I need to find a new path. I’m sick of being treated like a candy striper. There’s not a lot of love for us veterans here.
I don’t know what I’ll do now. It’s hard to go from red alert sirens and saving lives to pantyhose and heels. The world might be changing, but we women are still second-class citizens. And Black women. Well. You do the math.
Life isn’t calm back here. Race riots. War protests. Dr. Spock was arrested for telling guys to resist the draft. The National Guard being called out. But it isn’t war.
I’m kind of at loose ends. Mama recommends more food and dating. Last week she bought me a used sewing machine.
I guess she thinks perfecting a blind stitch hem will revive me. I’m thinking I need a change. Maybe this little town is just too small for me now. But where would I go?
Anyway, stay safe and keep your flak jacket close.
Save some lives for me.
B
* * *
On a quiet day in mid-January of 1968, Frankie’s DEROS came in. She tacked the paper up on the plywood wall above her cot and drew a big red circle around March 15 and an X through today.
She was officially a short-timer.
* * *
At 0400 hours, on January 31, a rocket hit the Seventy-First.
Explosions ripped through the night.
The red alert siren blared.
Frankie scrambled out of bed, grabbed her flak jacket and steel pot helmet from underneath the bed, and dressed quickly.
Another rocket hit. The hooch shook. A rat ran across the floor, looking for shelter.
Frankie’s new hooch mate, Margie Sloan, sat up in bed and screamed. “What’s happening? Oh my God—”
The red alert siren sounded again, became continuous. Over the loudspeaker the words: “Attention all personnel, take cover. Security alert condition red. We are under rocket attack. Repeat: Condition red. Take cover.”
“We’ve got to get to the hospital,” Frankie yelled as she ran to the door, flung it open. Outside, the camp was filled with fire and smoke: buildings on fire, black smoke billowing, acrid-smelling. An oil drum behind the latrines burst into flames. One of the four-hundred-gallon water trailers positioned above the showers exploded; water geysered out. “Margie. Now!”
Margie moved in beside her. “We can’t go out there.”
Frankie grabbed Margie’s hand, wished there was more time to ease the young nurse into a night like this. “I know it’s scary, Margie, and I wish you weren’t so green. But one thing at a time, okay? Put on your flak and steel pot—”
“My what?”
“Your helmet. Put it on and get to the ER. Help with triage.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.”
It was all the time Frankie had. As she ran for the OR, something big exploded behind her. The Red Cross building, maybe.
Outside the OR, personnel in flak jackets and helmets, some still in pajamas or shorts and combat boots, were running to the different wards, readying for wounded, carrying sawhorses to triage. The alert warning continued to blare out.
In the OR, Frankie got the lights on, the tables ready, the supplies carted and at hand: dressing carts, crash carts, thoracostomy trays, oxygen tanks, a portable suction machine. She sure wished Hap were still here, but he’d shipped out two months ago. Their newest doc had been here a week. It was going to be a tough night for him.
She heard the first Dust Off arrive at 0430.
The first wave of casualties hit Pre-Op and the OR minutes later. Too many for the operating tables they had, for the nurses, for the medics. Wounded lay on litters set on sawhorses, prepped for surgery and waiting. She saw civilians, heard a child crying for her mother. Had the U.S. bombed another South Vietnamese village?
As Frankie scrubbed in and masked up, she could hear the constant whine and thump of shells ripping the camp apart. The Quonset hut shook, IVs rattled in their holders. Her helmet kept clanking down onto the bridge of her nose.
Another hit. Close.
In the OR, the wounded who were able rolled off their beds or litters and hit the floor, their IVs yanked out of their veins. Frankie grabbed pillows, blankets, whatever she could find to lay over the patients who were too wounded to move. It wouldn’t save them from a direct hit, but it was all she could do.
The lights went out. Total darkness. Then the generators hummed to life and brought light back.
Frankie went to the nearest operating table, saw the soldier lying there. He was barely conscious, moaning for help. His uniform had been cut off in triage, exposing the devastation of his chest wound. He was bleeding everywhere; bits of shrapnel were embedded in his neck.
“I’ve got you,” she said, putting her strength into applying pressure to the chest wound. The patient gasped, tried to breathe, panicked. He bucked up. “Calm down, soldier,” Frankie said, looking for a doctor. “We need a trach here. Stat!”
All she saw was a sea of wounded men and medics rushing in and out.
She yanked a surgical cart close. The array of silver instruments lay ready. She’d never performed a tracheotomy before, but she’d watched and assisted on dozens. Hap had shown her how to do it step-by-step.
She looked around, called again for a doctor.
In the chaos, there was no answer.
She swabbed antiseptic on the anterior aspect of the man’s throat and picked up a scalpel and made her incision, opening a direct airway in his trachea. Blood bubbled up; she blotted it away and inserted a tracheal tube.
He took a gasping breath and released it, calmed.
She taped the tube in place and grabbed some gauze and went back to his chest wound.
“Where’s a goddamn doctor?” she yelled.
The noise in the OR was deafening. IVs and bottles and instruments and carts crashed to the cement floor. The lights flickered. Wounded streamed from triage into the OR.
The new doctor skidded into the OR, slipping on the bloody floor, almost falling. He wore his flak jacket and helmet.
“Captain Morse. Mark. I need you.”
He stared at her, not seeming to comprehend.
“Now,” she yelled.
He looked down at the patient’s sucking chest wound. “Holy shit.”
Frankie knew what the doctor was feeling. Unfortunately, there was no time to let him know that. This wounded soldier needed the doctor’s best, and now. “Look at his face, Doc. See him. See Specialist Glenn Short.”
The young doctor’s gaze moved slowly up to Frankie’s face; his eyes were wide with fear. She nodded in understanding, said, “See him.”
“Anesthesia,” Frankie yelled, waving the nurse-anesthetist over.
“Go on, Doc,” she said, as the patient was anesthetized. “Get scrubbed up, get your gloves on. You’ve got this,” she said. “We make little holes out of big ones, right? Go on…”
* * *
The attack went on for so long that Frankie finally took off her unwieldy flak jacket and oversized helmet and stopped even flinching at the sound of explosions or shelling.
For hours, the evac hospital overflowed with casualties; Pre-Op, the ER, the OR, the ICU, and the Vietnamese ward were all wall-to-wall beds, and there was overflow, but at last, they were nearing the end of the push. All of the casualties had been operated on. Now Frankie stood in the middle of the OR, sopping the sweat from her brow, watching Dr. Morse finish the last surgery. She knew he would fall apart soon, start shaking and be unable to stop, but he was still going. That meant he had what it took.
“McGrath,” a medic yelled from the doorway. “Someone wants you out here. STAT.”
Frankie ran out of the OR, saw Rye standing outside, covered in blood and mud. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s not my blood.” He pulled her into his arms, held her tightly. “You’re okay,” he said shakily, and then, steadier: “You’re okay.” He drew back, stared down at her. “I heard about the direct hit here and all I could think about was you. I thought…” he began. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
He let her go, but she didn’t step back. It had felt so good to be in his arms, to be comforted, even for a moment. “Just another shit day at the Seventy-First,” she said, trying to smile.