THE GATES OF HELL
Spoiler:
This is a very dark tale about Starsky’s time in
Author’s
Note: This is the Sequel to “A Mother’s Love” There will be a third story in this
series called “In My Father’s Footsteps”
CHAPTER 1
David closed
his eyes and tried to rest. He was exhausted. But sleep was out of the
question. The sound of gunfire in the distance, a sound he should be used to
after almost eighteen months in Vietnam, was keeping him awake. Not that he
really slept in this god forsaken place anyway. He hadn’t had a decent night’s
sleep in all the months that he had been in country. But in a few more weeks,
his personal hell would be over and he would be going home. His enlistment was
finally up.
He had been
scared when he got his draft notice and had to leave Bay City for boot camp.
But that hadn’t been anything compared to the absolute terror he’d felt when he
got his orders to ship out for Vietnam. He knew that the odds were against him
ever coming back home again. He could still remember those first few weeks in
country vividly. It was a different world over here and you quickly learned to
live by a different set of rules if you wanted to survive. And David had learned
his lessons well.
He had learned
to control his fear, to shove it deep inside of himself where it couldn’t
interfere with the job he had to do. He had learned to watch his friends get
blown apart by landmines and not bat an eye. He had learned to kill and he was
good at it. He could live off the land if he had too for weeks at a time and he
could slip through the jungle like a shadow, never seen and never heard by his
intended target. Whatever innocence he still had before coming to this place,
he had quickly lost. He had gone from an eighteen year old boy to a product of
Uncle Sam’s army almost overnight.
With a heavy
sigh, David finally gave up trying to sleep and sat up on his bedroll. Slapping
at one of the endless insects that seemed to fill the air, he barely noticed
the sharp sting on his arm when it bit him. Opening his knapsack, he dug out
the tiny snapshot of him with Rose, Al and Ma at his high school graduation. A
bitter smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. It felt as if that picture had
been taken a lifetime ago.
God, he missed
them so much. It was even worse than when he had to leave New York at 13 and
start a new life in Bay City, three thousand miles away from his mother, his
brother and his friends. With a scowl, he put the picture back in his knapsack
for safe keeping. Things had a way of getting lost or stolen over here, so he
had quickly learned not to keep anything valuable around. His father’s rings
were still worn snugly on the pinky finger on his left hand. The only other
jewelry he wore was a battered wristwatch on his left arm and his dog tags
hanging around his neck.
Shoving
himself to his feet, he shuffled over to the campfire and joined two other men
from his unit who were sitting there. David poured himself a bitter cup of coffee
and sat down beside one of his friends, Charlie Jones. Charlie was only a year
younger than David (who had just turned twenty two weeks ago) He hailed from
Tennessee and despite the differences in their backgrounds, he and David had
become good friends. The other young man sitting on the other side of David was
relatively new to the unit. Still green, his eyes darted around anxiously,
jumping at every unfamiliar noise that came from the jungle that surrounded
them. He had only been with their unit for three weeks and he was only
eighteen, one of the youngest soldiers there.
His name was
Mark Hendricks and he had been born and raised in Mesa, Arizona. David had
talked to him a few times, offering him advice on how to stay alive in this
awful place. It was a lesson every new recruit had to learn pretty quickly if
they wanted to stay alive. One mistake in this jungle could cost you and your
fellow soldiers their lives. The men who had been there for awhile were leery
and cautious of any new recruit. If a man didn’t shape up quick enough, his own
bunkmates could turn their backs on him in the middle of a battle.
“Where you
from, Dave?” Mark asked. He knew from Dave’s accent that it was probably from
somewhere back east.
“Bay City,
California.” David told him, tossing out the remainder of his coffee. Sometimes
he volunteered the information that he was originally from New York and
sometimes he didn’t. This time he chose not to.
“You got a
girl back home?”
“No….nobody
special.” David said with a thin smile. Back home he’d been popular with the
girls and never had to worry about a date. With his killer smile, rugged good
looks and a lean muscular build from helping out in his Uncle’s garage, the
girls all thought he was one of the hottest guys around.
“I got me a girl.”
Mark said proudly with a huge grin. He pulled a small snapshot out of his
uniform pocket and showed it to David. It showed Mark with his arm around a
pretty little brunette with big brown eyes. He carefully slipped the photo back
into his pocket “Her name’s Mindy Anne and I’m gonna ask her to marry me when I
get back home.”
“Good for
you.” David told him with a warm smile “She looks like a real nice girl.”
“She’s the
best.” Mark said with a quick nod of his head. “We’ve been together since the
eighth grade.”
“Hey, Dave….”
Charlie said, as he took a crumbled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and
lit one up. “You get a letter from home this morning?”
“Yeah. I got
one from Aunt Rosie.”
“How’s she
doing? She gonna send ya anymore of them cookies anytime soon?” Charlie
grinned. Rosie regularly sent David care packages from home complete with
socks, cookies and other goodies. David was more than willing to share with his
less fortunate friends.
“She’s doing
great. Uncle Al is thinking about expanding the garage.” David told him. David
sighed heavily. Letters from home were always welcome but they made him
remember how much he missed Bay City. It was so lonely in this place so far
away from the states. Even with twenty other men in his unit, David still felt
so alone.
Charlie
started to say something else when suddenly there was a loud whistling sound in
the air and then a terrible explosion right in the center of their camp site.
