One day, a nurse came in with disturbing news. Zinni’s Kit Carson Scout (wounded in the same engagement and now in another ward of the hospital) was in bad shape.
“He has a shoulder wound,” she said. “It’s not serious. So there’s no reason he should be doing so badly. But we don’t think he’s going to make it. It’s as if he’s lost his will to live.”
This did not surprise Zinni. He’d experienced the fatalism of the Vietnamese many times before when he was an adviser. But that experience also gave him an idea how he might help his scout. “Can you move him into the bed next to me?” he asked.
“We really shouldn’t,” she said. “Our policy is to keep the Vietnamese patients separate. But,” she added, “in this case we can make an exception.”
Zinni spent the next several days keeping his scout going. His family on their visits also helped.
After days of touch and go, he came out of his funk.
One day, Zinni felt strong enough to try to find the troops from his company who’d been medevaced when he was; but after a search of the wards he only found one still confined to the hospital — Lance Corporal Maui, a big strapping Hawaiian kid from the point team. He’d been hit in the ankle and had a badly screwed-up leg. He and Zinni had a good talk, but it was clear he was depressed; he didn’t know if he would fully recover.
But that wasn’t the only thing bothering him. Something larger was on his mind; and after the two men had talked for a while, he blurted it out. “Sir, why are we here?” he asked.
Zinni gave him an answer, but it was the “party line” response; and by then he realized that was “piss-poor,” as he thinks of it now: “I knew we were fighting a war that neither the South Vietnamese nor the American people were backing, and we were doing it with a lousy strategy, the wrong policies, and terrible tactics. After I walked away from Corporal Maui, I swore that from then on no troops of mine would ever again get such a shitty answer from me. They’d know from me why we were fighting. And if I felt something was wrong that put the lives of our troops in needless risk, I swore I would speak out, never hesitating to put my own career on the line for doing what was right by my men.”
After a week, Zinni’s time in Vietnam came to an end. His stretcher was loaded on another medevac plane headed for Guam.
Several hours later, lying on his bed in the ward of the Guam hospital, he began thinking about the dressing on his back. It had been there for two days. Removing it was going to be agonizing.
Later, a corpsman came in to discuss his injury. “You’re lucky,” he said. “The finest surgeon in the Navy will be handling your case.”
At that moment, a doctor appeared at the side of Zinni’s bed. “Let’s take a look at this guy’s wound,” he said gruffly.
Zinni began his ritual of rolling slowly over on his stomach and putting a death grip on the bed rails.
“What the hell are you doing?” the doctor said.
Zinni explained the procedure back at the hospital in Vietnam.
“You’re shittin’ me,” he said. And then he said to the corpsman, “Make him happy.”
Zinni got a shot in each shoulder that made him very happy. Then the corpsman soaked the dressing in a solution that loosened the adhesive. A few minutes later, he simply lifted off the bandage.
“I wanted to kill the other medics who’d ripped it off twice a day,” Zinni says now.
After examining the wound, the surgeon explained what would be done. “In a couple of days, I’ll close the wound,” he said. “I’m going to reattach muscles in your back.” In other words, he saw no need to take muscle tissue from elsewhere in Zinni’s body. “If you’re willing to do serious physical therapy afterward, you can be back to normal. But it’s going to take a lot of work… not to mention good luck in avoiding infection.”
That was very good news. Zinni’s morale was instantly raised higher than it had been since he was wounded; and he began to give serious thought to recovering and getting back to his company.
Two days later, he was wheeled into the operating room. The operation was a total success, and the physical therapy soon started paying off — though he knew he had a very long way to go. His body was doing strange things; muscles and nerves were all mixed up; when something touched his back, he felt it on his chest. He had to get used to all kinds of new muscle “hookups.” But they worked!
During the next month, Zinni endured a few localized infections, requiring massive doses of penicillin, but at the end of the month he’d recovered enough to leave the hospital.
Zinni begged to go back to Vietnam. He knew that was where he belonged. His time in the hospital had convinced him more than ever of that. Though the doctor was very reluctant, he liked Zinni’s drive and his eagerness to get back with his guys. He gave in and released him to full duty, but with a promise to continue to work out.
Zinni promised.
His orders sent him to Okinawa… “a stop off on the way back to Nam,” he thought.
In the spring of 1975, Vietnam collapsed, abandoned by the U.S. whose people could no longer support the war.
The Vietnamese Marines were badly mauled in the final battles. The remnants fought on in the hills for a time, and then the Marines ceased to exist.[23]
CHAPTER THREE
THE POINT OF THE SPEAR
Thoughout his convalescence, Zinni remained unaware that the Vietnam War had ended for him when he was evacuated from the Que Son Mountains.
By late December 1970, he had recovered enough to be transferred to Camp Hauge on Okinawa, where every Marine posted in the Western Pacific (including Vietnam) had to go for processing. When he arrived, Zinni expected a short stay, swiftly followed by return to duty to his unit in Vietnam. But new regulations, reflecting the growing reduction in U.S. forces, ended that hope: Since he’d been wounded and evacuated for more than thirty days, he was not allowed to return to combat. Neither could he go back to the States, since he had convinced the doctors, despite their strong concerns, to release him to full duty. Nor, finally, could he be assigned to an infantry unit based in Okinawa, such as the 3rd Marine Division, recently returned from Vietnam, since they were potentially redeployable to Vietnam, and Zinni could not be deployed there, by virtue of the rule previously stated. He had learned firsthand about catch-22s.
Zinni spent the remaining eight months of his yearlong Vietnam tour in the 3rd Force Service Regiment (3rd FSR), a logistics unit based at Camp Foster, Okinawa.
He expected to be bored. He was wrong.
Camp Foster was not boring. In fact, if his wish had been for combat, then his wish was granted. Camp Foster proved to be not all that different from a “real” combat zone… in many ways tougher than Vietnam.
After a few days of administrative processing, he set out to report in to 3rd FSR. His total possessions included a Red Cross-donated shaving kit and civilian clothes purchased out of his meager pay advance from the tiny post exchange at Camp Hauge.
Late one night, he walked out of the main gate and hailed an Okinawan taxicab to drive him to Camp Foster to report in. As the little car headed up the island road, his mood could not have been darker, thinking about his Marines in Vietnam and his family back in the States. He had managed to miss going back to either of them.
Okinawa— barely sixty-six miles long and perhaps nineteen miles at its widest — runs roughly north to south. In the north, the country is rugged, much of it jungle. The more populated areas are in the south. Its people are of mixed race — partly Chinese, partly South Pacific islander, and partly Japanese — with a complicated history.
