Short-timer
AFVN poured Lennon’s My Sweet Lord
then Joplin’s Me and Bobbie Mcgee
into everyone's headsets,
counterpoint to the heavy wump-wumping
the bird’s main rotor throbbed through their bodies.
That morning’s LZ had been especially hot,
with multiple casualties on insertion
and fuselage damage on extraction.
Now smooth grooves brought them home safely
in the cool clean air of 1500 feet.
One week and a wakeup short,
the door gunner felt alive, a bit goofy,
hugging the hog that hadn’t jammed once,
brass rolling to and fro at his feet,
some out the door to the green below.
What the fuck, he thinks,
pop some smoke, have some fun.
He pulls the pin and tosses the can forward,
sudden noxious red haze filling the cockpit
blinding everyone, turning all sideways.
The TOC lost them half-way across the Mekong,
found them from the air twenty minutes later,
nose stuck in the river bank and the rest of everything
scattered 100 yards or more.
Everyone aboard got a Purple Heart, even the gunner,
and their mothers all got Gold Stars.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Giofredda
Giofredda was young, just fourteen
the first time he went to the needle,
other Worcester kids his age
still putting baseball cards
in the spokes of their bicycle wheels.
Nam was a blessing,
best H he ever scored, paid for
exchanging greenbacks for MPC
in the alley behind the Hollywood Bar,
AWOL with his mama-san down
in Can Tho most nights,
never getting caught.
Rotating back to the World was tough.
no quality, no quantity he could afford
laying carpet this month,
taking down trees the month before.
Met him in a bar one night,
just reconnecting.
Lots of small talk, memories,
a few laughs, until he glanced nervously
around the room, leaned in closely
and asked me, with sorry hope in his eyes,
You got anything?
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Basic
Nearly half the platoon were dropouts,
or at least borderline illiterates
from the deep south,
but we also had a registered pharmacist,
a guy with a law degree
and one drafted out of seminary.
Didn't matter.
In '69 everyone was fodder,
and everyone got the same training.
How to pack a sucking chest wound,
how to clear a jam,
assuming the front leaning rest position,
and my favorite,
the proper response
to a nuclear attack:
If you survive the blast,
dig a foxhole,
cover yourself with your poncho
and maintain combat readiness.
With a subscription to Popular Science
since fourth grade,
I didn't have the heart to tell them.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
The Wall
I sought one name,
finally found it,
felt it etched among
thousands more, the first one
I knew, read in the paper
one summer morning
years earlier,
before I went over.
Do the others here
know his parents owned
a floral shop?
that he broke his arm
in fourth grade
and used to chase me with his cast
in the playground,
kept Playboy centerfolds
hidden in his seventh grade spelling book
and once hit thirty straight free throws
in high school?
Might have eventually gone on to college,
grown a family--
or maybe just spent the rest of his years
helping his parents in their floral shop?
Did he know the day
that he moved the bike
the cute little kid
had leaned against his truck
that he was tripping a booby trap,
ending his everything
before it ever began?
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Veterans' Cemetery
All things considered,
it turned out to be a beautiful day.
The night's rain had stopped, and
the blanket of clouds partly peeled back,
opening some blue sky like opening a door.
The minister quoted from Thessalonians
We who are alive, who are left, will be caught up
together with them in the clouds,
and everyone at the well-attended ceremony
felt a little better, thinking this wasn't so much
a loss, but more a long-term investment,
sure to pay heavenly dividends in the future.
They all stayed a bit longer now, visiting,
thanking the minister for his beautiful words,
while just out of sight over the rise,
parked respectfully between rows of other plots,
a guy on a big yellow back hoe
shook a Winston to his lips with one hand
while gripping the wheel with the other,
hoping they would get a move on,
thinking how much easier it would be to dig
the first of four more graves today
while the ground was still a bit wet and soft.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
His Prowess Confirmed
Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt. He only lived but till he was a man,
the which no sooner had his prowess confirmed in the unshrinking station where he fought,
but like a man he died.
(Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8)
Three hots and a cot,
that's all Master Sergeant Reynolds needed,
and all he ever wanted was his unfiltered Camels
and anything by Louis L’Amour in the latest USO package.
Twenty-year men, men like him,
men of the brown shoe Army,
didn’t understand flag burnings,
sideburns below the tragus,
let alone hair to the shoulders.