The three men sitting around the fire jumped to their feet and threw themselves
down behind the relative safety of the sandbags piled up around the perimeter
of the camp. The sounds of shouts and gunfire filled the air. Suddenly, there
seemed to be Viet Cong soldiers everywhere. Somehow, in the confusion and
excitement of the fight, David got separated from Mark and Charlie.
A second
explosion went off, so close to where David was hiding that it stunned him
momentarily and made his ears ring so badly he couldn’t even think straight for
a minute. As he slowly regained his senses, two Viet Cong soldiers suddenly
grabbed his arms and a hood of some kind was pulled down over his head. He
tried to struggle against the rough hands holding him captive and received a
vicious punch in the stomach for his defiance that took his breath away and sent
him to his knees. He felt more than one pair of hands jerking his arms in front
of him and then tying his hands together so tightly that the braided rope cut
painfully into his wrists. He was jerked roughly to his feet and then hands
were tying a rope around his ankles just as tightly but with enough slack
between his legs so that he could still walk. David felt his heart pounding
frantically in his chest as he realized that their camp had just been overtaken
and that he had just been taken prisoner by the enemy.
Hands shoved
him from behind, forcing him to walk forward into the unknown. He could hear
voices all around him, speaking in both Vietnamese and English but in the
confusion, he couldn’t make out more than a few words here and there. He felt
the barrel of a rifle in the middle of his back, nudging him to keep him moving
forward. Blinded by the hood over his head, David stumbled on the uneven
terrain as the Viet Cong and their prisoners began the march back towards the
Viet Cong camp. When David stumbled because he could not see what lay in front
of him, he was roughly pulled back to his feet by the unseen hands of the men
who had taken him prisoner. They walked for hours without stopping. When David
fell once because he was too exhausted to stand, someone grabbed the ropes
around his wrists and drug him across the uneven ground until he finally
managed to stumble back to his feet.
David knew
that as a prisoner of war, he had not rights, not to the Viet Cong Army, and
they were notorious for their torture and abuse of their prisoners. David had
been in numerous battles, had men die in his arms, had seen things no man
should ever have to see, but being captured by the enemy frightened him more
than anything else ever had. He knew it was unlikely that he would survive the
ordeal that lay ahead of him. When the time came, he silently prayed that he
would have the courage to die like a man with honor and with pride.
The physical
torment had already begun since none of the prisoners had been given anything
to eat or drink for hours and they hadn’t been allowed to rest. Under the
blazing sun all the prisoners were soon panting for breath beneath the heavy
hoods that covered their heads, their mouths parched and dry. Suddenly, David
was jerked to a stop. From somewhere beside him, he heard a scream and then a
gunshot. It was so close that for a minute, he thought he was the one who had
been shot. He heard the sound of a bullet entering a body and then a thump as
the body hit the ground. The man who had been shot whimpered and cried out in
pain when he realized that the bullet hadn’t killed him. That was when David
recognized the man’s voice. It was Mark, the young eighteen year old recruit.
There was so much pain evident in his voice that David felt his own fear
paralyzing him. A second shot ran out and then there was silence. A silence so
heavy that David could hear his heart pounding in his chest.
Then he heard
Charlie’s voice as he yelled at their captors to take off his blindfold,
followed by a string of curses in both English and Vietnamese. There was the
sound of flesh hitting flesh and then Charlie shut up. David felt hands shoving
him from behind forcing him to start walking again. He stumbled forward, the
sounds of the fighting in the distance slowly fading away until the only sound
he heard was the ragged breathing of the men around him and the buzzing of the
insects in the air.
CHAPTER 2
It was almost
two days before they finally stopped trudging through the jungle and reached
the hidden camp. David and the other prisoners were totally exhausted and
seriously dehydrated. David could feel his exhausted muscles trembling as he
struggled to remain on his feet. Their hoods were ripped off and the ropes
around ankles and wrists were finally untied. David blinked against the sudden
glare of the sun, the light cutting through his head like a knife. He stole a
furtive glance around and realized that Charlie and four other men from his
unit besides himself had been taken prisoner. His stomach twisted as he realized
with a sudden clarity that the rest of his unit was probably dead.
One of their
captors waved a gun at the men and ordered them in broken English “You strip
now….”
With trembling
fingers, David starting removing his clothes along with the other men around
him. When the six men were standing naked in front of their captors, one of
their guards walked in front of each man and ripped each set of dog tags from
around their necks. Another guard threw each man a pair of ragged pants with a
drawstring waist and a loose fitting shirt with long sleeves. Both articles of
clothing were threadbare, a red and gray striped cloth that had faded to a
pinkish gray color. David pulled on the dirty ragged clothing as the other men
around him did the same. The first guard quickly gathered up their army issued
clothing and hurried away with it.
When the first
guard returned, the men were ordered to walk across the compound to a run down
building not much bigger than the room David had shared with Nicky back home in
New York. One of their captors unlocked the heavy padlock on the door and the
six new prisoners were shoved inside, the door securely locked behind them. The
shed was crowded with other prisoners. Even though there was no light in the
building, there was enough sunlight creeping in through the cracks in the walls
to be able to see clearly.
The stench in
the room was almost unbearable. A combination of blood, stale sweat, vomit,
rotten flesh, dirty unwashed bodies, urine, feces, and a variety of other
unpleasant odors that David didn’t even try to identify. The smell made David
gag and he had to force back the bile that burned the back of his throat. Most
of the prisoners in the building didn’t even look human anymore. Their bodies
were wasting away from a lack of food and their eyes stared vacantly, empty and
dead. Most of them were covered with sores or open seeping wounds. Some of the
men were injured, holding amputated body parts against their bodies, trying to
ignore the pain. The air was heavy with moans and the sound of grown men crying
softly.
