You’re Going Home, Dude

A minor wound, a one-way ticket out of Vietnam, and a few strange detours to first class

I arrived by helicopter at the 91st Evacuation Hospital, Chu Lai, Vietnam in late May 1968. I had a minor ding that required surgery. The draftee surgeon, a Capt. Caputo from Chicago, advised me the hospital’s operating room had yet to be certified sterile. Without that certification there would be no surgery. Dr. Caputo continued, “This is an evacuation hospital, lieutenant. I can’t send you to one of the hospitals across the road. I must send you to Japan.”

I remember thinking: How cool is that?  Wonder if I’ll have time to buy a camera or get some stereo gear?

I had been in Nam exactly ten months. I figured I would go to Japan, have a twenty-minute surgery, stay a couple days and then di di mau (Vietnamese for go quickly) back to the Jolly Green Jungle.

photo by Khanh Nguyen

Dr. Caputo’s face countenanced disbelief. “You don’t get it do you, lieutenant? Uncle Sam’s regulations say a soldier’s Vietnam tour is complete when he has served ten months and five days. By the time you have surgery and a few days recovery, you’re done. You’ve got a one-way ticket out of Nam. You’re going home, dude.”  

Try to imagine and sense a free fall before a parachute opens or a jump from a high dive before you hit the water. That would be close, but I was as stunned as if Muhammad Ali decked me. Home? Yesterday I was burning leeches off my body and trying to sleep in holes filling with water, eating “ham and mother f’ers” too often because officers chose c-ration meals last. 

The c-ration meal, ham and lima beans set a new and disgusting low in gastronomy. Nobody wanted to eat that foul substitute for food. It was terrible, especially when eaten cold. 

That chapter of my life was closing with the suddenness and shock of the sound of a screen door slamming shut on a hot and stormy Kansas afternoon. 

Surgery was performed on my fifth day at the 249th General Hospital, Camp Drake, Japan. I was now “magic” — my tour was complete.

Six or seven months before, my platoon was on patrol southwest of Da Nang. Nothing much was happening. My recollection is we had stopped for lunch. We observed three C-123 cargo planes flying in a Vee formation a mile or more upwind. They were spraying defoliant that I later learned was Agent Orange. Minutes after seeing them, my mouth had a chemical taste like the smell of gasoline or lighter fluid. Everyone complained about it. I radioed battalion and was assured: “Don't worry! You could drink a gallon of that stuff, and it wouldn’t hurt you.” 

Right! Now we have a Fourth lie to add to the most famous lies trilogy, right after, “check’s in the mail,” or “I’m from the IRS and I’m here to help you,” and of course, the most notorious one having something to do with your mouth.

Two days before I was to catch the Freedom Bird back to the World at Tachikawa Air Force Base, I awoke and discovered I had grown, virtually overnight, a chin annex. I looked like Peter Pelican with a full beak according to a ward mate.

My role switched from ex-target to lab rat. Now, the draftee doctors who were earning their specialty stripes lined up at my bed and searched their medical menus for any test or procedure they might have missed during their residencies that they would now like to inflict on my convenient body. 

Surgeons removed the intruder and I remained at the hospital until early August cooling my jets. 

Japan was the Disneyland of my Twenties. I was raised in St. Louis but was unprepared for Tokyo’s vastness and bustle; the energy was astonishing — like New York City on a sugar high. 

The national rail system in Japan is as efficient as a Swiss clock. I went by train with a group of patients on a day trip to Tokyo’s famous Ginza District where we paid ten cents to sit and watch Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft do their thing in The Graduate. The locals watched while standing in the aisles. They paid three cents. 

The movie soundtrack was in English with Japanese ideograms on the screen’s right side, read top to bottom. The actors recited their punch lines and the English-speaking audience — that being yours truly and about eight ex-walking wounded, immediately laughed.

Japanese heads bobbed as they read and seconds later, like thunder following lightening on a hot summer’s night, the Japanese audience laughed in a low gargled rumble: “Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho,” which listening to was almost as funny as the movie. Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson!

August 8, 1968, was my departure date. I arrived for my flight hours early. I had no uniform. When my empty duffel bag arrived at the hospital, my uniform and the civilian clothes I bought in Hong Kong while on R & R, my penny loafers, and the Russian-made watch that I’d taken as a war souvenir/trophy were gone — stolen. 

I cobbled together a uniform from the lost and found closet consisting of a set of khakis with short sleeves and the trousers about two inches short. The blouse’s arms were scarred where sergeant’s stripes once called home. My jungle boots were weathered, meaning they looked like crap — devoid of color. I bought the basics of uniform branch and rank insignia at the Hospital PX. I was nowhere close to guard-duty supernumerary standards. I got a couple “looks” from several field grade officers assessing the sorry state of my appearance, but what were they going to do, send me to Vietnam? 

The Officers’ Club was adjacent to the airport. I didn’t know slot machines were allowed on post. I mused Uncle Sugar must have mellowed to condone gambling.

I am on the fence about Karma. On this day, however, I’m convinced the planets converged and two significant life events occurred. 

First, as I walked toward the restaurant for a sandwich, about one-third way I paused as if someone tapped me on the shoulder. The middle slot machine called to me like the Sirens beckoning Odysseus to their shores. The amount you could lose on a single crank of the bandit’s one arm ranged from a penny to a quarter for high rollers.

Being flush with twelve months’ pay I risked a quarter. I took it from my pocket and put it in the gash where the money goes. The wheels turned and the lights flashed. One bar… two bars … three bars. I won $300.00! If this was an omen about the future, then, fasten your seatbelts boys and girls, because it is going to be a fun ride.

The other significant thing occurring that day I would not realize for thirty years when my daughter announced she was getting married. Her future husband, now my talented artist son-in-law, was born that same magical day.

A thirteen-hour sardine-like packed Braniff Airways 707 flight deposited me at Travis Air Force Base, California. Many of us hopped a shuttle to San Francisco International Airport to continue our homeward journeys. I got a “military standby” ticket on TWA non-stop to its hub in St. Louis and was put in first class. It cost sixty dollars. Today you can’t check your bags for that price.            

The stewardess asked. “Coming home from Vietnam, lieutenant?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“What would you like to drink?”
“Everything!”

Five hours later, sporting my new kiddie flight wings the stewardesses awarded me, and I doubt it was for good behavior, I ambled into the main terminal building of Lambert St. Louis Field. Thankfully, I wasn’t driving. 

My parents were there to greet me. We stopped for dinner. The waitress took drink orders and cheerfully said, “Tonight’s special is ham and lima beans.”

Having left tact in my other lifetime, I blurted out. “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me, lady.”

Michael Hennessy