YOU PARENTS PLEASE, PLEASE READ THIS IN ITS ENTIRETY.
My unit was stationed on one corner of what was called ‘Leatherneck Square’ just below the DMZ in South Vietnam. It was night, I was sitting on a sandbag and I was looking around in the darkness when I was suddenly caught in the blazing hot hands that crushed me, then instantaneously they jerked apart and it felt like I exploded. The next thing I remember I was on my back in a hole with two or three of my fellow Marines and I was already instinctively rubbing my hands and fingers on my neck above my flack jacket so I could stick my fingers in the wounds to hinder the loss of blood until a corpsman could get to me! There wasn’t any! I was still dazed. When it got daylight, my buddies and I started looking around. The best I can remember my helmet liner was there but we couldn’t find the protective, outer steel part of my helmet.
A piece of shrapnel had just touched the front of my flack jacket in the center of my chest and turned immediately on a 90-degree angle, cutting the cloth of my flak jacket then had cut my flak jacket pocket off and had somehow gotten past my left arm. We couldn’t find my flack jacket pocket or the pack of cigarettes and lighter that were in the pocket! Somebody said it had been a 122 mm Russian rocket and it had landed and exploded 14 ft. directly in front of me! We investigated under the cut in the flack jacket cloth that went halfway across my chest and not one thread of the fiberglass plates had been scratched; NOT ONE!
An odd thing is that the closer a rocket or artillery shell is going to hit close to you the less time you have to hear it! I didn’t even hear the blast; I was part of it and was deafened. We had been taught that the concussion wave travels at 7000 miles per hour and the shrapnel is ahead of it. That fire hot concussion wave is what made me feel crushed and then made me feel like I had exploded when it got by but the two things were instantaneous. Science says that shrapnel can only go in a straight line until it loses its energy and falls to the earth, hits something and stops, goes through something then loses it energy and falls to the earth or hits something and ricochets away then falls to the earth. One of my men said; “Wow! Ole Sgt. Dave shore lucked out that time boys!” The others agreed and I could only shake my still buzzing head.
I did not tell my parents about the things that were happening but I did keep notes about various events and the date they happened. As far as Mom and Dad were concerned, I was safe in a cushy job. EXCEPT the time I was wounded! As soon as I realized the military would notify my parents, I immediately wrote a letter home explaining that I was just fine, just a little cut on my forehead. I did not tell them my little eleven-man unit had taken 1 KIA and 6 wounded including me. The other 5 were flown out to a hospital ship to stabilize them then on to a hospital for long term recovery.
After my 13-month tour was over I was flown from Dong Ha in the North on a military flight to Da Nang then on to Saigon where we were placed on a commercial jet flight to California then another commercial flight to New York then a commercial flight to Jacksonville, N. C. and then a bus to Camp Lejeune where I was to be stationed. I checked in with my unit and took a 30-day leave to finally, finally, finally go home. I caught a commercial flight to a larger city about 60 miles from my home. The one trip per day local Greyhound bus that made local stops had already left so I hitch-hiked in my uniform with my small suitcase and caught a two different of rides home. The first one had taken me about one third of the way home so I hitch-hiked another one that took me all the way home.
Let me tell you about my home before I go on. We were old-fashioned, poor folk, hillbillys. Please be patient, it will be worth the wait! When I was 6-years old we lived in an ancient, warped, rented house about 1-mile up Lick Fork holler (hillbilly colloquialism for the hollow, the valley between two ridges or points). Mom had attended a revival held in the old one room school about one fourth mile up the road from that house we rented and had gotten saved in the revival being held there when I was about four years old. I have a foggy memory of her baptism in the deep pool of water in Lick Fork creek behind the school when I was about four years old. Mom was the only Christian in the family.
My Dad traded for a medium sized barn sitting on about a one- and one-half acre lot down by Route 23 at the mouth of Lick Fork holler. Dad hated to go in debt with a passion so he started from scratch. Of course he had friends who helped him. That’s the way it was back then; we helped other people when they needed it and they helped us when we needed it. He wrapped the barn in that old-fashioned brown brick siding that came in rolls. Then he put in braces and floored it with half cured rough pine boards, partitioned it into four rooms, put in a ceiling and walls and covered them with that old fashioned, one-half inch thick, four feet by eight-foot drywall, painted the rooms, covered the floor with linoleum rugs in every room and we moved in to our new home when I was seven years old.
