The 17211 [Marine C-117D, Bu. No. 17211]

My first memory is a voice asking me if I want my first of kin notified. The voice is close to the left side of my head and even though I can't see or feel anything, I sense somehow that I am lying face up on the ground. My mind is floating around in a fog somewhere with only a thin thread connecting me to reality. Something terrible has happened. I don't know what but something very terrible has happened. It is more of an intense feeling than a memory; an overpowering feeling that something terrible has happened very close by and I was involved somehow in a bad way

Then, a very vivid supercharged bolt of memory shoots through the fog. I AM ALIVE!  I AM ALIVE!  OH MY GOD! I'M STILL ALIVE! Inside my scrambled mind I am ecstatic. I am delirious with joy. I am hysterical. I scream and cry with joy.

Only an instant ago I was doubled over from strong g-forces, my forehead pressed flat against the deck in a death-grip no amount of struggle could free me from. I was pinned helpless in an out of control aircraft that was seconds away from hitting the ground. I had no idea what was up down or any which way. One thing I knew though, and with absolute clarity, was that this plane was never going to land anywhere anymore. I was in an out of control airplane in its final death dive and in a few seconds I would be DEAD. DEAD! NIGHTMARE MOTHER OF ALL NIGHTMARES! NO! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING TO ME!

I have no concept of any passage of time between that horrifying instant and the voice asking if I wanted my first of kin notified -- I was alive; that I knew. First of kin?  Still can't feel or see anything but know I'm injured. I tell the voice, "No."  My folks did not want me to go into the Marines, let alone Vietnam. They worried about me a lot. No, don't tell anyone anything.

Later. An hour ... two hours ... many hours?  I don't know. I am vaguely aware that I am being operated on and it has something to do with my leg and I am pleading with these vague shapes around me not to cut it off. Oh God, this nightmare can't be happening to me! Fade out.

Later still.

I can't make much sense out of things. I have a terrible pain in my back. Fade in, fade out.

Like struggling up the side of a deep dark misty well and then slipping back down again over and over, but every time struggling up a little higher and falling back a little less.

I am aware that I am in a field hospital and I am surrounded by wounded. They tell me I am at Charlie Med. I know where that is; at the base of Freedom Hill 327. My back hurts terribly. I try ever so gently to change my position to see if that will help. Nope.

I can't move or feel anything from my waist down. Crap! There is my leg! Sure glad to see that. It is in a cast up to my crotch but it is still there. It is night outside. What time it is, I don't know or care. Lots of wounded being brought in. Fade in and out.

I am aware of a wounded guy babbling in the bed across from me. He seems to be lucid but I can't understand what he is saying. A corpsman comes by to check on me and I ask him about the guy in the bed across from me. He gets down close to my ear and tells me the guy is missing everything from the middle of his hips down and that he will be dead soon. No ifs ands or buts about it. He was not callous when he said it -- it was just the way he said it. I remember it made me feel strange and very sad though. The Corpsman leaves and I am mad at myself for not remembering to ask him what is wrong with me. Fade in fade out.

It is light now. The bed across from me is empty. I am becoming very slowly more lucid. A corpsman comes by and seems happy than I am coming around. I ask him how long I am going to be laid up. He says that I have internal injuries and they don't want to move me until I stabilize. He says after a couple of days they will move me to another hospitable but he didn't know where. I ask him about the rest of the crew and the corpsman assures me that I am the most badly injured. Well, I know by now that I am going to get through this okay, so if I am the worst injured, hallelujah. Everything is all right with the world after all.

Morphine making me feel very drowsy and very comfortable. Ah, this is glorious. I can go to sleep any time I want. I don't have to do anything but lay here. Beginning to think that this is pretty good duty. First real rest I have had since I got here. I drift in and out a lot those first few day and don't really remember a whole lot about it.

Days later.

I am now much more alert and aware. I am also in a world of hurt. I feel like I have been beaten to a pulp. Every inch of my body it seems is a different color. My head aches (skull fracture and concussion), my back hurts terribly (torn muscles and ligaments), my shoulder aches (dislocated), my leg aches (compound fracture), my broken ribs are killing me, my guts hurt, my chest hurts terribly (infected internal damage to my rib cage and left lung). Boy do I hurt. And this hurt goes on and on. The shots help. They put me into dreamland for a while but the pain always brings me back to consciousness way before it is time for another shot.

Weeks later.

Violent G forces double me over from my sitting position and force my head to the deck. I try to force myself up with my arms but I can't. The plane begins bucking and jerking. Bucking and jerking now very severe. It is crashing and we are going to die. AGhhhhh!

Wrenched awake, breathing hard, drenched in sweat, the ward is dark and quite. I can see the first hint of dawn seeping through the windows of my air conditioned ward on the second floor of the Yokosuka Naval Hospital. I am not hurting so much now ... but these dreams are driving me crazy.

Months later.

The C-130 touches down at Đà Nẵng Air Base just before dawn and taxis over to Marine air freight. I grab my stuff and walk the short distance to my old hut. Everyone is still sacked out from an all night flare mission. I yell reveille and wake them all up. They look at me like I am a ghost. I-I-I'm baaack!  A little gimpy but back.

Decades later.

I am on a business trip which takes me to Washington D.C.

I must go. I don't want to but I must go and honor them, and all the others.

The docent [guide] helps me find their names. The four of them are all together and I can cover them with the extended fingers of my right hand -- there they are, etched in the black granite -- the rest of my crew. The corpsman had lied to me, you see.

I stand there in another world for I don't know how long, caressing the black granite. Why?  Why me?  Why not me?  Why am I still here?  I have never been able to find the answer to that question and probably never will. When we get together again for a few beers on the Otherside, maybe between the five of us, we can make some sense out of the whole crazy thing.

Raymond Prittie, USMC, WS LM-35,
Radio Operator, Marine C-117D, Bu. No. 17211,
Crashed on land, Quang Nam Province, RVN, July 25, 1966
10th day of squadron operations in support of Operation Hastings.