They understood John Wayne,
love it or leave it, cracking hippie heads,
flags flying from the front porch
on the Fourth of July, Memorial Day
and any other day they damn well pleased.
He signed on the dotted line the same day
the Japs signed their surrender
aboard the Missouri, surrounded
by victorious Americans in their dress whites,
and showed that famous photo to his sons
whenever he could corner them.
When the older one enlisted
right out of high school and
ended up in the A Shau Valley,
he worried a bit, like any father would.
When the boy came home in a box
he had a helluva time getting his wife
and angry younger son to understand
the pride he felt when he held that folded flag.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Non-Combat
We called him Preach.
Didn't mean anything--
like I was Jersey and
another guy was Dago.
His dog tags read O-Neg, so he'd get trippy,
go through the hootch saying
I'm one of the Lord's universal donors!
He was just up in his rack that night,
leafing through his King James.
Bama was at the other end of the hootch,
playing with his prized AK.
The accidental discharge caught him
dead center, as if aimed.
While Doc tried to pack the wound,
he bled out on the plywood floor,
and all I thought was Damn,
all the lives that O-Neg might have saved.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
KIA
Even Goodwill
didn't want the stuff--
well maybe the boxes of books
by the scarred desk
where he used to try
to write things down
when he couldn't sleep.
The boots in the corner
with the cotton duck uppers
hadn't been shined or worn
in fifty years.
His dress greens always hung in the closet,
except when he'd put them on
to stand in front of the long mirror
on the back of the bathroom door,
almost proud.
His field jacket, faded by tropical sun
and too many laundromats
lay tossed in another corner,
and if you looked under his bed
you'd find the empty Dutch Masters box
where he'd kept the gun he used.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Troop Morale Was Important
to our new battalion commander,
so his first two weeks in-country
he had a half-mile loop measured
inside our perimeter, and offered
a certificate and a handshake to anyone
logging 100 miles on this loop.
As hot as it got during the day,
he advised us to not run at night,
lest a sentry mistake us for the enemy,
friendly fire deaths being bad for morale
and even worse for his record of command.
Night was for other things.
The bakers worked at night so the troops
would have fresh bread and pastries the next day,
which always boosted morale,
and graves registration unloaded body bags at night,
because doing so during daylight, when everyone could see,
was very bad for morale.
One of the bakers used to slip away from the mess hall
at night and help unload the bodies,
and for a tray of fresh cookies
they’d let him unzip some bags
and peek inside.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
90th Replacement Battalion
At Long Binh they herded us under an enormous tent,
our fatigues still factory green and fresh.
A bored young lieutenant read aloud our names and destinations,
detached, droning through static as if listing Amtrak departures.
One by one we moved outside to stand in sucking mud,
facing labeled posts, our lines slowly growing, snaking
across the compound, our lungs struggling
with the wet heat and smell of burning shit,
our shoulders drooping from the weight of the weather,
the barked orders and our own secret fears,
heavier than the weapons, packs
and flak jackets we’d soon be issued.
My post read Can Tho, wherever that was.
A kid from Ohio who’d sat next to me on the plane
said goodbye and slogged to the line for Chu Lai.
A pimply kid in a uniform bagging at his every angle
said Excuse me, passing before me bound for Anh Khe,
mumbling Gawd, I thought Missouri was hot.
Some white, some black, some brown. Some tall and lean,
others short and squat, all far too young,
able to go days without shaving, already missing mothers
and other things back home.
From Detroit, LA or East Jabip
to Vinh Long, Da Nang, Khe Sanh.
I never learned those men’s names or saw any of them again,
always just thought of them as places on a map,
some worse than others, like some places back home.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
Ernie
Ernie was just a good ole boy,
big LSU fan, always talking about Billy Cannon,
with an aw shucks cowlick
and easy going way that belied
what he’d already seen over there,
what showed in his eyes when things got quiet.
My first night in-country
Spooky was working our perimeter,
miniguns sounding like God belching,
a torrent of fire lighting up the sky east of us.
I jumped. Ernie said, “Don’t worry,
that’s us,”
taught me the nuanced difference
between incoming and outgoing
and calmed me through my first mortar attack.
“No need to run to the bunker, you’ll
probably just trip over something in the dark
and get a Purple Heart you can’t explain.”