Reeling with
shock and exhaustion, David and the other men from his unit made their way over
to a corner of the room and slumped to the cold hard ground. David drew his
legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. He let his eyes
close, partly to rest and partly to block out the horror all around him. But he
could still hear the sounds of the camp, the yelling of the guards, the screams
of prisoners somewhere outside, coughing and gagging, the sound of men around
him vomiting. David knew that he had stepped through the gates of hell. He was
tired, he was hungry, he was thirsty, and he was scared out of his mind.
He jumped when
he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He jerked up his head, regretting it
immediately as his stomach rebelled, the muscles cramping as a wave of nausea
swept over him. A man was crouched beside him, long stringy hair falling over a
pale gaunt face. With a start, David realized that the man couldn’t be that
much older than he was even though the other man’s ragged appearance made him
look considerably older. The man held out a tin cup of water which David
accepted gratefully. The water was hot and stale with a sharp metallic taste to
it that made David gag, but he drank it anyway, desperate to soothe his dry
parched throat. His stomach churned uneasily but he forced the water to stay
down. Before David could thank him, the man grabbed the cup and scurried away,
disappearing into the crowd of bodies in the room.
He must have
dozed off because the next thing he knew someone was shaking his shoulder
gently and whispering his name. David forced his eyes open and looked into
Charlie’s frightened face. He wondered if he looked just as frightened to his
friend. “Hey, Charlie….” David said his voice dry and raspy to his own ears.
“Hey, buddy.”
Charlie said with a thin smile. “Looks like we’re really in a mess this time,
huh?”
“Yeah, looks
that way.” David agreed as he leaned back against the wall behind him,
exhausted and weak from his long trek through the jungle and the lack of food
or water for two days.
“I’m scared
out of my fucking mind.” Charlie admitted with an awkward chuckle, voicing the
silent thoughts in David’s own mind. He slumped down on the ground beside his
friend and they both fell into an uncomfortable silence.
“Don’t
worry….” Another man called to them from across the room “You’ll get used to
the smell soon enough….then it’ll never go away.” The man’s voice broke off
into a maniacal laughter. David closed his eyes again and tried to block out
the horror surrounding him.
As night fell
and sunlight no longer crept through the cracks in the walls, it became almost
impossible to see beyond the blackness that settled around them. But the noise
didn’t stop. The moans, the crying, the sound of men getting sick somewhere in
the darkness. Charlie and David stayed together, grateful for the comfort of
each other’s presence in their shared nightmare. Neither of them got any sleep
that first night.
Early the next
morning, the door to the shed was opened and two guards held guns on the
prisoners as they crowded around the doorway. Charlie soon realized that food
was being passed out, so he went to get some for himself and David. After a
long wait, he returned with two small wooden bowls. The bowl contained a watery
soup with a few scraps of boiled cabbage. Charlie told David as he handed him
one of the bowls that another prisoner had told him that was all the food they
would get until late that evening. It was barely enough to keep a man alive but
it was all they had. A big tub of water had been set inside the building at the
same time and that would be their rationed water for the day.
David tipped
back the bowl and took some of the soup in his mouth. He started gagging almost
immediately at the rancid taste but somehow he managed to force it down. He
knew he had to keep his strength up if he intended to survive this hellhole.
When the soup was gone, he sighed deeply and sat the bowl on the ground at his
side. Leaning his head back against the wall, he closed his eyes. In his mind,
he went home. He went back to Bay City. It was something he had learned to do
early on as a way of relaxing and keeping his sanity in this insane place
called Vietnam. At least for a while, in his mind, he could leave this place
and return to the one place he felt safe and secure.
That day, two
men died and their bodies were left lying on the ground in a corner of the shed
where some of the other men had dragged them. One of the other prisoners told
David and Charlie that the guards came in every couple of days and collected
the dead bodies to be buried in a common grave. That is the bodies that hadn’t
already been eaten by the animals that crept into the building at night to feed
on the dead and sometimes on the living too. Mainly rats, some of them the size
of a small house cat. David had already felt them crawling over his legs in the
darkness the night before.
Later that
evening, Max, one of the other men from their squad, came down with a raging
fever and by the next morning he was dead. His body was added to the growing
pile in the corner. David was terrified that he was going to die here in this
place and that his family would never know his fate.
Some of the
other men in this place had obviously gone insane, their minds and souls
destroyed beyond any hope of repair. Maybe they were the lucky ones. They
didn’t seem to care where they were. It was a better alternative than facing
the reality of the situation. David could already feel his spirit starting to
die inside of him as his body started to weaken even more from the lack of
proper nutrition and the dysentery that he got from the only food they were
given to eat. Most of the men got it within a few days of being captured. It
was accompanied by severe abdominal cramps and a fever which only added to
their general discomfort.
David and
Charlie had become acquainted with another prisoner named Pete. He seemed to
make it his mission to look out for the new men and helped to acclimate them to
the conditions of the camp and what they could expect. He had informed them
that they would more than likely be taken from their current location in a few
days and placed in one of the wooden cages scattered throughout the camp that
housed the other prisoners. New prisoners were always put in with the sick and
the dying for the first week just to see how many survived the atrocious
conditions. It was the Vietcong army’s way of weeding out the weaker men who
would never survive the more brutal conditions in the main camp.
