Larry Jackson Remembers His Last Days in Vietnam (cont.)
This One Is Dead
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They got me up to the top and lay me beside all the rest of the wounded. I couldn't believe I was alive.
My good friend Blair finally found me and knelt down beside me and was crying uncontrollably because I was seriously wounded and going out. I was still not sure what would happen to me, so I gave Blair $300 I had rolled up in a round band-aid can. I told him to send it to my mother since we both had written letters to each other's mother. He knew my family could use the money if I didn't make it.
Finally the chopper made it up there. They were going to get me and the rest that were hit badly out first, but they didn't know how long it would be before they would attack again. They put me in the chopper and if you can imagine stacking cord wood, that's how they put us in there.
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It was solid blood in the chopper with all of us bleeding on each other. There were Marines I could see with arms and legs gone and tourniquets on them.
I was told later that there were so many of us wounded in the first chopper that it couldn't get off the ground at first. All the Marines were running down to the other end of the landing zone thinking we were going to crash. Finally, it rose above the tree line and left.
I went to a field aid station that was like something you would see on the TV show MASH. I was in and out of consciousness again now. I couldn't open my eyes but I could hear guys screaming with pain and people scrambling around. I must have been breathing really shallow and I felt somebody touching my body now.
The next thing I heard was, "This one is dead" and they pulled the sheet over my face.
