RELAXING IN THE MOONLIGHT, NOT

Toward the middle of my tour, I got to know 1st Sgt. Harry Meyers. Two tours in Vietnam, hadn’t taken a scratch. Harry taught me how to stay alive in combat, and he ran his outfit by the book, every time, no exceptions. The men called him Hardcore. Earned, not given.

Harry had one habit that should have gotten him killed: he refused to sleep in a bunker. He set up an old Army cot in the open, slept on a white sheet, covered himself with another. Said bunkers smelled like other men’s feet.

One cool night he dragged his cot farther out to catch a southerly breeze. That move saved his life.

Around 0200, a 122mm rocket landed between Harry and the enlisted men’s bunker. It killed three men inside. When I got to the impact site, I found Harry stark naked, hauling wounded and dead out of what was left of the bunker. His back was covered in blood. I thought he’d taken a head wound. He hadn’t.

A medic and I pulled him aside. Under all the blood, a half-inch strip of skin was gone, running from his neck to the small of his back.

Then I looked at his cot. The shrapnel had sliced the sheet and the frame clean in half, and Harry had dropped straight through the gap. The wound traced the curve of his spine like the shrapnel knew him personally.

We bandaged him up and showed him the cot. Harry shrugged. Said it wasn’t his time.

Ya think?

A soldier’s soldier, survived by falling through his own bed. Hardcore indeed.

We stayed friends until he died a few years back. I’ve buried a lot of men I served with. Harry’s the one I still argue with in my head.