When the battle was just about over a platoon
came in to count the dead - and they found us lying out there. They were surprised that anything lived through that bombing. I went to a field hospital first. One of my GIs from Parris Island was there all datasets in the hospital. He had been in Nam two weeks. He got shot in that same battle I was hit in. He had been shot five times. I saw the doctors look at me. They sort of shook their heads, wrote something down and then they gave me a shot and I was out. I woke up on an operating table at Phu By. The doctors gave me some more shots and I was out again.
I woke up in bed I looked like a mummy
I was wrapped in bandages from my head to my foot. Next to me was my buddy Skip. He was in the next bed. He was real bad, shot in the stomach. I don't know whether he made it or not. Right across the way was Sully. He was on his stomach cause he had been shot in the ass. Our outfit really took a beating in that battle.
They strapped me on a stretcher - put me on a plane back to Da Nang, where I stayed at an Air Force hospital for a couple of days. Then I was flown into Cam Rahn Bay. I thought I was home when I landed there. Giant concrete air strip all lit up. Paved streets. Sidewalks. Nurses walking on the plane. I said, I'm out of that shit, I'm home. I had just woken up and I thought I was in America. Then I saw a jeep pull up with a sixty machine gun mounted on it, and I said, Oh, no, I'm still here.
Lying there in the bed and those guys
come into the hospital, waxing the floors, scrubbing walls, moving beds out so it don't look so crowded. I knew that morning something was coming through, but I didn't know what. They never did that before. They said, "The man is coming." I said, "Who?" and the guy says, "LBJ."
Then a thousand newsmen with cameras and lights all come in. Then come some officers and President Johnson with Marshal Ky, and Westmoreland was there too. Johnson stops and talks to the wounded. The press is writing it all down and taking a million pictures. Then he comes over to my bed. Some officer says to him, "Lance Corporal Whitmore, wounded in action," etc., etc.
The President walks over with a Hawaiian shirt with a million colours in it and brown slacks. He grabs my hand and he says, "How are you doing?" I'm practically dying, but I say, "Fine, sir, just fine." He looks at me and says, "This job that you've done for your country, we appreciate that." Then he introduces Ky, a tiny little mother-fucker. He shakes my hand too. Then Westmoreland is there too.