In the Company of Doc Campilletti

1,700 words

IN THE COMPANY OF DOC CAMPILLETTI

Time took a hike for a second. Then AK-47 rifle fire burned a hole in the heart of Company C, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade in South Vietnam. It was January 17, 1970. Lots of us breathed our last that day. When civilians ask me how the army got troops ready for combat back then, I always says the same thing. They jus’ told us, “Think of yo’self as already dead. That’ll take away any hesitation and make ya all the more dangerous.”

If your military occupational specialty was 11B—“infantryman,” “ground-pounder,” “grunt”—you jus’ as well kiss your momma good-bye, ’cause you ain’t gonna

last a year in the jungles, swamps and rice paddies. No shot—zero, zip, zilch…nada. The landscape was too lethal. And your odds of not bein’ shipped home inside a gray metal container in the belly of a “freedom bird” was out of sight. Believe it. These was down-and-dirty combat rules. And combat rules, for those who don’t knows no better, was that there ain’t no rules.

Specialist Five Cory Campilletti would’ve gotten in my face and argued the point ‘cause, as senior medic in the 2nd Platoon of Company C, it was his job to try and keep us alive as long as possible. That was a bigger deal than his twenty-one-year-old, junior high-sized-bod’ could usually handle when stuff got really hairy, which was most of the time. He wasn’t what you’d think a veteran doc looks like. But it never kept him from doin’ his thing, anyhow.

Doc hailed from Athens, Georgia and spent his first year out of high school as a preppie in college studyin’ to be a reporter or writer of some sort. He could’ve beat his draft notice with a college deferment, but told me once, “Someone’s got to do it, so why shouldn’t it be me?”

I didn’t think that was too smart, since I grew up with my homies on Chicago’s mean streets. My own draft notice came jus’ in time to keep me out of a long stretch in the slammer for usin’ a cracker’s head for a punchin’ bag. He’d called me a “nigger” in a bar. Drunk or not, whitey ain’t never gonna get away with that. This kinda talk can get ya killed, where I comes from, even if youse a brother. A honkie judge figured if’n I liked to fight so much, he might as well save the state some bread and ship me where I could get my fill of it.

So Moses Abraham Washington got to be a grunt and ended up in Company C as a private first class with Doc and the rest. That’s when the 2nd North Vietnamese Army Division began pushin’ ‘gainst us near Hiep Duc in January of 1970. They was some tough little dudes. Hiep Duc was ’bout 35 miles southwest of Da Nang in I Corps.

Doc was a hard-core Southerner who didn’t have no hangover from the Civil War. Color didn’t seem to matter to him. If ya got zapped, he treated ev’ry grunt the same—even if ya was “Charlie” hisself. If youse good at your job in the infantry, ya get respect from your platoon and company officers. So word got ’round plenty fast in the unit area that here was a real doc, somebody ya could trust your backside to.

Most of the brothers and whites hung with their own when they wasn’t in the field. But Doc was one of the few who felt comfortable hangin’ with ev’rybody. And he’d earned the right ‘cause of all the risks he took. Twice in the first six months he’d been lit-up hisself tryin’ to treat guys that had got themselves greased.

‘Bout that time, I got close to a brother—a crew chief in a medical evacuation helicopter crew—located with us at Landin’ Zone Hawk Hill. He’d dropped the fact one of his pilots was a published writer. I thought of Doc and figured he might like to meet him, since that’s what he wanted to be, too. So, one hot and muggy afternoon—between their missions and ours—I set up a meetin’ in the battalion aid station.

This captain and Doc stood out of the traffic flow next to the radio shack. They talked ‘bout writin’ and flyin’ for ‘bout twenty minutes ‘fore another medevac was called in and they had to scramble. Durin’ this rap session that I was close enough to

overhear, Doc stopped talkin’, once, looked up into this pilot’s face and said somethin’ that didn’t make much sense to me, then.

“Sir, when you get back to ‘the World,’ tell them what it’s like here. Tell them what we’re trying to do.”

“You can count on it,” the captain replied.

All the time I was thinkin’, so why don’t you be the one to tell them, Doc? Ain’t you the one that wants to be a writer?

Then that January 17th mornin’ dawned all wet and blurry. Our platoon was so far out in the boonies of Antenna Valley, to the northwest of Hiep Duc, Lewis and Clark couldn’t have spotted us even with the help of that Indian broad they had along. With the fog and misty rain, ev’rything seemed part of ev’rything else. Squadrons of mosquitoes—our own personal flock of malaria birds—hovered ‘round our heads like drunks ‘round a free bar. We’d all slipped ponchos over our shoulders and ate breakfast from cans of cold C-rations. Jus’ ‘nother burden of bein’ alive and a grunt in a combat zone.

