A/N: Just throwing in some info before the start of the Drabble. Hope you don't mind. P.S. Thank you Wolfy dear for encourage this, I'd love to see Helene's side of this! <33 Please forgive the character banner but I've got to dig through a few boxes to find some of my Dad's photos. It’s hopefully a temporary banner. P.S. I have no idea what I did on the first post for this drabble but somehow the post got locked. I do apologize.
A brief time line for the locations Colleen & Sam called their temporary home from the start to the bitter end. **updated the years because dammit I did more research**
’64 - ’66 - Pleiku
’66 - ’68 - Tam Kay
’68 - ’71 - Cam Ranh Bay
’71 - ’72 - Long Giao
’73 - '75 - Saigon
The quote ‘The temperature is 105 and rising.’ And the song White Christmas were indeed used by the Defense Attache’s Radio but only in April of 1975. The last of the US troops pulled out in 1973 before the city of Saigon fell. I’m just going by anecdotes from my Dad ( who served in the Navy and who rather vividly described what the jungle atmosphere was like. He left in either '72 and ended up sleeping nearly the entire way home on the plane. ) and a few sources on the net.
* Borrowing the phrase good morning Vietnam from AFRS radio DJ Adrian Cronauer who sadly passed away in July of this year. I will always love the Robin Williams movie of the same name.
* There is a book I highly recommend if you’re interested that started this entire endeavor. It’s called Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam by Bernard Edelman.
MUST = Medical Unit Self-Contained Transportable AFRS = Armed Forces Radio Show MEDCAP - Medical Civic Action Program used for Vietnamese civilians in villages that were working with the American military. Space A = Space Available
For What It's Worth“Gooooood morning Vietnam! Hey this is not a test! This is rock n’ roll. Time to rock it from the Delta to the DMZ! AFVN better than AFVD which means you’ve gotta get a quick shot. This first request comes from Lt. Dan Taylor out in DaNang. Here's to you, Danny Boy.”
The sounds of the AFRS flooded the tiny tent that Colleen Murphy had called home on the MUST unit for the past year. The Game of Love filtered through the radio's speakers and Col found herself checking inventory and swinging her hips to the beat. It wasn't as if anyone was going to actually see her, the unit was thankfully mostly empty except a few of the injured awaiting transport to the Army hospital in Saigon. She’d been here eleven years, she knew she could have left like so many other nurses had, just packed her gear and gotten the hell out of dodge but for some reason she hadn’t. Not when so many men, boys really, and other innocent people depended on her. At least that’s what she told herself during the daylight hours as the sky misted over in a sepia tone haze from the defoliant fog used to clear the brush and lush green jungle that surrounded the unit. The front expanse was already brown and cleared leaving nothing but sandy dirt. The nights though, were as deep and dark as Indian ink and seemingly endless. Between the exotic wildlife that prowled deeper in the jungle a human threat loomed twice as large. Mortar strikes, flash bombs, various rapid fire of rifles she’d heard it all and it still shattered her each time. It was always the worst when it rained for some reason, the sounds weren’t muffled and the rain wasn’t a gentle patter that she was used to back home. It came in sideways sheets and the ground turned to a sludgy soup that could pull a grown man down to his waist. Those were the nights that she thought of them. Her mother, Eileen, her best friend Helene who was the sister not by blood but by soul that God himself had gifted her with, and the man that had stepped up to guide her, Harvey Starling, Helene’s father. Not an evening went by when she didn’t close her eyes and think of them, pray for them, pray to live to see them once this, whatever this entire thing was, was over. Needless to say when the rainy season swept through Long Giao, or Camp Hell Hole as it had been dubbed by the GIs, she spent many a night praying and crying. Those were the nights when Sam would find her huddled in one of the utility store rooms clutching her rosary and sobbing, begging God as the rain fell and mortars flew overhead deeper into the jungle.
“Please God, please just let me live another day so I can see them again. Please.”
