Military Mishap

I was drafted in the spring of 1971.  After a few months of basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, we were bussed down to Fort Polk, Louisiana for advanced infantry training in July and August.  If anybody wants a cure for the heat and humidity of Virginia, just go to Louisiana in the summertime.  You could almost drink the air. The nickname of Fort Polk was “Little Vietnam”.  The troops came up with a different name, but it’s probably unprintable.  The wooden structures were so old that you had to start a coal fire in the boiler before you could have warm water.  We were training pretty hard in preparation to go to Vietnam.  It was fairly rugged training, but nothing too disastrous.  For a farm boy from Virginia, it was a little like a vacation (no post holes to dig, and they let me sleep until 5:30!  I was used to milking cows at 3 AM).

One day we were qualifying for the .45 pistol, and headed to the range.  I was the point guard, and my buddy Grassel was behind me as the flag bearer. The column of about 120 recruits was behind him.  We got to a creek that we always jumped when going to the different ranges.  It was about 5 feet wide and 4 feet deep when the weather was dry.  Normally it was an easy jump, but that day it had been pouring down rain like a cow peeing on a flat rock.  For about 50 or 60 feet in front of us, all we could see was water.  The whole field had flooded with that little creek going through the middle of it, and we couldn’t tell where the banks were.  I halted the column and asked the drill sergeant if we could go around it.  “Nope” he said.  “We gotta go over it”.  I looked at Grassel and we both laughed and took off through the new pond, splashing like water buffaloes.  I leapt where I thought the bank was, and my lead foot went down into the middle of the creek.  I crashed forward, slamming my head into the bank on the other side.  Normally it wouldn’t have been a problem, but my steel pot (helmet) started to come off in the middle of my fall, hitting the bank first.  The sharp rim split my right ear in half from front to back, all the way to the skull, making it bleed like crazy.  Grassel was pointing at my ear, laughing, and enjoying my having gotten hurt, so I said, “Look in a mirror before you laugh, Wise Guy!” I had noticed he was in a similar predicament, with blood pouring out of his mouth. He had tried to pole vault the creek using the flag staff, and the end of it went into the middle of the stream.  When he pitched forward, the steel tip went into his upper lip, cutting it pretty badly.

At that point I was soaking wet and it was about 90 to 100 degrees.  I hadn’t seen air conditioning in about 4 months; we’d been climatized to the high heat and humidity.  I was taken to a military emergency room where the temperature was apparently on the cadaver setting.  I was soaking wet and lying on a gurney without any blankets in a freezing cold room, almost ready to pray for death.  I was COLD!

After about 20 minutes of waiting I knew something was up, it just seemed like it was taking too long.  Then a major walked in, a short guy with a sour look on his face.  He had my paperwork in his hand as he walked over to look at my ear.  He shouted God’s name in vain and yelled, “You’re not going to sue me for facial disfigurement!”  He threw my paperwork onto the gurney next to mine, and stormed out.  I figured I was right, there WAS a problem: the doctor’s attitude. Very soon after that, a colonel walked in with a private beside him.  He glanced at my ear and quickly proclaimed, “Aw, that’s not so bad!”  He turned to the younger man and asked, “Son, do you want some practice, sewing this man up?”  “Yes Sir, yes Sir, and I’m going to do the drains too!” the recruit declared enthusiastically.  “I’ve got to do the drains, but you can sew him up.”  “Please let me do the drains; I know I can do it right!” the assistant begged.  “No, you sew his ear, but I’ll place the drains in” the colonel said firmly.  Sure enough, the private did a great job.  I don’t think the average person would even notice the scar now.  Attitude is a huge factor in a lot of life’s challenges, and if you’ve already quit before you get there (like the major did), you won’t win.  It’s probably a blessing that he didn’t sew me up, because the other guy did a fantastic job.