Copyright reserved. No part(s) of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form by any means without the written permission of the author. Robert Flynn's VIETNAM NOTES Part Three Dust! It was everywhere and in everything: in our eyes, mouths, hair, clothes, food, and water. It was from the medevac helicopters. As the Tet offensive raged on, the choppers just kept coming in, one right after the other: many times all day long, bringing in the dead and wounded from everywhere. Sometimes three or four helicopters would be waiting their turn to land, so they could go back and tempt fate again, to go get more. They were a constant reminder of what could happen to any of us, at any time. There had always been medevacs coming in, but never anything like this; it never stopped. Whether we were building bunkers, eating chow, or trying to catch a little sleep, the unending river of pain, agony, and death kept right on coming. The wounded were quickly helped or carried off the choppers in their bloody bandages and shredded fatigues, some quiet, some moaning, some screaming, most just curled up and lost in an agony of pain and morphine; so many of them were handicapped and disfigured for the rest of their lives. Then there was the never-ending train of body-bags. Bags and bags full of dead men, sometimes only parts of dead men. They were hauled off the choppers, dragged out of the way, and laid in a row at first, then stacked as room ran out. Tents with their sides rolled up and surgery tables running down their centers were at the focus of all this. Medics were in constant motion from chopper to table and back again, as the worst cases that had a chance, but probably wouldn't make it to a real hospital, were cut and drained and patched and sewn, in a kind of horrible, extremely bloody ballet. This went on for days, and days, and days. Be all you can be.Numbing exhaustion; aching back, arms, legs, and mind. Suffocating tropical heat draining every ounce of motivation. Eye stinging, sweat starting at my head, running down my body, and ending up in my burning, soggy boots made the heat rashes sting and burn. It's too humid for sweat to evaporate and cool like it should. How much longer could this miserable day last? Hours later these thoughts must have rolled through my mind a hundred times. Digging holes - filling sandbags - stacking them into bunker walls - digging, filling, stacking, digging, filling, stacking. And the same tomorrow, and the day after and the day after that ... Flies! They swarmed through the air by the millions, their size halfway between a housefly and a gnat, their high-pitched, infuriating bzzzzzz fraying everyone's nerves and pushing tempers to the edge. They crawled all over our exposed skin, into our eyes, noses and ears, and tried to get between our tightly-closed lips. Our arms got so tired from swatting that we finally had to just let them crawl. We had been in Kontum for weeks now and the heat, humidity, dust and flies made us all feel somewhat insane but we did have lots of company there. I met them when I first arrived and began digging a trench for our fuel cans. We put the cans in the ground to protect us from a self-made napalm attack that would have resulted from the cans being hit by one of the incoming mortar rounds that peppered the area every so often at night. The idea was that if hit, the blast and fireball would blow up, not sideways into people and materials. Fortunately they were never hit, so we didn't have to find out how well the theory stood up to reality. Anyway, as I began digging, the sickly-sweet and familiar stench of death wafted up from the hole. The shovel struck some roots which were somehow covered in cloth. As I tried to cut through the stubborn obstructions, I suddenly saw hair, and became aware that what I thought were roots were actually bones and clothing. The hole I'd dug was in a grave. I began digging around the edges trying to find a clear area, but soon realized I was standing in the middle of a mass grave which had resulted from the carnage of a battle fought during the Tet Offensive a few months earlier. I got out and tried again nearby with the same result. I finally found an unoccupied patch and finished the now grisly job. It turned out that the whole area was a site of several mass graves, exactly how many we never knew. The bodies tended to rise to the surface in the monsoon rains, and we were made aware of their presence again and again: a dog chewing on a rotted hand: a thighbone strung on the mess-tent sign, by a prankster attempting to make light of it and preserve his sanity: a skull unearthed and grinning on the trail to the perimeter. And of course the flies --- always the flies --- the ceaselessly swarming flies of a corrupted graveyard. Nights on the bunkers, when I was pulling my shift, as the only one awake, were a surreal, lonely, and sometimes terrifying experience. When there was a break in the clouds and enough of a moon to see, the vegetation would become sinister: seemingly in motion, with strange sounds drifting through the dank, humid darkness. Along with the ever-present fear of a real attack, would come the eerie feeling that if I were to turn around, my frightened gaze would be met by the leering visage of a rotting skull and skeletal body, clothed in the tattered fatigues of one of the residents, upon whose grounds we were trespassing. It was a strange time. That kind of environment breeds disease and I began feeling weak and sick one day. A concerned friend said that I actually looked yellow and mentioned jaundice, so I went to see the medics and collapsed onto a cot, in the sweltering heat of the hospital tent. I was in and out of it for about a week, losing quite a few pounds in the process. One night, the survivors of a very bad ambush were helicoptered in and I was laid on the dirt-floor, to make room for the wounded. I remembered drifting in and out of an agonizing world of screaming and crying men and shouts of rushing medics, while the roar of the choppers and the shuddering of the tent, in the dusty wind from the blades, created a memory of being locked into a never-ending nightmare. It didn't even seem real the next day but it was. I was very glad when I began feeling better and could finally leave that place.   Continue All copyrights reserved