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I set up
in the middle and had a machine gunner on one side and a rocket man on the
other with an automatic weapon. The radioman was to my right and my
corpsman was behind us. We were on a turn so that we could fire in either
direction down the road in case something came up from either direction. We
were making radio checks every half hour by clicking the mike key on the
radio. We wouldn’t talk but just key the mike.
There was a code–either 1 or 2 clicks. This was about 11 or 11:30 at night
and you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. There was supposed to be
a click but I didn’t hear it. I was reaching over to see whether my radioman
was awake or whether he made that connection. When I reached over, the
tiger grabbed my right arm from behind. I didn’t know it was there until it
grabbed me and, at that time, I didn’t know what it was. I thought I had
punched him in the nose but I’m not sure that happened. On these patrols I
kept a K-bar knife in between my legs because I always sat up. Well, that
K-bar was missing; we don’t know what happened to it. I don’t know whether
I stuck it in the tiger or it just got lost in the shuffle. I heard nothing
until the tiger ran away. It sounded like a freight train. The whole thing
took milliseconds; it was very quick. I don’t remember what happened right
after that because I went into shock. There was no pain. I had no feeling
in that arm whatsoever. The tiger had severed the nerve because he had
taken so much muscle out. And because it was so dark, there was no way to
see what the damage was. The corpsman had one of those Bic
lighters and was able to assess what had happened. He said I was in bad
condition and he needed to get me out of there. The corpsman was trying to
patch me up and call out on the radio without any lights.
Because
it was so dark, the first time he tried, he wrapped the microphone from the
radio up in the bandages and had to take it all apart and re-do it. He was
trying to get permission to break the ambush, but back at headquarters,
they were having a hard time trying to comprehend what was going on. So it
took 30 minutes or so to decide to let us break the ambush and leave. The
corpsman and I decided that I would walk back with him as far as I could
until I couldn’t walk anymore. Then he would give me morphine. Up until
that point, I had no feeling in the arm and it wasn’t hurting.
About two-thirds
of the way back I got to the point where I had probably lost so much blood
I couldn’t go any further. So they took some rifles and ponchos, made a
stretcher, and carried me the rest of the way in.
We came
to a bridge we had to cross and had to do it single-file and I have no idea
how we did it with no lights. We were trying to move as quickly as possible
to get back inside the perimeter before the enemy caught us. That was a big
concern and that’s why we wanted to break the ambush as soon as possible.
When that tiger got me, I must have made enough noise to wake up Laos.
They
carried me back to the company at Ca Lu because there were restrictions
that kept them from flying the choppers. When daylight came, they put me in
a jeep, and a squad riding in a dump truck escorted us back to Delta Med.
At the same time, they sent another squad back to the ambush site during
the daylight and found the tiger tracks that confirmed that it was a tiger.
I
remember a corpsman pouring some saline solution on my arm and I went
ballistic. I think he had given me a shot underneath my arm and when he put
the saline on it to clean it, I went out and was out until they were
wheeling me down the ramp from the chopper into the USS Sanctuary,
and down a hallway right into the operating room. I didn’t know how serious
my wounds were, but later they told me I was within millimeters of losing
my arm. The tiger had taken my bicep and just removed everything on the
front side of the arm down to the bone.
The
surgeon put everything back together but left the wound open for 2 or 3
weeks while I was on the ship so it could be cleaned out to prevent any
infection. They also gave me the 14-day series of rabies shots. After that,
they did a skin graft, taking the skin off the front of my legs. There’s no
muscle in there. The skin graft just covered up the area. I spent about 30
days on the Sanctuary and then they shipped me back to the
Philadelphia Naval Hospital. There a Dr. Smith did a tendon transplant so I
could use my hand. He used tendons that went to my shoulder, and my
shoulder muscles help to move my hand. Then I was discharged.
I have a
lot of problems but the arm is useable. I can’t lift anything; I’ve got no
strength because I have no muscles.
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