“I don’t
reckon I’ll ever get back home except in a body bag.” Pete told Charlie and
David in a resigned voice. “Who knows? Maybe one of you will be luckier than
most of us poor bastards in here.”
“How long have
you been here?” Charlie asked, not really caring that much but trying to keep
up his end of the conversation.
“Almost a
year.” Pete told him “Figure I won’t last much longer….most of us don’t…” David
looked at the other man as he spoke, really noticing him for the first time and
seeing his emancipated body, the open festering wounds and the flat dead look
in his eyes. David couldn’t help wondering how long it would take before he
looked like that himself.
“You two watch
your backs……cause nobody else here will.” Pete said as he painfully shoved
himself to his feet. “The guards around here like young bucks like you two.
They like to see how long it takes to break you…make you beg.” With those final
words, Pete walked away to mingle with a group of men on the other side of the
building.
“You think we got a chance in hell of making it out of here alive?”
Charlie asked David, trying to keep the fear from creeping into his voice.
“There’s always a chance.” David muttered, not really sure if he
believed that himself or not. “We’ll just have to stick together and watch out
for each other.”
He was rudely interrupted as the door to their prison slammed open and
a guard suddenly appeared in the doorway with a fire hose, spraying a blast of
icy cold water at the prisoners. He kept spraying the water until all the men
inside the building were soaked and shivering from the cold. As the door
slammed shut once more, one of the other prisoners took the time to tell David
and Charlie that the guards did that frequently. It was one of their favorite
pastimes when it came to tormenting the prisoners. David huddled in his corner,
soaked to the skin and miserable. And he knew this was only the beginning.
CHAPTER 3
David sat
against the wall of the shed in a daze. There was nothing else to do for hours
at a time except to sit in one place. The days were long and sweltering hot. So
hot that it was hard to even breathe. With so many men crowded into such a
small space, what little air there was hung heavy and stale in the room. And
the insects were a torment all by themselves. Almost every exposed inch of
David’s skin was covered with bites and stings that he scratched at without
even noticing.
Suddenly, the
door to the shed slammed open and four guards with guns came in. Two of them
stood by the door, keeping their guns trained on the other prisoners while the
other two guards began scanning the faces of their captives. David felt a block
of ice settling in his veins as one of the guards turned his attention on him
with a leer on his face. Snarling something in Vietnamese, the guard pushed his
way across the room to where David was sitting and grabbed his right arm,
pulling him roughly to his feet. The other guard grabbed another man sitting on
the far side of the room. The guard holding David twisted his right arm behind
his back, pulling his wrist up between his shoulder blades until his shoulder
screamed with pain. The man shoved him towards the open doorway and then
outside. David blinked his eyes rapidly, the glare of the sun hurting his eyes
after being accustomed to the dimness in the shed where he’d been held for the
past four days.
The door to
the shed slammed shut behind them and was locked securely in place. While two
of the guards turned their guns towards David, the third guard took his
prisoner and walked off in the opposite direction. The guard who had grabbed
David jerked his other arm behind his back and securely tied his wrists
together with a thin cord that bit deeply into his skin. Without a word, he
reached down and grabbed a heavy piece of coiled rope lying on the ground at
his feet. With a sinister laugh he looped it around David’s neck and tightened
it, grabbing the loose end with one hand. He started walking towards a one
story block building sitting in the middle of the compound, pulling David along
behind him like a dog by jerking on the rope around his neck. David had no
choice but to stumble along behind him. He tried to keep the fear he felt from
showing on his face as he was led into the block building and down a long dimly
lit hallway.
The guard
pulled him into a large room, lit more brightly than the rest of the building.
Without any warning, he yanked on the rope causing David to fall to his knees
in front of the other man. David coughed violently and inhaled deeply as he
tried to catch his breath. He stole a glance around the room with wide
frightened eyes. The room was filled with instruments all designed for one
purpose. To torture the prisoners.
David forced
himself to remain calm and to keep his face devoid of any expression at all as
another Viet Cong officer came into the room. He was obviously a higher ranking
officer than the guard who had pulled him into the room because the other man
instantly stood at rigid attention. The officer stepped up in front of David
and glared down into those sapphire blue eyes that looked back at him with just
a hint of defiance. “Who are you?” the man demanded in broken English.
“Private First
Class David Michael Starsky. United States Army. Division C. Serial number
443-26-4058.” David recitedThe officer apparently didn’t like that answer
because it earned David a punch in the jaw that rocked his head to one side and
made the entire right side of his face ache.
“Wrong.” The
man snarled “You are nobody. You are nothing. You have no name. You are our
prisoner. If you live or if you die, it is all up to us.” He glared into the
dark haired youth’s face fully expecting to see panic and fear in those eyes,
however he was surprised and angered to see the same defiance in those eyes as
before, even in the face of danger. “Where are you from?” he hissed
“California.”
David replied with a stubborn tilt to his chin, only to receive another vicious
punch to his face, followed almost immediately by a hard kick to his stomach
that sent him sprawling to the floor. David gasped in pain and instinctively curled
up into a fetal position, trying to protect the more vulnerable parts of his
anatomy.
“Wrong! You
have no home! You are nothing because we say you are nothing!” the man growled
angrily. He repeated the same questions several more times, each time punching
or kicking David viciously when he refused to give him the answers he wanted to
hear. By the time he had finished questioning him, David was barely conscious
and his whole body screamed with pain.
