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Drug Detention

By VVAW

"How can you believe a place like that is going to help you when they let a man who is sweating like crazy and running a high fever, die in front of them?" a GI from the 542nd here in Long Bing asked.

He was talking about TC Hill, the drug detention center located 12 miles north of Saigon. And he was also talking about his former unit-mate, SP-4 Jeffrey C. Wright, from Flagstaff, Arizona, who died of malaria here.

Wright didn't die in the hospital at TC Hill. He was "drying out" in the post's detention center. Wright's friends say he had gone to sick call several times complaining of a chill and cramps, but the medics sent him away telling him he only had a cold.

"He was walking around here like a skeleton for three or four days," a member of the unit asserted. "Then his urine test came out positive and he was sent to the center at TC Hill."

Periodic urine samples are taken in search of Heroin users, though many men claim they are both "affront to personal privacy", and frequently inaccurate. Mistakes in diagnosis are common. A Spec 4 said, "For instance, they picked up a hard-drinking lifer a few weeks ago, and sent him to the center. He couldn't believe it. He had never even smoked pot, let alone heroin, but his test came out positive and he was sent up to TC Hill to dry out."

Wright suspected he had malaria before he went up to TC Hill, but according to men in the unit, "People in the detention center mistook for malaria symptoms for withdrawal pains and refused to take him to the hospital."

Army spokesmen admit the incident occurred, but claim "The staff at the drug detention center thought Wright was 'Jonesing' (going into withdrawal). By the time they realized their mistake it was too late. He was dead by the time he reached the hospital."