He had pictures of all his brothers,
sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles
taped up in the hootch, under a framed
portrait of his ma and pa,
and when we inventoried his belongings
we all agreed we’d never heard him say
a mean word about no one.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Midair
In the shimmering late day distance the guy in the tower
saw them both coming fast, ready for final approach,
a rotary wing from Ca Mau and a fixed wing from up north,
both oblivious to one another in the slanting light.
Commo a bit wanting, Be aware he told the fixed wing,
you're stacked . . . over a Huey, then breaking up again.
The pilot dipped his port wing for a better look,
and the wing went right into the slick’s main rotor.
It was quick and final for all involved, even the tail rotor
boomeranging across the compound
faster than the spinning sound it sent before it
to decapitate a mama-san headed home
with her weeks’s wages and a box of Tide for her family--
even this took just another surreal second or two,
but the cleanup took hours, magnesium alloys
in the tail boom blazing like the surface of the sun,
doctors and other flight crews puffing hard on cheap cigars
to get past the smell of the burning bodies.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Purple Heart
Before the heavy echo of the blast had cleared
the medic saw the shredded mess of the private’s left leg
and knew it was gone, but thought
maybe the right could be saved.
Luckily, this happened just a few quick klicks
from Dong Tam, and 3rd Surg could do more for the kid
than he could behind the cover of a rice paddy dike.
The medic was wrong.
The records that followed the patient were more sterile
than the many OR’s he passed through, noting
MFW’s, all four extremities, scrotum and penis
with injury to right median nerve,
just jacking off now a thing of the kid’s happy past.
At Letterman General debridement of wounds
(op perf oth hosp) became amputations,
above-the-knee, bilateral, circular technique.
By the time he got to Reed his file
was a textbook of the horrors of modern war,
always packed in the side pocket of his shiny new chair,
travelling with him everywhere, up and down
the hospital’s several ramps, for consults, treatments
and friendly visits with guys worse off than him.
His third year there, after surgery number six,
he was promoted to E-5, but then further problems
with his plumbing and morale began,
urinary fistula in the first, depressive disorder in the second.
His favorite doctor hailed from the same hometown
and one Friday issued him a weekend pass,
knowing the kid could score better shit on the street
than the weak stuff they were giving him
for the unceasing fire
where his parts used to be.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
PTSD
Over there my mantra was Just don't kill anyone,
dreading the screaming behind my eyes
that would follow the rest of my days and nights.
In a tower at the farthest point of our perimeter,
in broad daylight he came toward the concertina,
shin deep in standing water, smiling,
showing me a string of fine fish.
Dinks in the wire just two nights ago,
I'm thinking to myself
maybe there's something on his back,
so I stand behind my sandbags and say
Dừng lại,
loud enough for him to hear.
He keeps coming, still smiling, and at forty yards.
I say again
Dừng lại!
more loudly,
thinking about family back home,
a pregnant wife,
a mint '56 Chevy,
and hold up my weapon for him to see,
thinking I know this is your house
--now thirty yards away--
but I don't even want to be here
so why are you fucking with me?
you know the rules,
and now yell
Dừng lại!!
voice cracking as I lock and load.
At 15 yards I become something unwanted,
switch to full auto not even looking,
stop talking and put a burst
in the water in front of him,
splashing him and his fine fish.
He finally stops, always smiling, and
retreats, never showing me his back.
I lower my weapon and watch
him slowly moving away,
now dragging his string of fine fish
in front of him.
Back home, even when I'm holding my new son,
people see my deep tan, my short hair,
my faded field jacket
and stare.
I drive too slowly my wife says,
asking What were you doing in the kitchen all night,
are you eating rice and bacon again?
I miss our light ship cranking up,
the soothing sounds of choppers 24-7.
The crickets make my head want to explode.
But then I feel my thumb
finding full auto, not even looking.
I smile in the dark,
finally tasting those fine fish.
My heart thinks
dừng lại and slows,
my eyes close
and I sleep.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
AFVN poured Lennon’s My Sweet Lord
then Joplin’s Me and Bobbie Mcgee
into everyone's headsets,
counterpoint to the heavy wump-wumping
the bird’s main rotor throbbed through their bodies.
That morning’s LZ had been especially hot,
with multiple casualties on insertion
and fuselage damage on extraction.
