ascetic looking, the senior surgeon of the Eighth Field Hospital, personally supervised the sorting of the wounded by the degree of severity. He was assisted in this humane endeavor by Major Julius Goldman. The two directed which men would receive immediate treatment and which would have to wait-or take second best from some of the orderlies.

Goldman was examining one of the head wound casualties when he stopped suddenly, straightened up, shook his head as if confused, and called to Colonel Landries.

"Colonel, you better come over here and confirm what I'm looking at-or get ready to put me in the rubber room."

Landries swore at him. "I have been ready to do that ever since you were assigned to this unit, but I'll look."

Landries made his way over to Goldman, stopping occasionally to give instructions about the disposition of a particular patient, or to answer a question from one of the braless nurses. (The heat made bras develop a rash, so Landries had authorized the only braless uniform in Indochina.)

"All right, Goldman, what the hell are you mumbling about now? Have you finally pickled your brain with specimen alcohol?"

Goldman nodded, consternation written across his face. "I hope that's all there is to it, Colonel. At least it would explain this." He indicated the prone figure lying before them.

The casualty was a stocky, powerfully built man, not unusual as human beings go. What was unusual about him was the wound. According to all the known laws of medicine he had no right to be living.

Around the corners of the battle dressing on the left side of his head the brain itself could be seen. Protruding from the exposed brain was a piece of shrapnel, a shiny sliver of Russian steel about a quarter of an inch in diameter sunk to an unknown depth in the exposed vital organ. The open area of the brain was about four inches long and three inches wide and ran up to where the part in a man's hair would normally be. This section of the skull had just simply been blown away; an adjoining section was held on by a flap of skin. A Chinese-made 60-mm mortar, firing Russian ammo, had obviously scored a direct hit.

Landries bent over to take a closer look at the wound and the shrapnel. Blood covered the man's face and the tails of the battle dressing holding the bandage to his head. Landries squinted, looked closer, took out his glasses, and looked again.

"My God!" he exclaimed, face paling, as he turned to Goldman. "What…?"

Both men turned their attention to the exposed brain.

A wound like that, in the incubator climate of Vietnam, meant almost certain death, or, at the very least, that the man would be a vegetable if he lived. But…

This wound was different. God, how different!

Slowly, but surely, as the two surgeons watched in disbelief, the open wound was taking steps to protect itself. The slender piece of shrapnel was being isolated and encapsulated by what appeared to be the same kind of calcification process that isolates TB bacilli in the lungs. For TB, it was known as a ghom complex, but what the hell this was was something else. The dura mater, pia mater-the meninges-protective coverings for the brain and spinal cord, were making slow butvisible progress growing back over the exposed regions of the brain.

Visible…Good God! Landries turned to Goldman.

"Get this man prepped and into surgery immediately." His voice rose to a piercing shriek. "Move! Get X-rays of every centimetre of this man from every angle-and do it now!"

The nurses and orderlies jumped at the commands, but Landrie's voice still followed them: "I want blood work. I want urology and hemoglobin. I want every damned test this place can make-and some it can't. Move, you slugs! If this man dies I will transfer every one of you to the paratroops and send you fine young ladies to clean open sores at a leper colony. Move, damn it, move!"

He turned to Goldman.

"Goldman, you found him-so you can stay with him every second of every hour until I can personally relieve you."

The major nodded and followed after the wounded man, telling the aides to get an IV started. He ordered the nurses to get the man cleaned up and into isolation, told them he wanted sterile technique to be observed, that if any of them contaminated any of the specimens taken from this man there would be hell to pay.

They took the soldier quickly to a bed in the isolation room of the hospital. The only other patient in the room was an elderly Viet farmer in the final stages of a bout with typhus, no longer contagious, so Goldman had the orderlies throw him out with a gift of fifty American dollars. The sudden windfall delighted the old man, and he quickly grabbed his few meager belongings and sprinted out the door like an Olympic hurdle-jumper as if he feared these crazy Americans would change their minds and take the money back. He went through the main gate so fast the A. P. standing guard shook his head in wonder at the old timer's agility.

As the nurses and orderlies stripped the wounded man, Goldman called for an IV of sterile saline to be startedstat. For the first time he now looked at the man's dog tags to check his blood type. O positive. No problem there. The most common type of blood. Vital signs were next. The man's temperature was 97.9-almost a degree lower than normal. It shouldn't be lower than normal; he should be running a fever. Respiration: 18 to the minute. A little rapid, but not bad. Pulse: slightly faster than normal. Blood pressure: 140 over 90. Normal.

But there was nothing normal about this; nothing about the wounded man was as it should be…

Goldman left, taking the man's dog tags and wound tag. Again he read the legend on the dog tags: "CASEY ROMAIN-TYPE O-POSPROTESTANT." It told him nothing about who the man was. He stopped by his chief orderly's office to drop off the wound tag.

"Get this man's medical records in here ASAP and tell the commanding officer of his company to get me his 201 file. Also, I want all information on his personal history and background. And have it for me by tomorrow afternoon."

The chief orderly had a bland look in his eyes, so Goldman went on:

"Sergeant Ferguson, you have been bragging about how you talked your way into a cherry assignment here. I am not particularly fond of your ass anyway, so I am going to tell you that if you don't have that info for me by tomorrow I have just the place for you. There is a Special Forces camp on the Laos border that has lost its last three medics from KIAs in the last month, and it looks like the shit is really going to hit the fan there. If you don't deliver that information for me, you will find yourself reassigned as their Temporary Medical Specialist by 0800 hours day after tomorrow and on your way to join the Green Berets by noon. Goodbye, Sergeant."