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Summary - December 1967
To be written
December 9
Christmas 1967
For Christmas 1967 a ceasefire supposedly had been agreed to. It seemed like it was working as billed because Christmas Eve was very quiet. I was working the night shift in X-ray, meaning I went to work at 6pm and stayed through to 7 am the next morning. If all went well I'd turn the lights out at midnight and sack out in one of the bunk beds we shared with the Lab. That way I was there to be called out for a dust-off or other emergency. The night meal was served in the Mess Hall at 11:00pm and it was the usual leftovers from the dinner meal plus eggs made to order. For Christmas there were some extras like the Foremost Milk processing plant in Saigon had made eggnog and we had a lot plus most of us had received 'Care Packages' with cookies and other goodies that we shared. Seating at the night meal was not segregated so that Doctors, Nurses, corpsmen, Officers and EM's all sat together. I can't remember the conversations but some of it was about missing Christmas at home and about the Bob Hope Show being at Long Binh the next day. On my way back to the clinic I checked into the Emergency Room and found everything quiet with the staff reading and writing letters. Nothing doing anywhere, the Ceasefire was working. I settled down to some reading and listening to tapes on the Akai tapedeck.
Sometime after midnight the telephone rudely woke me up. It was the ER telling me a Dust Off was inbound. I walked the ramp across to the ER. I learned the Dust Off carried one litter with a neck injury being transferred from the 36th Evac in Vung Tau. As soon as it touched down we were at the pad, I carried the litter for the exchange and two corpsmen wrestled with the patient on the litter. Inside the ER we met a patient like we'd not seen before. He was a big guy, over 200 lbs, and alternately happy - loudly yelling, "Merry Christmas!" and angry that he'd been taken away from his party. He occasionally would plead to be let go so he could go back to his party. The nurse settled him down with some sympathetic words and a few pointed threats as only a good ER nurse can do. We learned that the guy was having a very Merry Christmas Eve, going from party to party when he fell out the back of a lambretta tricycle taxi. He landed on his head and his friends thought his neck was broken. The ER at Vung Tau sent him to the 24th because we were the neurosurgery center. Dr. Leaver was the surgeon on call and was soon at the ER. Our patient was thoroughly anesthetized by all the Christmas cheer he'd ingested. He serenaded us with carols and we were laughing at his good humor even as we had to immobilize him, keeping him strapped to the litter. Dr. Leaver helped push the gurney over to x-ray and waited in the reading room as I took two pictures of the C-spine. The ER corpsman watched the patient while I developed the films and brought them to Dr. Leaver. We were both floored to see on the lateral view a jagged fracture of the spine of C-7. Our 'Happy' patient had a broken neck. Merry Christmas!! The rest of the night was uneventful.
Because it was Christmas Day the clinic was manned by a 'skeleton staff' and the rest were given the day off. As soon as I was off work I went to the motorpool and checked out our 3/4-ton truck. I gathered some food from the Mess Hall and my buddies from the Pharmacy, Lab & X-ray hootch and we drove to the Long Binh "Dust Bowl." The Bowl was carved out of a hill with rows of seats made of sandbags all overlooking the wooden stage. We got there at about 7:30 for an 11:00am show. There were already several hundred GI's, some of whom must have spent the night. We got decent seats up in row 9 or 10, left of the stage and maybe 200 or 300 feet away. We had a great view as the bowl filled up with GI's from Long Binh, Bien Hoa, Black Horse, Di An, and elsewhere coming by bus, jeep, deuce and half etc. The wooden benches in the area on the floor of the bowl right in front of the stage remained empty. There was a big tower about 10 rows back in the middle of the floor and we watched technicians mount lights, cameras, sound equipment and cue cards. Around 10:00am, to our amazement and good fortune, buses arrived and delivered dozens of patients in blue pajamas. They were herded to those prime seats at the front by Nurses and Corpsmen who were our friends. The front rows had been reserved for patients from the 24th and also the 93rd Evac Hospitals! My buddies and I clambered over the rows to meet the parade of blue pajamas. With more seats than patients, our friends welcomed us to the group. We were in the third row from the stage!
About ten minutes before the show started, General Westmoreland, General Palmer, Ambassador Bunker and Vice Premier Nguyen Cao Ky (with wife) were escorted onto the floor of the bowl and took their reserved seats, about 10 rows behind us!
Bob Hope and Raquel Welch.
Click on photo to see
larger versionBob Hope, Les Brown and the Band of Renown, Miss World, Phil Crosby, Earl Wilson, Barbara McNair and Raquel Welch, what a show! Thousands of GI's cheered themselves hoarse. I saw a sea of Olive Drab all around with some GI's who'd climbed the nearby telephone polls alternately cheering, clapping and snapping pictures. You could tell when the show was being taped because Bob Hope diligently read his lines from the cue cards on the camera tower behind us. When the cameras weren't rolling, Bob got a little more risqué and spontaneous. Without a doubt the favorites were Raquel Welch and Barbara McNair. They each had very sexy, clinging nightgowns that had all the guys eyes riveted as they danced and sang. Two songs I remember are Raquel singing 'Sound of a Different Drum' and Barbara McNair led us all in 'Silent Night'. To this day whenever I hear the Linda Ronstadt recording of 'Sound of a Different Drum' I remember Raquel Welch, in a Blue and White knit micro-mini dress, dancing and singing before ten thousand cheering GI's. A truly memorable Christmas Day."
Updated October 25, 2001