Our platoon finally trudged off in a staggered trail formation through the jungle under triple-canopy cover. ‘Fore long, a familiar sick and churnin’ sensation started rumblin’ in my stomach. This time it ain’t the C-rations or the “runs.” I was feelin’ stressed ‘cause of humpin’ this coronary country day in and out. Ev’rybody had a fear all the time of bein’ ambushed in the middle of nowhere by wily Mr. Charles. “Luke the Gook” was like Casper the Ghost. Ya never knew when he’d pop up out of some spider hole or tree line and ruin your whole swingin’ tour.

It’d been still and quiet, ‘cept for the sound of jungle growth slappin’ ‘gainst tired bodies and weapon stocks. We’d been hoofin’ up a mountain trail ‘bout an hour when it happened. Sudden bursts of AK-47 fire sounded like a band of crazed drummers poundin’ their drums in my head. Guys in front and behind me began fallin’ like bowlin’ pins creamed by a M48 Patton tank. In no time at all, shell casings and blood were scattered and splattered ev’rywhere ‘round us. It was O.K. Corral, again, in the ’Nam.

Our point man was hit first and I could hear him screamin’ for help ’bove the firefight. He was a brother nicknamed

"Bruiser" ’cause he was big, black and bad. Charlie had hit us with a lot bigger force, so our platoon leader ordered us to fall back and regroup so we could call in reinforcements and artillery support.

I stumbled on Doc as he was workin’ his way back through the wounded and dead. He was whippin’ on field dressin’s, poppin’ morphine Syrettes and comfortin’ the wounded…covered with ev’rybody else’s blood.

“Hey, Mo,” he yelled at me ’bove the firefight, “Bruiser got hit bad. Help drag these wounded back. I gotta get to him.”

“No way, Doc. Charlie’s just itchin’ for us to go back there. That’s why they’re lettin’ him yell. Ya gotta wait ’til we get some arty called in.”

“My job’s to get to him. I’m not gonna let him die alone!”

Las’ time I looked, Doc had dropped his steel pot, web-gear and .45-caliber pistol. Only takin’ his aidbag, he was low-crawlin’ back up the muddy, bloody trail in Bruiser’s direction. ’Bout 50 meters away, Bruiser’s screams had now turned to squeals.

Short, weird, high-pitched squeals like somethin’ a pig would make gettin’ butchered ‘live. Unearthly squeals. No words. Jus’ sounds ya never want to hear ’gain.

It was hours later ‘fore we found ‘em. Somehow, Doc made it all the way back. His left arm was under Bruiser’s messed-up head. Charlie had zapped both of ’em at close range, ’though neither had a weapon then. More work for Graves Registration. More overtime for the tombstone maker. More hate for the gooks. More reason to even the score later.

Doc wasn’t the kind of dude to leave a wounded brother by hisself. Why else would he leave his weapon behind? Guess he didn’t want it fallin’ into enemy hands, too. Maybe that’s why he told that medevac pilot to tell everyone what it was like there. Lots of guys I knew talked ‘bout havin’ dreams or feelin’s ‘bout gettin’ wasted ‘fore it really happened. That was just part of the eerieness of the ’Nam. I learned that lesson in a hurry from day one 'cause it happened over and over again with grunts in our company.

They gave Doc a Silver Star for gettin’ hisself offed. That’s our third highest hero medal. But that’d never match what he’d done in a war where there was no welcome home, no parades, no brass bands or yellow ribbons 'round the old oak tree. He deserved a whole lot more and so did all the rest.

There’s a bunch of “maybes” hauntin’ me to this day. Sometimes the nightmare of that early mornin’ seeps into my brain, drop by drop. Drips and drops gather and, ’fore I

knows what’s happenin’, there’s a puddle I gotta deal with. It has a way of remindin’ me how war makes grunts kinda crazy and forces us to die so cheap.

I think Doc knew he was gonna crash and burn that day. But that scrawny, pint-sized, southern cracker wasn’t ’bout to back off. He’s the bravest dude I ever seen. Now I knows that guts and courage ain’t measured by size, school smarts or skin color but by actions. They got their own yardstick…and Doc’s was a whole lot longer than most all the rest.

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