Navy Guantanamo Bay Part V

The surgical ward at Guantanamo Bay Naval Hospital was populated by quite an eclectic bunch. The Marine next to me had a hole in his back large enough to put a fist into from some incident that we never talked about. A Machinist Mate across the aisle had been hit with super-heated steam when a valve failed. It had hit him in the arm and his skin had sloughed off like a sleeve. So, you know, the usual. 

Based on what some of the other patients on the ward were suffering with, it made my little scratch seem inconsequential. Some of these guys were going home for certain as soon as they could leave.

But in my own selfish way, I was concerned whether my new nickname might be 'Stumpy' or 'Captain Hook'. 

Years before all this I had determined my handwriting to be so bad that I had abandoned cursive and simply printed everything. Imagine if I had to try that crap with my left hand! Forget it, pal!

I was also not the best, most consistent writer of letters home. Is that a phrase? It doesn't look right, but you know what I mean. However, I was sending money home to my parents for their car payment. They didn't know anything about this incident yet and I was trying to figure out a way to gently ease the information into their hands. In the end I decided a phone call was best even though that was also not a part of our normal culture. Of course I downplayed it, wouldn't you? In the meantime, I was practicing my writing (i.e., printing).

For whatever reason, we had pretty much free run of the hospital. During rounds we'd listen in while the docs were talking to the other patients and watch while work was done on them. And if we needed something from the store room, we just went in and got it. So, in addition to the rounds of antibiotics, I was washing my hand a dozen times a day with Phisohex and soaking it in a little pan with distilled saline working the dead, burned skin off with an oversized q-tip.

I went through a lot of those five gallon bottles of distilled saline. But whichever of this combination of therapies worked, I didn't care, because the infection was finally beaten back and no one had to come in with a hack saw and cut off my hand. Although, probably the other guys in the ward would want to watch.

To honor the value of the magical saline, I stole one of the metal medallions that hung around the big five gallon bottles and wore it on a chain around my neck. The medallion said Sterile Distilled Saline and I wore it for a couple of years. It disappeared after I got married, but I do have a photo of me wearing it at Haulover Beach. This was about a month before I met my future wife, so you can see how miserable and unhappy I was.

Life in the hospital was pretty easy, we had no assigned duties. We were just supposed to be getting better, so life centered around meals. Three times a day, we got a little printed menu where we could circle what we wanted for the next meal. 

Then they brought the food right to us on a cart. How cool was that? This one time I found a fly in my mashed potatoes and it was so exciting I went around to show everyone. The Marine in the bed next to me wanted to see it and as soon as I brought it close enough he lurched out and ate it. Don't mess with Marines, they have different thought processes.

At night, if the weather was good they would show movies outside on an outdoor movie screen. You might think the mosquitoes would bother us, but there were so many bats flying around they kept the population down.

There were so many bats in fact that they would interfere with the movie sometimes. This is why they didn't let us carry weapons because there would have been so much gunfire that just the accidental wounds would have kept the hospital full. And there were quite frequent earthquakes, but mild ones, just enough to remind you that you should leave.

And just as Lord Halifax wrote, in the fullness of days, it was time for me to leave, too.