He barely felt
the rough hands that pulled him to an upright position, a man on holding him on
either side. Too disoriented to walk, the two men drug him back down the
hallway and out into the blistering sun. But instead of returning him to the
small cramped shed, David was drug across the compound to one of the large
wooden cages at the far end of the enclosure. It was a cage that housed almost
fifty men, most of them the healthier prisoners in the camp.
The guards let
David fall to the ground just inside the cage and left him there. He lay there
for a few minutes, breathing heavily, until he found the strength to crawl over
to one corner of the cage. He curled up against the wooden bars in a fetal
position, nursing his aching muscles and bruised ribs. The other prisoners
ignored him. They’d seen it all before. It wasn’t anything new to them. It was
just a normal part of their everyday existence. Most of them were just thankful
that it wasn’t them this time.
David drifted
in and out of awareness. He jerked, startled, when he felt a hand fall on his
back, rubbing gently between his shoulder blades. Forcing open his eyes, he
looked up at the middle aged man with the deep brown eyes who was crouched
beside him, smiling gently.
“Hey, kid….”
The man said with just the faintest trace of a southern accent “How ya doing?”
“I’ve been
better.” David muttered through his badly swollen lips. He flinched as he felt
the man’s hand running over his ribcage and tried to pull away.
“Relax
solider…” the man told him “I’m just trying to see how bad they worked ya
over.”
“I’m okay.”
David said through tightly clenched teeth, as he recklessly pushed himself into
a sitting position, a move he regretted almost immediately as a wave of nausea
swept over him and he began to retch violently. The other man caught him in his
arms and held him as his stomach tried to crawl out through his mouth. With
nothing in his system to bring up, all David could do was dry heave.
“Easy, kid…”
the other man told him soothingly as he patiently waited for David to stop
heaving. When the spasms finally eased up, he helped David to sit back up. “You
okay now?” he asked in a genuinely concerned voice.
“Yeah….” David
mumbled, too weak to feel embarrassed about losing control in front of this
stranger.
“What’s your
name?”
“Dave
Starsky.”
“I’m Jeremy
Holiday. Glad to meet ya, kid.” He smiled warmly “How long you been here?”
“Four days, I
think…..” David told him, as he licked his lips and wished he had a drink of
water to soothe his parched throat.
“How long have
you been in country?”
“Eighteen
months.” David said with a heavy sigh, his stomach still cramping
uncomfortably.
“Well,
Dave….you got some bruised ribs but I don’t think anything is broken. The
guards are good at what they do….they know how to make it hurt like hell
without causing any real damage. You’re gonna be pretty sore for awhile.”
“You sound
like a medic.”
“That’s
because I am. That’s why they keep me around. I’m more valuable to them alive
than I am dead. I help them keep you guys alive.” For the first time David
noticed that although Jeremy was as underweight as the other prisoners, he
seemed to be in better overall physical condition.
“How long have
you been here?”
“Almost nine
months. They killed everybody else in my unit….would have killed me to if I
hadn’t been a medic.”
“As far as I
know they killed everybody in my squad too….except for me and five other
guys…but one of them died just after we got here.”
“I ain’t gonna
lie to ya, kid. You probably won’t make it outta this place alive….unless
you’re very very lucky.” Jeremy told with a hint of sadness in his voice. “Take
care of yourself, huh?” With that, he pushed himself to his feet and
disappeared into the group of prisoners milling around the cage. David leaned
his head back against the wooden bars behind him and closed his eyes, praying
that he would be one of the lucky ones.
CHAPTER 4
David finished
the slop in his bowl without gagging. It didn’t take long for him to get used
to the foul taste. When you’re close to starving, you’ll eat just about
anything someone gives you. He had learned to ignore the tiny bugs floating in
the broth and the other unidentifiable items that found their way into the
prisoner’s food supply each day. It had been almost three days since he’d been
thrown into one of the main cages and for the most part, the guards and the
other prisoners had left him alone.
It was even
worse in the cages than it had been in the shed. There might be more room to
move around in but there was no protection from the outside elements. During
the day, the sun beat down relentlessly and at night there was no relief from
the bitter chill of the night air. The smell might not be as bad as the tiny
enclosed shed but the conditions were just as deplorable. The latrine pit dug
along one end of the cage was seldom cleaned out and when the sewage overflowed,
the guards simply used the water hose and sprayed it down, sending rivers of
liquid waste among the prisoners. David quickly learned to get out of the way
as best he could to avoid getting any more of it on him than he had to.
Prisoners who
became sick or too injured from the cruel treatment received at the hands of
the guards were removed from the cages, never to be seen again. Routinely
during the day, the guards came into the cage and would drag men out, some of
them kicking and screaming, to be interrogated and tortured. Most of the
prisoners learned to keep their heads bowed and not to look anyone in the eye
so they wouldn’t draw unnecessary attention to themselves. David knew it was
just a matter of time before his turn would come again.
David was
dozing when he felt the hands grabbing at him and jerking him to his feet. His
eyes flew open in alarm and he instinctively tried to fight whoever had come
for him. He was quickly beaten into submission by two guards, who drug him out
of the cage and towards the main building without bothering to tie his hands.
In the same room he had been taken to before, one of the guards forced his
hands in front of him and clamped his wrists together with a pair of handcuffs,
tightening the metal bracelets until they cut into his skin. With a sneer, two
guards drug David over to the middle of the room. One of them grabbed his hands
and jerked them over his head, sliding the links between the metal bracelets to
an eyebolt screwed into the wall above him.
