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Absent of Grace and Mercy

By Rich Raitano

May 8, 1968

My thoughts were wildly conflicted as I sprinted through the maze of screened wooden hooches of 2nd Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai. Delta Company had made contact and the wounded and dead were on the way. I waited uneasily at the pad for Dust-Off to arrive. My heart pounded in my ears and my lungs sucked in the heavy night air.

One of our medics was a casualty. Andy, Fred, and Leroy were medics with Delta Company. In the distant darkness the familiar cadence of blades slicing into the dank air worked its way into my anxieties. I watched with pained anguish as Dust-Off approached, touched down, and the wounded were off loaded and rushed into the ER.

Gathering myself, I took a deep breath and followed them into the ER. The smell of blood and torn flesh filled the room. Doctors, nurses, and hospital medics went from litter to litter treating first those with the best chance of survival.

I slowly made my way to each litter taking names and assessing wounds while searching for the medic. He was not among them. One of the wounded told me that "doc was hit" but could tell me nothing more.

I rejected the thought of where he could be and struggled with the persistent gnawing truth as I made my way out of the ER and trotted down the darkened road to Graves Registration. I had done this so many times before and I knew he was there, but I would not say it; I would not dare think it.

The reefer room was dimly lit and cool. I had come to appreciate this room and the macabre opportunity it offered for escape from the hot and oppressive air outside its walls. On most occasions the attendant would pull cool beers from an empty drawer while I examined the bodies of fallen comrades. With emotions shut down it had become nothing more than a daily routine: assess and evaluate the dead and wounded, drink a beer and exchange small talk. Such is the stolid necessity that separates the living from the dead.

GR was nothing more than a grim crypt with a never ending supply of dead. Time and countless visits had kindly dulled my senses. But that night, May 8th, the room would not willingly receive me. Struggling against my desire to turn and walk away, I made my way to the desk and asked about the recent delivery. The attendant led me to a drawer, pulled it open and unzipped the body bag.

It was Fred.

I stepped back as the hopelessness of his death struck me. The room went silent, and my head filled with an incredulous roar as the sinister, cold specter of death rushed past me once again; looked me in the eyes and moved on.

"GSW to the back of the head," the attendant reported with a casual indifference as he turned and went about his business; his own senses numbed long ago.

A tight, knotted pressure began building in my chest and my head ached as I looked on the lifeless body of my friend. His face was unshaven and sweat streaked...and warm still to the touch. I gently lifted his head and located the entry wound. No exit. I wept silently for my friend; his life now gone. My tears fell on his lifeless body.

I was just two months into my duties as a Casualty Reporter and I had seen much death and mayhem already, and much more would follow before my tour was over, but this one was personal and filled with cruel irony.

In mid-January, 1968, while pulling guard on LZ Sue, the word had come to us that another friend, Dave, had been killed. It was a friendly fire incident. As the platoon was moving through rice paddies, Dave reached up and grabbed the barrel of Fred's M-16 to pull himself up. A shot rang out and a round entered Dave's chest under his arm. In a matter of seconds he was dead.

Fred was devastated and noticeably changed when I saw him again sometime later. He was more subdued; quiet. The weight of that death hung heavy and hard on his spirit.

And now he was dead.

I turned and walked into the humid oppressive air. My body shook with anger and grief while the past, present and future collided in my head. I was physically and mentally exhausted from the goddamned daily bloody mayhem of torn and shattered bodies and watching men die. I had had enough.

I screamed at God that night as I made my way up the road. I could no longer contain my rage or my tears. I wanted the forces of Heaven to explain this to me.

The urgent cacophony of busy choppers was the only reply I heard that night as I made my way back to the ER under a star filled sky. God was silent...and Heaven was far from near.