A grunt was crying. One of the wounded, his friend, had just died. The other was just barely alive. I wanted to fly at a thousand miles an hour.
Riker called ahead so we could land at Camp Holloway without delay. We went by the tower like a flash and landed on the red cross near the newly set-up hospital tent. The stretcher bearers ran out to unload the cargo.
I could see that they had been busy lately. There was a pile of American bodies outside the hospital tent.
The other wounded man died.
We had lost the race.
The stretcher bearers’ technique was to cross the cadaver’s arms and then, with a twist, flip it off the deck onto the waiting stretcher. I watched as two specialists unloaded One-Leg. They dropped him in a grotesque heap on the canvas. The sun glinted off a gold band on his left hand. The specialists were laughing. About what, I don’t know. Maybe they were so accustomed to their job that they thought this was hilarious. Maybe it was nervous laughter. Regardless, their nonchalance was too much for me. I jumped out and made them stop before they got to the tent. I braced them on the spot and yelled and yelled and yelled.