One of the
guards bent down and strapped his ankles together while the other one turned on
a valve on the wall behind David which caused a stream of icy cold water to
pour down over his head. David filled the air with a string of curses in both
English and Yiddish, with a few choice words in Vietnamese thrown in for good
measure. A pile driver to the stomach made him gasp for air as he struggled to
breathe. Through the haze of pain that blurred his vision, David watched as one
of the guards pushed a metal cart over in front of him. Sitting on the cart was
a portable telephone generator that generated electricity when the handle was
cranked. David tried to choke back his fear, knowing what they had in mind but
this time the fear could be seen clearly in his eyes.
His mouth went
dry as he watched the guard pick up a handful of alligator clamps that were all
attached to the generator by a long thin wire. The other guard grabbed David’s
ragged pants and suddenly jerked them down, exposing the brunet’s lower body.
David began to fight against the restraints holding him prisoner but to no
avail. He cried out in pain as the guard snapped one of the clamps to the soft
mound of flesh just above his groin, the teeth cutting deep into the sensitive
tissue. But that was nothing compared to the agony that ripped through his body
when he snapped two of the clamps to the tender, sensitive sack of flesh
hanging between his legs. David bit back a scream and tried to will the pain
back to a more manageable level.
A ragged
scream tore from David’s throat, his body convulsing and jerking, as the guard
began to turn the handle on the generator, sending an electrical current
surging through the brunet’s body. The water on his body acted as a conductor,
heightening his pain. David’s heart was pounding frantically in his chest and
he was breathing in deep gasping breathes from the violent assault on his
senses. It took a few seconds for his brain to register the fact that the pain
had stopped at least momentarily.
“What’s your
name?” the guard snarled in his broken English.
“David
Starsky….”
The guard
wound the crank again, sending another shock of electricity coursing through
his system that left his body shaking and his throat raw from screaming.
“Wrong! You are nothing! You are our prisoner.” The guard growled, shocking him
again to emphasize his words. The intensity of the current could be adjusted by
how slow or how fast the guard cranked the handle and he took pleasure from
alternating the strength of the current that swept through David’s trembling
body. David screamed in agony, the cords in his neck standing out in sharp
relief and every muscle twitching beneath his skin. The guards continued
repeating the same questions several more times, each time shocking David when
he refused to give him the answers they wanted to hear. The torture continued
for hours until he lost control of his bladder, the smell of urine hanging
heavily in the air, before he finally slumped into unconsciousness.
It was dark
outside when David finally forced his eyes to open. His heart was still
fluttering inside his chest, beating in an erratic pattern that scared him. A
gentle touch on his arm made him jerk and pull away. He would have screamed
except he had no voice left to scream with. Jeremy was kneeling beside him, a
kind gentle look on his face, as he carefully helped David to sit up so he
could drink some of the water that Jeremy offered him. “It’ll be all right,
son…” Jeremy told him in a soft soothing voice “The jittery feeling will pass
soon. They don’t use strong enough current to kill ya although I know it feels
like it.”
David moaned
as he tried to shift positions, suddenly aware of the burning sensation in his
groin. With worried eyes, he glanced at Jeremy trying to convey his question
with speaking. As if he’d read his mind, Jeremy smiled and said “The current
does however leave a pretty nasty burn….especially down there…there’s also some
swelling but it should be better in a few days and there shouldn’t be any
permanent damage or scarring.”
David closed his
eyes to hide the tears that threatened to overflow in response to his ragged
emotions. He wondered how much more of this he could take before he finally
broke like all the others. God! He just wanted to go home! He must have
fallen asleep because the next thing he knew it was morning and the guards were
sitting the vat of soup inside the cage for their morning meal. David remained
where he was, too tired and too weak to go after his portion. He barely raised
his head as Jeremy appeared at his side and held out a bowl with his share of
the morning food. David shook his head and pushed it away. The thought of
trying to choke down the slop that passed for food made his stomach queasy.
Jeremy didn’t try to force him to eat, he merely handed the bowl to one of the
other prisoners. He slumped down beside David and slipped his arm around the
younger man’s shoulders, pulling him close and letting him rest against him.
Within minutes, David slipped back into a light doze, his only means of escape
from this place.
CHAPTER 5
The days
blended one into another until David lost all track of time. He could no longer
remember how long he had been in the camp. It seemed like a lifetime. Lack of
food, poor hygiene, poor sanitation, a lack of adequate sleep, and continuing
physical torture (usually in the form of the electric shocks) were starting to
take their toll on David’s spirit and his mind. He found himself wondering if
anyone back home even knew that he was still alive or if they all thought that
he was dead. He wondered if he would ever know. The other prisoners kept to
themselves, avoiding each other as much as possible. When the guards came for
him again, David didn’t resist. He knew there was no point in it. If he
resisted, the guards would just beat him into submission and take him anyway.
He stumbled
down the long corridor that was so painfully familiar by now and into the room
where they would find more ways to hurt him. It no longer mattered if he told
them what they wanted to hear or not. No matter what answers he gave them they
would just use find an excuse to torture him some more anyway. David tried not
to give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream. It was an ingrained part
of his nature to resist bending to their will and giving up his own identity. Unfortunately,
that only made the guards more violent and more determined to hurt him until
his screams of agony filled the air. It was a battle of wills that David knew
he couldn’t win; the guards were too good at what they did and they didn’t care
if he lived or died.