Now smooth grooves brought them home safely
in the cool clean air of 1500 feet.
One week and a wakeup short,
the door gunner felt alive, a bit goofy,
hugging the hog that hadn’t jammed once,
brass rolling to and fro at his feet,
some out the door to the green below.
What the fuck, he thinks,
pop some smoke, have some fun.
He pulls the pin and tosses the can forward,
sudden noxious red haze filling the cockpit
blinding everyone, turning all sideways.
The TOC lost them half-way across the Mekong,
found them from the air twenty minutes later,
nose stuck in the river bank and the rest of everything
scattered 100 yards or more.
Everyone aboard got a Purple Heart, even the gunner,
and their mothers all got Gold Stars.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Giofredda
Giofredda was young, just fourteen
the first time he went to the needle,
other Worcester kids his age
still putting baseball cards
in the spokes of their bicycle wheels.
Nam was a blessing,
best H he ever scored, paid for
exchanging greenbacks for MPC
in the alley behind the Hollywood Bar,
AWOL with his mama-san down
in Can Tho most nights,
never getting caught.
Rotating back to the World was tough.
no quality, no quantity he could afford
laying carpet this month,
taking down trees the month before.
Met him in a bar one night,
just reconnecting.
Lots of small talk, memories,
a few laughs, until he glanced nervously
around the room, leaned in closely
and asked me, with sorry hope in his eyes,
You got anything?
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Basic
Nearly half the platoon were dropouts,
or at least borderline illiterates
from the deep south,
but we also had a registered pharmacist,
a guy with a law degree
and one drafted out of seminary.
Didn't matter.
In '69 everyone was fodder,
and everyone got the same training.
How to pack a sucking chest wound,
how to clear a jam,
assuming the front leaning rest position,
and my favorite,
the proper response
to a nuclear attack:
If you survive the blast,
dig a foxhole,
cover yourself with your poncho
and maintain combat readiness.
With a subscription to Popular Science
since fourth grade,
I didn't have the heart to tell them.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
The Wall
I sought one name,
finally found it,
felt it etched among
thousands more, the first one
I knew, read in the paper
one summer morning
years earlier,
before I went over.
Do the others here
know his parents owned
a floral shop?
that he broke his arm
in fourth grade
and used to chase me with his cast
in the playground,
kept Playboy centerfolds
hidden in his seventh grade spelling book
and once hit thirty straight free throws
in high school?
Might have eventually gone on to college,
grown a family--
or maybe just spent the rest of his years
helping his parents in their floral shop?
Did he know the day
that he moved the bike
the cute little kid
had leaned against his truck
that he was tripping a booby trap,
ending his everything
before it ever began?
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Veterans' Cemetery
All things considered,
it turned out to be a beautiful day.
The night's rain had stopped, and
the blanket of clouds partly peeled back,
opening some blue sky like opening a door.
The minister quoted from Thessalonians
We who are alive, who are left, will be caught up
together with them in the clouds,
and everyone at the well-attended ceremony
felt a little better, thinking this wasn't so much
a loss, but more a long-term investment,
sure to pay heavenly dividends in the future.
They all stayed a bit longer now, visiting,
thanking the minister for his beautiful words,
while just out of sight over the rise,
parked respectfully between rows of other plots,
a guy on a big yellow back hoe
shook a Winston to his lips with one hand
while gripping the wheel with the other,
hoping they would get a move on,
thinking how much easier it would be to dig
the first of four more graves today
while the ground was still a bit wet and soft.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
His Prowess Confirmed
Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt. He only lived but till he was a man,
the which no sooner had his prowess confirmed in the unshrinking station where he fought,
but like a man he died.
(Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8)
Three hots and a cot,
that's all Master Sergeant Reynolds needed,
and all he ever wanted was his unfiltered Camels
and anything by Louis L’Amour in the latest USO package.
Twenty-year men, men like him,
men of the brown shoe Army,
didn’t understand flag burnings,
sideburns below the tragus,
let alone hair to the shoulders.
They understood John Wayne,
love it or leave it, cracking hippie heads,
flags flying from the front porch
on the Fourth of July, Memorial Day
and any other day they damn well pleased.
