Download PDF of this full issue: v27n2.pdf (9.8 MB)

No More Half-People

By Paul Giannone

We had been lying in a pit by the airstrip for eternity, it seemed. Looking above the rim of that hole, I could see tracer rounds and parachute flares from the battle in the distance. That battle was someone else's hell though. My hell was in the bottom of the pit.

Looking at the mass of flesh and blood below me, I thought to myself, "It must have been a Bouncing Betty mine" triggered by the South Vietnamese patrol that I now shared the pit with. These mines are designed to bounce up, out of the ground and explode: to slash, dismember and disembowel a whole squad, rather than just the man who stepped on it. But then again, it could have been an American-made Claymore mine.

Whatever it was, the mine had done its job well. A South Vietnamese army medic was trying to help the wounded. As a US Army medic, I had been called in with a radioman to assess the damage and call for a helicopter to evacuate the wounded if necessary.

Three of the men looked as if their lower bodies had been ripped open with meat cleavers. As hard as the medic worked, they continued to ooze blood. But the other soldier was the worst off. Everyone's eyes were fixed on him.

"He must have been the one who stepped on the mine," I thought. Both his legs were gone above the knees. If there had been any mercy, shock would have knocked him out. But he lay there, awake, staring up at the sky. I had been in Nam long enough to recognize the glassiness in the human eye that indicates death is stalking. He had that look, but death would not come quick that night.

And then it started. To everyone's horror this half-man began to lift his legs and look at his stumps. He did it slowly, repetitiously.

The chatter from the radioman increased in volume. Calling in a medevac was routine. You gave your location, the number and disposition of the wounded and soon a helicopter appeared. But there was a battle on that night and Americans were being wounded and dying. Four broken up Vietnamese soldiers were a low priority. The radio operator pleaded, then he tried cursing and threatening. All the while, the soldier cut in half kept raising and lowering his bloodied, bandaged stumps.

"What are the odds that he'll survive?" I wondered. "And even if he did, what would a broken half-soldier do in a Third World country?" The South Vietnamese Army threw out their broken soldiers like we toss out garbage. There was an entire street in Da Nang lined with thousands of these dismembered soldiers. They sat in groups, talking, smoking, begging, waiting for nothing.

My hand went to the handle of my pistol and the radio operator looked at me through the darkness. I could tell that he knew what I was thinking. It would be a quick short blast of mercy, but I couldn't get myself to do it. I swore at the radioman and begged him to do whatever he could to get these men out. I looked out at the fight in the distance, avoiding the carnage in the pit, as if staring into the darkness could will the helicopter to arrive. For a while, the half-soldier stopped raising his stumps. We all thought he was dead, but then it started again.

Suddenly, the radioman got the call and I heard the rotor blades of the helicopter. I picked up a hand-held strobe light and ran to the center of the airstrip, holding it over my head so that the helicopter could see a friendly face on the ground. We began loading the wounded. The last man out was the man with no legs. The crew chief indicated that he wanted this man on one of the stretchers bolted into the helicopter. As we lifted him up, the prop blast of the helicopter lifted the stretcher under him and covered me with his blood.

Time is a healer. Time is like Novocain. It allows your brain to push events off to the side. My ghosts, especially the half-man, came to visit me in the night for years, but I battled them back. I buried them.

In May of this year, though, I was jarred back to reality during a visit to Angola. Twenty years of war have left Angola a country filled with mine-created half-people. You can't walk down a city street, or visit a village or a school and not see the hobbling victims of mines. A face that I remember is that of a little girl, about 10 years old, walking on crutches - one leg missing - in a refugee camp in Bie Province. I, too, have a little girl.

I thought of my daughter in the United States and wondered what it would be like if something put in the ground years ago ripped her limbs off. The little girl in the refugee camp was not unlike the half-soldiers of Vietnam. She faced a life of frustration, despair and waiting.

There are still 10 million land mines in Angola - one for every man, woman and child in that country. Worldwide, there are an estimated 100 million land mines throughout 68 countries. Wars end, but land mines don't.

Over 100 countries have pledged to meet in Ottawa in December to ban the use of land mines by the year 2000, to help ensure that no more mine-maimed people are faced with a world of emptiness, frustration, and despair. In August, the US government agreed to participate in those talks. As a result, the United States is now present at the negotiations taking place in Oslo, Norway through September 19, 1997. Unfortunately, however, the United States has already demanded exemptions for mines on the Korean peninsula and the use of certain types of mines.

When we were in our twentiess, President Clinton protested the war in which I met my half-soldier. Today, he has a chance to end US collusion in the creation of more half-people. As the US charts its course with regard to the Ottawa process, may the President remember our children. May he remember the ghost of a half-soldier lying in a pit.

Paul Giannone is a member of CARE's emergency response staff in Atlanta. This article first appeared in the The Atlanta Journal Constitution on September 10, 1997. Thirty-nine of the 63 countries where CARE International works are affected by land mines.