The fear of death she hadn’t had when she had initially gone over. No. That had come to her with a vengeance in Tam Ky in ’67. She’d had nearly three years in and then all of the sudden all it took was a gunshot to the thigh coming back from a MEDCAP mission and a check in on an infantry division, a normal day until all of the sudden it wasn’t. She hadn’t even had time to scream when she felt the pain. Blood stained her right thigh as a searing pain bloomed. Those same hands she knew so well applied as much pressure as they could while another nurse readied the instruments needed for the extraction and another readied a suture kit. Her world was going in and out and for a moment she could have sworn she was back home lounging on Good Harbor beach in the late afternoon sun listening to the sounds of the surf. Her eyes focused and unfocused and one of the last things she saw was the Corpsman in front of her in the passenger seat of the medic Jeep slump over as the windshield was streaked with flecks of red. For an absurd moment she thought it was her Granny Sheehan’s strawberry jam of all things. She found herself refocusing on Sam's face begging him to check medic. His name had been Christopher Bilmoore, he had just turned 19 and he had hair the color of summer wheat. He had called Indiana home he had spent his life in and out of foster care. She still remembered the look on his face when she and some of the other nurses and doctors had surprised him with a coffee cake and some emergency candles stuck into it along with carefully wrapped gifts. He was just a young kid not even old enough to drink and he was dead. She would never forget his name or his face. She never forgot any of them, carrying each of them in her heart because they deserved to be remembered by at least one person. Deep down she knew that to keep her sanity she should have never learned their names, most of the other nurses didn’t specifically if something did happen to the servicemen they could shield themselves from the pain of the loss. Colleen couldn’t bring herself to that point, it was stupid she knew it but that’s just the way she was. She’d seen death and destruction entirely too many times at this point but still, she chose to stay for the same reason her Sam did. Because they were needed. So she had her dreams of the people she loved back home. The tiny town she’d been born in, it was eternally autumn there when the air was crisp and the leaves were changing. She could almost smell the salty air if she tried hard enough. Then she’d open her eyes and still find herself shocked that she was standing in a brightly lit sterile unit the harsh light of the halogen bulbs casting a harsh slash of light.
Home was 8,735 miles away but in her dreams she felt like it was just around the corner. The scampering of tiny feet and reedy little voices of a few local children, the Nguyens, brought her out of her yarn gathering.
“Nurse lady! Doctor Sam! Đến nhanh lên!”
A second tiny voice, most likely belonging to the younger sister, Huong sounded.
“Em bé đang dến!”
Grabbing the medic bag and shaking a slumbering Sam they raced out to see Mrs. Nguyen being pushed in a wooden wheelbarrow by her mother-in-law.
“Oh boy…I was wondering when she was due. “
“You owe me ten when we get back home, Col. Đưa cô ấy đến đây.”
April 25, 1975“The temperature is 105 and rising.”
The cheery voice sounded on the Defense Attache’s radio station just before it cut to Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. The ride to Bien Hoa Air Base had started out joyous for their group but as they took their seat on the Space A plane it set it. They had packed up their belongings, a suitcase and duffle each and then went about breaking down the medical supplies. Sam had broken protocol the evening before and had handed out basic medications and bandages to the remaining villagers. What had been left was loaded onto the back of a Huey and would most likely be used in some hospital in Frankfurt. The rest? Would probably end up on the burn and no return pile.
“You’re crying again, Col.”
She was offered a tissue by the hands she knew so well, every mark had been engrained in her mind. After nearly eleven years spent at Sam’s side in and out of the operating room and in the fields she knew him.
“Sorry. It’s just…I’m thinking about…them. About Christopher.”
“You wanna talk about it?"
“Yes…and no,I dunno. I’m thinking about all those boys that’ll never have this chance. To know that feeling that they’re going back…”
She still hadn’t been able to say the word home. A small part of her still thought she’d jinx herself if she said it.
“I know, Colly. I know.”
Deep down she knew he did. He had been there right along with her, had seen the same moments and had countless ones of his own. A moment passed and he pulled her towards his shoulder and gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders before he smoothed her hair. The last thing she remembered was being woken up as they flew over the Tokyo and landed in Chicago. Another flight and somewhere over Farmingham Sam revealed the need to get away from loud noises and crowds. The last year in Saigon had done them both in. Constant shellings and the threat of the city being overtaken loomed large. Final approach had been a rough one, Colleen found herself grabbing Sam's hand on reflex and said a silent prayer. Gathering the courage she found herself finally finding her voice.
“You mean to tell me that you’ve never been fishing your life..what the hell kind of childhood did you have, Sam?”
“A very bookish one, I played a lot of chess. Gloucester sounds like a dream though. You’ve gotta promise that you’ll take us out though.”
“The first thing we’re doing when we get off this damn plane is going fishing.”
“Well, I thought that maybe we’d get married first but since you’ve got fishing on your mind…”
“I can easily rearrange my schedule.”
“Good, because they’re meeting us.”
Colleen made it through customs as she turned towards her traveling companion.
“Meeting us where?”
“Here.”
“What?”
“Look over there.”
Colleen turned and saw three faces that she had dreamed about since she had left home.
Her bags had dropped from her grip with a solid thud and her feet moved on their own.
Before she knew it she was hugging each of them like her life depended on it. In a sense it had, all that time spent praying for them, to be able to come home to them, and here she was actually hugging them.
“I…oh my god…
oh my god….”
Drifting from her mother to Helene to Harvey and back again her world blurred and for a split second she thought this was all another dream. She panicked as she studied each of their faces and hugged them all over again.
“I’m not dreaming, please please
please tell me I’m not dreaming and that you’re all here.”
“You’re not dreaming, Colly. You’re home.”
The voice of her best friend filled her ears as tears slid down both of their cheeks, makeup running every which way.
“I’m home. We're actually home."
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