Poop Shute

A War Story

WARNING: Not For The Faint Of Heart

I was listening to NPR today and they did a really nice piece about the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington. I guess today marks 25 years since it was built. They told interesting stories about items left there over the years by people trying to heal.

Listening to all this reminded me of a speaker that came to my school when I was in about sixth grade. Holly Duncan (I don't know why I remember her name... I probably had a crush on her) brought her dad in to speak during our history unit on Vietnam. His stories moved a room full of sixth graders to awe-filled silence, and if you have ever worked with kids, that is no small feat.

He was a medical officer on a Med-Evac helicopter. Some of his stories were fairly mundane, day-to-day kind of stuff, but even the most mundane of war stories are still interesting. And some were even funny. All those stories are long forgotten to me. Only one stands out.

They were on a pick-up mission. Some poor soldier was hurt pretty bad and lying in a field. They swooped in and picked him up without a hitch, and were back in the air in no time at all.
Once they started to work on him they discovered that he was delirious from his injuries. At first he was tame enough, but then they began to realize that the poor guy thought he had been captured by the Viet Cong. He got belligerent, and Mr. Duncan watched in horror as the guy grabbed the pins out of the grenades on his harness and hurled them out the open side of the chopper.

What happened in the next couple seconds will haunt Holly's Dad for the rest of his life. He acted from pure gut-instinct. Without even a second's thought he grabbed the wounded soldier by his harness straps and heaved him out the side of the airborn helicopter. A split second later the grenades detonated into the side of the chopper, hitting them with a barrage of shrapnel and gore. The copter was damaged so badly that they had to put down again and await pickup themselves, but fortunately for them nobody was seriously hurt.

That poor soldier cast his lot when he dumped those pins, and Mr. Duncan saved his own life and the lives of all of his crew mates with his fast action. But, like I said, a nation may not have a conscience, but an individual does. Standing there, before a room full of awe-struck sixth graders, Mr. Duncan openly wept over what he had done. He wept for the feeling of helplessness. He wept for not being able to save that man. And he wept for the memory of when he looked Death square in the eye and said "Not yet. Not today. Not me."

Those of us who were not silent were only making a sound because we too were choked up. Holly rushed up to the podium and threw her arms around her father, telling him how proud she is of him. It was one of the most honest and real moments I have ever seen in my life, and I will always be thankful that I was there to see it. I don't know that I will ever forget it.