As the guards
led him through the doorway into the large room where they did most of their
torturing of the prisoners, David was startled when one of the guards pulled a
black bag over his head, blinding him and making it hard to breathe. He felt
hands tying the bag around his neck even as his hands were cuffed together in
front of him. Not being able to see what they were planning to do to him
petrified him and his heart pounded frantically but he refused to let them see
how frightened he was. David felt his hands being pulled over his head and
being fastened to the eyehook in the wall behind him.
It seemed like
an eternity passed with him just hanging there wondering what they were going
to do to him this time. He could hear the soft rumble of their voices and the
sound of them moving around the room but not being able to see what they were
doing was more terrifying than knowing what to expect. Then he heard a swishing
sound and a loud crack, followed simultaneously by a fiery line of pain that spread
across his upper thighs, making him cry out in surprise at the attack he
couldn’t see coming. Instinctively, his hands clenched into fists and every
muscle in his body tensed up involuntarily as the lash cut across his thighs,
belly and his chest again and again. His screams filled the air but he knew
that nobody could hear him except his captors and they enjoyed hearing him
scream. David could feel the blood running down his body as the fierce beating
continued. He lost count after thirty lashes. He felt a blanket of darkness
starting to slip over his mind and he fought to remain conscious but it was a
losing battle as he slowly slipped into unconsciousness. Still, the beating
continued.
David slowly
forced his eyes to open. It was dark outside and he was back inside the cage,
curled up in the corner. His whole body hurt, his chest and stomach feeling
like they were on fire. He tried not to move to minimize the pain as much as
possible but he couldn’t stop the soft moans that slipped from his raw aching
throat. Immediately, Jeremy was kneeling by his side “Take it easy, kid…just
lay still.” He said in a soft, soothing voice. David nodded slowly to show that
he understood and closed his eyes, drifting back into a fitful sleep.
He awoke with
a start, sending a flash of pain through his whole body as he jerked
involuntarily. As he slowly became more alert, he realized that Jeremy was
lying on the ground beside him, curled up against him and sharing his body heat
to keep David warm. He found himself wondering just how much more abuse his
body could take. He was already seriously weakened. Every day he could feel his
mind slipping a little closer to the edge of his own sanity. He had already
seen more than one prisoner go crazy, lost forever in the depths of his own
mind. David was terrified of the same thing happening to him. So far his
memories of his family and of home had helped him survive the worst of the
abuse but how much longer would those memories be enough to keep him alive and
fighting to survive? He sighed and forced himself to relax, closing his eyes
again and drifting back into a restless sleep.
The next day,
the guards came for David again and this time he went crazy the minute they
touched him, kicking, biting and cursing even as they beat him into submission.
But instead of taking him into the building, they grabbed three other men as
well and forced them to stand facing the cage so that the other prisoners could
see them. Holding their weapons on the prisoners, one of the guards ordered
them to undress. After the four men had pulled off the rags that they wore, the
guards ordered them to get down on their knees on the hard, rocky ground. One
of the guards smiled coldly as he stepped forward and held a pistol to the
temple of the first man in line. Without a word, he pulled the trigger and the
gun went off, instantly killing the young man who fell to the ground, his blood
soaking into the hard packed dirt.
David began to
shake involuntarily as the guard moved on to the next man in line and held the
gun to his head. A moment later, the second man lay dead on the ground. Then he
moved on to the third man who was sitting next to David. Another shot rang out
and the third man fell to the ground, some of his blood and brain matter
spattering on David’s face. David’s heart pounded violently as he felt the
barrel of the gun pressing against his own temple, hard enough to bruise the
skin. He closed his eyes, silently saying a prayer, as he waited for the
inevitable. His heart jumped into his mouth as he heard a loud click and then
the hammer fell on an empty chamber. It took David a minute to realize that he
was still alive and not lying on the ground dead with the other three men. He
was shaking so badly that he collapsed to the ground, instinctively curling up
into a fetal position. He heard the guards laughing, and then rough hands
reached out to grab him and pull him to his feet. PLEASE DEAR GOD! HELP ME!
PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE! I WANNA GO HOME! I WANNA GO HOME! His thoughts
screamed silently into his mind even as the tears fell unnoticed down his
cheeks.
Instead of
throwing him back into the cage with the other prisoners as David had expected,
the guards drug him past the larger cage and into the jungle that surrounded
the camp. Twisted vines and sharp blades of grass tore at his legs as jagged
pieces of stone cut into the soles of his feet. In the center of a small
clearing not far from the main camp, several small wooden cages stood under the
glare of the mid-day sun. There was a man slumped forward in one of the cages
but it was obvious from the heavy smell that hung in the air that he was dead
and had been for a few days. The guards shoved David into one of the cages and
locked the door securely, leaving him alone there in the jungle. The cage was so
small that all he could do was sit on the ground, hunched over in a cramped
position with no room to even turn around. David sat there, naked, with his
knees drawn up to his chest, trying to ignore the protest of his aching
muscles. He choked back the bile that rose in his throat and blinked back the
tears that gathered in his eyes. He had never been more terrified in his life
as he wondered if he had been abandoned here to die.
A noise caught
his attention and David raised his weary eyes to watch as two guards appeared
in the clearing, dragging another man between them. It wasn’t until they threw
him into a cage across from David and locked the door that the burnet realized
that it was Charlie, his friend from his own unit. Charlie looked to be in bad
shape, his body covered with welts and open wounds that were oozing pus. David
knew that he didn’t look much better.
