Search and Destroy by Keith W. Nolan

Author:Keith W. Nolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2010-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Sergeant Webster spent a month aboard a hospital ship and, upon discharge, was reassigned to the squadron rear in Fat City in recognition of his two Purple Hearts. Webster had a good case of short-timer’s fever by then and recalls being put in charge of a detail “that did whatever it did, which I can’t tell you a lot about because I wasn’t concerned and didn’t show up most of the time.”

Staff Sergeant Pryor was reassigned all the way back to a guard tower at division headquarters as part of the Chu Lai Defense Command. The transfer was the result of a dragoon, who, poring over the army manual like a convict studying the law, had discovered a life-saving wrinkle: any GI wounded three times qualified for immediate reassignment to the rear. “Word spread like wildfire,” recalls Pryor, “and people demanded to be pulled off the line.”

Pryor was one of them, thanking his lucky stars that his hand and eye injuries from Hill 34 had been recorded as separate wounds: he thus received two more Purple Hearts to go with the one from the Pineapple Forest. Befriending another thrice-wounded staff sergeant, a proud black man from Mississippi, Pryor and his buddy decompressed in the rear with Jack Daniel’s. “I was drunk for thirty straight days,” he says. “I didn’t slow down until I looked in the mirror, and my face was bloated like I had elephantiasis. I realized I was killing myself.”

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