He signed on the dotted line the same day
the Japs signed their surrender
aboard the Missouri, surrounded
by victorious Americans in their dress whites,
and showed that famous photo to his sons
whenever he could corner them.
When the older one enlisted
right out of high school and
ended up in the A Shau Valley,
he worried a bit, like any father would.
When the boy came home in a box
he had a helluva time getting his wife
and angry younger son to understand
the pride he felt when he held that folded flag.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Non-Combat
We called him Preach.
Didn't mean anything--
like I was Jersey and
another guy was Dago.
His dog tags read O-Neg, so he'd get trippy,
go through the hootch saying
I'm one of the Lord's universal donors!
He was just up in his rack that night,
leafing through his King James.
Bama was at the other end of the hootch,
playing with his prized AK.
The accidental discharge caught him
dead center, as if aimed.
While Doc tried to pack the wound,
he bled out on the plywood floor,
and all I thought was Damn,
all the lives that O-Neg might have saved.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
KIA
Even Goodwill
didn't want the stuff--
well maybe the boxes of books
by the scarred desk
where he used to try
to write things down
when he couldn't sleep.
The boots in the corner
with the cotton duck uppers
hadn't been shined or worn
in fifty years.
His dress greens always hung in the closet,
except when he'd put them on
to stand in front of the long mirror
on the back of the bathroom door,
almost proud.
His field jacket, faded by tropical sun
and too many laundromats
lay tossed in another corner,
and if you looked under his bed
you'd find the empty Dutch Masters box
where he'd kept the gun he used.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Troop Morale Was Important
to our new battalion commander,
so his first two weeks in-country
he had a half-mile loop measured
inside our perimeter, and offered
a certificate and a handshake to anyone
logging 100 miles on this loop.
As hot as it got during the day,
he advised us to not run at night,
lest a sentry mistake us for the enemy,
friendly fire deaths being bad for morale
and even worse for his record of command.
Night was for other things.
The bakers worked at night so the troops
would have fresh bread and pastries the next day,
which always boosted morale,
and graves registration unloaded body bags at night,
because doing so during daylight, when everyone could see,
was very bad for morale.
One of the bakers used to slip away from the mess hall
at night and help unload the bodies,
and for a tray of fresh cookies
they’d let him unzip some bags
and peek inside.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
90th Replacement Battalion
At Long Binh they herded us under an enormous tent,
our fatigues still factory green and fresh.
A bored young lieutenant read aloud our names and destinations,
detached, droning through static as if listing Amtrak departures.
One by one we moved outside to stand in sucking mud,
facing labeled posts, our lines slowly growing, snaking
across the compound, our lungs struggling
with the wet heat and smell of burning shit,
our shoulders drooping from the weight of the weather,
the barked orders and our own secret fears,
heavier than the weapons, packs
and flak jackets we’d soon be issued.
My post read Can Tho, wherever that was.
A kid from Ohio who’d sat next to me on the plane
said goodbye and slogged to the line for Chu Lai.
A pimply kid in a uniform bagging at his every angle
said Excuse me, passing before me bound for Anh Khe,
mumbling Gawd, I thought Missouri was hot.
Some white, some black, some brown. Some tall and lean,
others short and squat, all far too young,
able to go days without shaving, already missing mothers
and other things back home.
From Detroit, LA or East Jabip
to Vinh Long, Da Nang, Khe Sanh.
I never learned those men’s names or saw any of them again,
always just thought of them as places on a map,
some worse than others, like some places back home.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
Ernie
Ernie was just a good ole boy,
big LSU fan, always talking about Billy Cannon,
with an aw shucks cowlick
and easy going way that belied
what he’d already seen over there,
what showed in his eyes when things got quiet.
My first night in-country
Spooky was working our perimeter,
miniguns sounding like God belching,
a torrent of fire lighting up the sky east of us.
I jumped. Ernie said, “Don’t worry,
that’s us,”
taught me the nuanced difference
between incoming and outgoing
and calmed me through my first mortar attack.
“No need to run to the bunker, you’ll
probably just trip over something in the dark
and get a Purple Heart you can’t explain.”
He had pictures of all his brothers,
sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles
taped up in the hootch, under a framed
portrait of his ma and pa,
and when we inventoried his belongings
we all agreed we’d never heard him say
a mean word about no one.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Midair
In the shimmering late day distance the guy in the tower
saw them both coming fast, ready for final approach,
a rotary wing from Ca Mau and a fixed wing from up north,
both oblivious to one another in the slanting light.
