Shortly thereafter, I could see bone shavings falling to the floor under the mans head. One of the doctors, to my amazement, very quietly hand drilled two small holes in the back of his head. Then they inserted a double pronged top of a 'Y' shaped piece of metal into the holes. They attached a rope to the single prong bottom end of the metal, and put weights on the other end of the rope which hung down from a pulley to the floor. I'd seen traction on a lot of men's severed legs, but not to the back of a mans head in order to straighten out his back...
There was always a lot of things goin' on in 3ab. The patients had all kinds of serious injuries they were dealing with. A helicopter pilot who had been shot down laid in bed paralyzed with a colostomy bag and no longer wanted to live. His condition was permanent. He refused to eat and died after he was there for a couple of months. Another guy had been shot in the knee on one leg requiring it to be fused together. His other leg had been amputated above the knee. He couldn't even walk with an artificial leg....
Guys became crazy once in a while. One day, two patients had been arguing over how to pronounce Bob Dylan's name. One pronounced it 'Bob Dieland,' and the other pronounced it 'Bob Dilland' which is the correct way. The one who was pronouncing it 'Bob Dieland' somehow found a metal butter knife, and was jumping up and down in his underwear on his bed screaming that he was going to kill the other guy!! It took several people (other wounded patients) to grab him and calm him down??
Sometimes the critically wounded in wheelchairs would come back from the bowling alley, or some place in the hospital where they'd been drinking, and start fighting each other from their wheelchairs. They'd really go at it, hitting each other with whatever they had using someones crutches or just their fists; sometimes rolling on the floor together. They didn't seem to care about their more serious injuries that they were there for. Consequently, they would re-fracture their wounds and end up instantly back in surgery. Everyone there was usually pretty stressed out from the things that were going on with their families back home, the hospital situation, their wounds and whatever else was bothering them. This was life in 3ab at Valley Forge....
At the time, I didn't realize it, but eventually the accumulation of inconceivable experiences would lead me to practically search the ends of the earth for something that meant something. I became more and more discontent as time went on with the traditional mind set of the typical American. Nobody really wanted to know much of anything other than how to make a lot of money. I wanted to know the truth about life. Did it stop when we died? Was there an after life or life after death? Where did all those who died beside me in the field and the others, who later died in the hospital, go? Eventually, I would need some answers...
Well, the hospitals weren't totally out of the picture for me after Valley Forge. Following my discharge from the army hospital, I was transferred to the nearest VA hospital to my home. This was the Ann Arbor VA hospital in Michigan. My leg had healed and the work I needed done on my ears had to wait until the infections in them cleared up. The VA hospital was incredibly less caring than the Army hospitals had been. The Army hospitals were at least aware of what we had been through. The VA hospital's staff didn't seem to know or even want to know the long list of traumatic things we'd endured prior to our arrival there. It was as though we were an immense burden to them, and that their only concern was their pay check.
If I'd only known the conclusions I was to compile years later, perhaps Vietnam wouldn't have been such a dead end experience for me. Anyway, later on, after much thinking and reading, I resolved that there is such a thing as life after death; there is a God and that there is such a thing as real love.
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