The mind is a powerful though delicate instrument that none of our prize winning scientists have yet mapped, or even begun to understand.  We are all aware that a tune, played perhaps during the correct phase of the moon, can cause the old gray matter to recall a dim memory.  Such is what just happened to me as I listened to George Harrison singing My Sweet Lord on a local golden oldies radio channel.  Seems I’ve told this story before.  Likely I have.  If you’ve heard it already, keep reading because no story worth repeating ever comes out the same twice.

It was summer in Vietnam.  Hell, as a line company grunt, it was always summer in Vietnam.  Monsoon season had ended and my company had gone three days without water.  I could think of nothing else.  For any of you out there that has gone three days without water, you know what I’m talking about.

On a prolonged hump through the jungle, the 110 degree heat seemed just a bit more pronounced.  That evening, we made camp on a hill.  Later, someone yelled that there was a creek at the base of the hill and anyone needing water should bring their canteens.  I grabbed my empty water containers and hurried after the file of soldiers hurrying down the hill.  Along the way, I rushed headlong into an extremely sharp branch of bamboo that poked me directly in the eye.  In my haste for water, I had forgotten my glasses.

That night was hell.  I felt like popping my eyeball out of its socket, it hurt so badly.  Next morning, the choppers picked us up and flew us out of the jungle to a nearby forward fire base.  Once there, I quickly made my way to the medics hootch.

“You have a hell of a tear,” the doctor said, packing my eye with heavy grease and putting a patch over it.  “You’re going to the rear for awhile.”

“You’re a coward-ass, pain faking son-of-a-bitch,” my platoon sergeant yelled at me as he and the rest of the company headed back toward the awaiting choppers.  My throbbing eye told me I wasn’t faking but it didn’t assuage the guilt caused by his voice, and the looks of my fellow ground pounders.

I spent two weeks at the rear fire base of Song Be, playing chess with the company clerk of Headquarters Company.  When the doctor let me go, I returned to my company.  A long month later, a clerk-typist position opened back in Song Be and my buddy, the company clerk, recommended me to fill it.

Everything went well for weeks until, one day, a shooting pain in my eye drove me to my knees.  This time, the doctor greased my eye, patched it and decided to refer me to the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon.

Next day, I landed at the airfield with orders in hand and a patch on my eye.  I soon met an airman that told me how to get to the hospital.  “First,” he said, “You should get a massage and a piece of ass at the best whore house in town.  Go right in that door and ask for girl #35.”

I followed his sage advice.  Miss 35 was as beautiful as he had billed her.  At the time, I was every bit of 23, but she seemed much younger than me.  Perhaps she was older than she looked because I felt like a 100.

Anyway, I finally made it to the infamous 3rd Field Hospital.  There was no eye ward, so they assigned me a bed in the hemorrhoid ward (no, I’m not making this up).  I had a tiny radio with a single ear plug.  Some pirate radio station was all I could get and they were playing George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord over and over again.

Next morning, I went for a shower.  There were no shower heads and only small metal bathtubs scattered on the floor’s broken tile.  “First day here?” a soldier asked when he saw my confusion.  “Fill the sitz bath with water hot as you can stand it, doctor it up with one of these bottles of Phisohex, and then soak until the water gets cold.”

Like a moron, I did as he directed.  When he realized that I didn’t have hemorrhoids, he almost busted a gut laughing.

Everyday for nine days I would visit the doctor in the eye ward.  One of the patients had only the whites of his eyes.  Some tropical disease he had contracted on R & R in Australia.  He looked like a creature from a horror movie.  My doc couldn’t find what kept slicing up my eyeball.  He tried everything, even scrapping it with a scalpel.  Finally, in desperation, he got after it with a Q-Tip, finally finding a sliver of bamboo that had worked its way to the back of my eye.

“Are you a line soldier?” he asked me.  “I can give you a pass for ten days so you won’t have to go straight back.”

“Thanks,” I said, “But I have a job in the rear now.”

That night, a band was playing in the rec room on the first floor.  The room was filled with triple and quadruple amputees, every one of whom looked younger than me.  Many were Vietnamese and I wondered about their futures.

Next morning, I took my little radio and checked out of hospital hell.  At least I was walking out the door on my own two feet.  The plug was in my ear and I listened for the last time to the velvet voice of George Harrison singing My Sweet Lord.

Nearly forty years has passed since that day.  I had almost forgotten it until tonight.  Why?  I have no scientific answer, except that the mind is a powerful and delicate instrument that none of us will ever understand.

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