Part 10… Wounded

Everything changed on a cold Sunday in January when I made my usual trip to the post office to check my mailbox. Mail from Vietnam was very sporadic. I went every day, “just in case.” I found a white envelope, addressed red ink, with unfamiliar handwriting and Red Cross stamped on the back. Boyd had been wounded and was unable to write. He was concerned the military would notify me and scare me. A Red Cross worker wrote for him. My heart sank. His letter told me very little about his injury, saying he had been shot in the leg and was in a field hospital.

Monday morning I called the Red Cross to try to get some information and was told if the military hadn’t contacted me then it wasn’t serious. I have no idea why I accepted that answer and didn’t push for more information. For the next six weeks I learned what was happening through letters from Boyd.I was never contacted by the military. In the next letter he told me the bone in his leg was broken. I was relieved. I knew they wouldn’t patch him up and send him back to fight.

I was to eventually learn it was very serious. His squad had been caught in an ambush. They were under fire and ammunition was needed. When no one would go, Boyd volunteered. A bullet hit his right leg just below his knee. He was pinned down. A medic managed to get to him and apply a tourniquet. Eventually he was taken to a waiting helicopter to be flown to a field hospital. He recalls getting thirstier and sleepier as he laid in the jungle waiting for help. He was bleeding to death as he was taken to safety. Lying on a gurney in a waiting area, he remembers the guy next to him saying, “we’re going to live, this isn’t where they put the dying ones.”