Next thing I knew, I was one of a sorry pile of wounded men, back down the hill, below the ambush site, with the battle still raging above the slope, the noise splitting the jungle still, even above the storm.

Around me, the other wounded men groaned with their own wounds.

One — Private Nixon-Smith — looked the worst. His head, held together with thick field dressings, had been split open like a watermelon. He was screaming out that he was blind.

As well as his other wounds, Ochiltree had burns to his backside from the back blast of the rocket he’d rushed to get away as Private Kermode lay dying in front of him. Another had fragment wounds to his legs and abdomen, and was trying to find his balls. Even when he couldn’t find them, he searched again and again and again in panic and shock, and looked at the rest of us with a look of such agony, it was pitiful.

One had a bullet wound to the side, a ‘clean wound’ I heard someone say, though the field dressing couldn’t contain the blood, and it leaked out the sides in a thick purplish stream. A fourth had a neat gash across his forehead that might have blinded him, though he dared not open his eyes to find out.

The medic Private Peter Bunn, who had also joined in the rescue, moved from man to man in our sorry group, ministering first aid and solace as best they could. 

Then came a white light through the rain, breaking through the jungle canopy, and the sound of the chopper hovering, and there were snap decisions made as to who would go on that first flight to the field hospital.

‘Nixon-Smith, Tate, Ochiltree and Walker,’ the medic declared, ‘in that order.’ 

The sergeant nodded in agreement at his assessment. ‘They’re the worst. They go tonight. Get them on the chopper.’

Then, came the jungle penetrator, crashing through the canopy, followed by a litter, flopping and rocking wildly in the driving rain. They loaded Nixon-Smith into it first. He was completely out of it. He’d copped the only dose of morphine the platoon carried. There was nothing for the rest of us. 

Then it was my turn to be tied into the litter, and I left the battlefield for the last time. And in those few minutes of time, all that mattered was reaching the safety of the chopper. 

My last images of the war were of men barking orders in a frenzy; of slowly being hauled into the eternal black of the night sky against a curtain of monsoon rain, up, up towards that bright light, spinning in a never-ending circle under the downdraft and whirr of the chopper blades, the sounds of battle still going on below me; and of being dragged into the cocoon of the chopper by a big black American with arms like tree branches.

They dropped the litter a third and fourth time, hauling in the other two wounded, though the gunner and the chopper pilots were screaming at each other about whether they should hang around any longer, since it was ‘hot’. 

But they did, and Walker, with his hands bandaged to his chest, and Ochiltree, sitting upright, clinging to the wire like his life depended on it. It was. 

I took one last look at the jungles of Vietnam, and turned away. I didn’t want to watch any more.

Blacked it all out. Layer upon layer, all pushed down into small boxes, and smaller boxes still, and filed down to the deepest recesses away from the light, and out of sight where I wouldn’t see it again for a long, long time.

I’d been content with just one, solitary thought, and it was overpowering, all encompassing, like my mother’s arms tight around me when I was a baby boy. I’d be going home if I survived that flight to the hospital. I’d fought my last battle. Never again would I have to fight.

What a stupid boy I still was. I knew nothing.

***

When that bullet struck me, I thought the war over for me. But it really just beginning.

I wasn’t the only soldier wounded in war- and certainly not the worst.

I’m reminded of this often, by those men who came home unscathed. But I ended up spending more than two years in hospitals- and another couple of years readjusting to life with a disability, and another couple of years after that getting educated, learning new skills.

A decade flew by. I watched my schoolmates, my fellow veterans, all move on with their lives. For me, time stood still.

My 21st and 22nd birthdays came and went in those hospital beds. What youth I had left after the war is now a fog of operations and skin grafts and endless nights of frustration as the days and months of my youth slipped away.

Five months in traction; a year or so in a full body-plaster from my chest to my toes- and all that kept me alive through it, and sane, was a beautiful woman who tended me- and who remains at my side today. Carole- my wife.

This was self-sacrificing love- the Christian ethic at its best. It was what made the difference in this man’s life.

Here was a woman who put aside her own worldly ambitions, her own talents and abilities- so that she could steer me through the turbulent years and seas that lay ahead.

While many other wives of veterans ran for the hills- this one stayed put. And I can’t honour her enough for having done so.

I know that many other good men are still with us today only because they too, had good women who lasted the distance- women who deserve a special medal for what they endure being married to some of us veterans.

Don Tate,

Albion Park, NSW