We had 2 coal stoves, an outside toilet, drew our water with a rope by hand from a well outside, had a small coal house where we also kept a small wood pile and chopped kindling to build fires in the stoves, a hog lot with a lean-to for their shelter, a chicken lot with a chicken house, a huge garden and a dog lot for Dad’s coon hounds because he was a dedicated coon hunter on the weekends.
The second ride I caught was a big tandem tractor trailer truck. I was really anxious the closer we got to my home I guess because there had been several times I thought I would never make it out of Vietnam and when we rounded the curve about four hundred yards below my house I was filled with joy, OUR BARN HOUSE WAS GONE! I was instantly filled apprehension and shock; where was Dad and Mom? I never showed my shock and I told the driver; “Let me out at the mouth of that holler up there where that house is.” There was no traffic and he stopped on old route 23; “Sir, thank you for the ride.” “You’re welcome son.” and I jumped out with my small suitcase and he rolled away.
As I walked toward the house, I noticed the yard was still a mess from the recent construction of the house. I knocked on the door to ask where Dad and Mom had moved to but when I knocked Mom answered the door and she was also shocked! We grabbed each other and hugged and laughed a good long time. WOW! Mom had finally overcome Dad’s fear of going into debt and they had built a new house. The best I can remember they had borrowed a bit over six thousand dollars. It was in the mid-sixties. The house had indoor plumbing, a bathroom, a basement, a furnace and air conditioner; a modern house; WOW! No more freezing our butts off in the old outside toilet in the winter AND no more cautiously, very cautiously watching for black widow spiders before we sat down on the hole cut in the wood seat in the summer! No more carrying in buckets of coal and chopping kindling! We still had a hog in its lot, chickens, the garden and the dog lot for Daddy’s coon hounds.
I spent that 30 day leave before I would report back to Camp LeJeune to my permanent unit shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and raking the mounds of dirt in the daytime to construct their yard. My evenings were spent drinking beer and reuniting with old girlfriends and female acquaintances.
One day I was in the bathroom shaving when suddenly Mom shoved the door open and said in a loud voice in hillbilly vernacular; “What er ye adoin’ Jimmie?” “I’m a shavin’ Mom!” “No ye wasn’t, look at yerself! I could hear ye out in the hall n you was a sayin’ over n over; “Why did you live when so many good men died? Look where yer astandin! Yer nose aint six inches from thu mirror!” For ‘some reason’ I told Mom about the incident with the 122 mm Russian rocket. Mom got a strange other worldly look and quietly asked; “When did that happen Son?” I told her about my notes, went and got them and told her when it happened. We took the international date lines and time lines into consideration and she told me she had a premonition that I was going to be killed! I want you to see and hear what that aging hillbilly woman did.
She went into the bedroom of that old barn. Her hair had never known the tender touch of a beautician, her old, worn thin gingham dress, her cracked and worn penny loafer shoes from working outside so much. The partially cured pine lumber of the floor had drawn and bowed until the linoleum was cracked so badly that, here and there, you could see the ground underneath the floor. She got down beside the bed, her tears pouring, and spiritually (Heb. 4:12-16 esp. V.16) she respectfully laid her terrified, wounded, bloody, suffering, broken Mother’s heart (Rev. 8:3) on the great golden altar in heaven and begged (John 20:27-28) her Lord and her God to spare her child’s life (me)! She did not know how long she prayed but she finally got the relief she so desperately, desperately wanted! (1Thess. 5:18) Mom thanked her Lord and Her God with pouring tears and a thankful heart filled with love for her Lord and her God. Then she started to get up but she couldn’t! She reached across the bed as far as she could, grasped the covers and started pulling herself up over and over until she could roll onto the bed and massage her knees and legs until she could walk.
There is no doubt in my mind that yonder in glory God summoned an angel, gave the angel instructions and sent the angel on its way. Then, through the Holy Spirit, (Luke 1:37) God gave my Mother an assurance that her child would be OK! There is no doubt in my mind that in that millionth or billionth or possibly even a trillionth of a second an angel finger turned that piece of shrapnel going seven thousand miles per hour; which would have gone through me and both sides of my flack jacket; ninety degrees to my left at exactly the correct instant to cut the cloth of my flack jacket but did not touch the fiber glass threads of the outer layer of the plates! ! ! ! ! (5 the Biblical number of grace.)
I wasn’t a Christian then but I am now, I love you, my Lord and my God, with all my heart and I thank thee oh my Lord and my God of all perfect love, all power, and beautiful, beautiful grace that you gave me a mother like my Mom. Amen.