Commo a bit wanting, Be aware he told the fixed wing,
you're stacked . . . over a Huey, then breaking up again.
The pilot dipped his port wing for a better look,
and the wing went right into the slick’s main rotor.
It was quick and final for all involved, even the tail rotor
boomeranging across the compound
faster than the spinning sound it sent before it
to decapitate a mama-san headed home
with her weeks’s wages and a box of Tide for her family--
even this took just another surreal second or two,
but the cleanup took hours, magnesium alloys
in the tail boom blazing like the surface of the sun,
doctors and other flight crews puffing hard on cheap cigars
to get past the smell of the burning bodies.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Purple Heart
Before the heavy echo of the blast had cleared
the medic saw the shredded mess of the private’s left leg
and knew it was gone, but thought
maybe the right could be saved.
Luckily, this happened just a few quick klicks
from Dong Tam, and 3rd Surg could do more for the kid
than he could behind the cover of a rice paddy dike.
The medic was wrong.
The records that followed the patient were more sterile
than the many OR’s he passed through, noting
MFW’s, all four extremities, scrotum and penis
with injury to right median nerve,
just jacking off now a thing of the kid’s happy past.
At Letterman General debridement of wounds
(op perf oth hosp) became amputations,
above-the-knee, bilateral, circular technique.
By the time he got to Reed his file
was a textbook of the horrors of modern war,
always packed in the side pocket of his shiny new chair,
travelling with him everywhere, up and down
the hospital’s several ramps, for consults, treatments
and friendly visits with guys worse off than him.
His third year there, after surgery number six,
he was promoted to E-5, but then further problems
with his plumbing and morale began,
urinary fistula in the first, depressive disorder in the second.
His favorite doctor hailed from the same hometown
and one Friday issued him a weekend pass,
knowing the kid could score better shit on the street
than the weak stuff they were giving him
for the unceasing fire
where his parts used to be.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
PTSD
Over there my mantra was Just don't kill anyone,
dreading the screaming behind my eyes
that would follow the rest of my days and nights.
In a tower at the farthest point of our perimeter,
in broad daylight he came toward the concertina,
shin deep in standing water, smiling,
showing me a string of fine fish.
Dinks in the wire just two nights ago,
I'm thinking to myself
maybe there's something on his back,
so I stand behind my sandbags and say
Dừng lại,
loud enough for him to hear.
He keeps coming, still smiling, and at forty yards.
I say again
Dừng lại!
more loudly,
thinking about family back home,
a pregnant wife,
a mint '56 Chevy,
and hold up my weapon for him to see,
thinking I know this is your house
--now thirty yards away--
but I don't even want to be here
so why are you fucking with me?
you know the rules,
and now yell
Dừng lại!!
voice cracking as I lock and load.
At 15 yards I become something unwanted,
switch to full auto not even looking,
stop talking and put a burst
in the water in front of him,
splashing him and his fine fish.
He finally stops, always smiling, and
retreats, never showing me his back.
I lower my weapon and watch
him slowly moving away,
now dragging his string of fine fish
in front of him.
Back home, even when I'm holding my new son,
people see my deep tan, my short hair,
my faded field jacket
and stare.
I drive too slowly my wife says,
asking What were you doing in the kitchen all night,
are you eating rice and bacon again?
I miss our light ship cranking up,
the soothing sounds of choppers 24-7.
The crickets make my head want to explode.
But then I feel my thumb
finding full auto, not even looking.
I smile in the dark,
finally tasting those fine fish.
My heart thinks
dừng lại and slows,
my eyes close
and I sleep.
by Contributing Poet Vincent Phillips Copyright © 2023
VWP 2023 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Vincent Phillips is a retired educator who dropped out of college his senior year and enlisted in the Army in October 1969. There were many reasons for this decision; patriotism was not one of them. He arrived in Vietnam August 1970, worked in combat aviation battalion intelligence and operations and returned to "the world" June 1971, assigned to Walter Reed until his discharge in September 1972. Except for rocket and mortar attacks, his duty in Vietnam was not hazardous. His time at Walter Reed, working with severely wounded patients, was as life-changing as Vietnam. His preferred email address is [email protected].
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