“Hey,
Charlie…” David said in a raspy hoarse voice that was barely above a whisper.
At the sound
of his name, Charlie’s head jerked up and he looked at David with frightened,
alarmed eyes. His expression softened as he recognized his old friend. “Davy,”
he whispered in a weak strangled voice “You’re alive!”
“Barely….”
David muttered wearily “How about you?”
“I think they
busted something up inside of me….hurts like hell.” He looked at David warily
“I think they brought us to die….”
“Yeah…..me
too.” David agreed. Too tired to continue talking, he lowered his head to his
crossed arms which were folded over his knees and closed his eyes to try and sleep.
CHAPTER 6
The sun was
high overhead when David opened his eyes. The air was so hot and heavy that it
burned his lungs with each breath he took. As the day wore on, the temperature
rose and breathing became more difficult. It was so bad that David finally
passed out from the heat. The sensation of something crawling across his bare
skin awoke him with a startled cry. He swatted at the huge spider that was
crawling over his right arm, knocking it outside of his cage. .
“You okay,
Davy?” Charlie asked anxiously, aroused from his own stupor when he heard
David’s startled cry.
“Yeah….just a
spider crawling on me.” David told him, taking a deep breath and trying to
steady his ragged nerves.
“They been
crawling all over me too.” Charlie said “Suckers hurt when they bite too.”
“I’ll take
your word for it.” David muttered, trying to clear the cobwebs out of his foggy
mind. He winced, his shoulders protesting any movement, the skin on his back
burned and blistered from prolonged exposure to the sun. The muscles in his
legs cramped from being forced to sit in one position for so long and David
noticed the tremor in his hands. He could feel his body slowly shutting down
and he was too weak to resist any longer. He closed his eyes and let the
darkness creep over him once more.
The day seemed
to drag on with no end in sight. But when night fell it was even worse. The
darkness was overwhelming, covering everything like a blanket. And it was still
hard to breathe. There was little relief from the heat; it was only slightly
cooler at night than it was during the day. And what made it even worse was
that the spiders and other critters that crawled over David in the darkness
could not be as easily identified as they were during the daylight. It was
impossible to do more than doze off for brief periods at a time. The excessive
heat was sapping the last of David’s failing strength and endurance. Death
seemed preferable to this continuous torture with no end in sight.
A guard came
early in the morning with a small cup of rice and water, their only ration for
the day. Then they were left alone. The loneliness and isolation was almost
unbearable. All David and Charlie had was each other, so they used that to hold
on to their sanity. They talked about everything and anything they could think
of just to pass the endless hours. David was glad he wasn’t out here in this
cage by himself without anyone to talk to. If he had been, he would have lost
it by now from sheer loneliness.
David was
listening as Charlie started telling him about the first girl he’d ever made
out with. Only half of his mind was paying attention, the other half had
drifted off. Suddenly, David felt a sharp burning sting on his bare ankle.
Instinctively, he jerked his leg away from the unexpected pain.
“DAVY!”
Charlie yelled in a frantic voice “SNAKE!”
By the time
his words registered in David’s foggy mind and he glanced down at his left leg,
the snake had already crawled across his bare leg and found its way out of the
cage. Through blurry eyes, David saw the two little puncture marks just above
his ankle. A few minutes later, he began shaking uncontrollably and felt
violently sick to his stomach. Even though it was mid morning and the
temperature was crawling into the high nineties, David had never felt so cold
in is life. Unable to lie down, all he could do was sit there hunched over in
his usual position as the poison slowly seeped into his system. David’s
condition grew steadily worse as the day wore on. He could hear Charlie talking
to him, trying to keep him alert and oriented, but he was too sick to reply.
The next two
days were a blur in his mind and always would be. The only thing David would
ever remember clearly was feeling so cold all the time and wanting to give up,
to just curl up and die so he could stop the paralyzing cramps that twisted his
guts into knots and the gut wrenching nausea that swept over him relentlessly.
But his mind refused to let him die and slowly he started coming out of it.
When he was coherent enough to start responding to Charlie again, Charlie told
him that all he had done for the past three days while he was delirious was
rant about home. His foot was swollen up to twice its normal size and was
turning purple. He could barely move his left leg and his entire body throbbed
with pain. He could feel himself burning with fever from the infection that
flooded his system.
Late that
afternoon, the guards came and took Charlie away. It was hours before they
brought him back and when they did, it was obvious that he had been severely
beaten. He managed to tell David that the Viet Cong had questioned him for
hours wanting to know the location of their camps and their weapon sites. They
refused to believe that Charlie didn’t know. In retaliation, they had beaten
him almost to death. The next morning, the guards came for him again. David
watched helplessly as they drug him away. Only this time they didn’t bring him
back that day. Alone in his cage, David felt the terror seeping into every pore
of his being when he realized he was now truly alone. He could feel his mind
starting to slip away without Charlie there to keep him grounded in reality.
By morning,
David felt as if he was teetering on the very edge of his sanity. He was afraid
that he was going to start screaming and never stop. No longer held at bay, the
terror inside of him felt like an iron fist curled around his heart. Suddenly,
the guards came through the trees dragging Charlie’s limp lifeless body between
them. They threw his dead body down on the ground in front of David’s cage,
jabbering something he couldn’t quite understand in Vietnamese. One of the
guards reached out and unlocked his cage, hands reaching in to grab at him.
With a whimper, David scooted as far into the corner of the cage as he could
possibly get his eyes wide with terror. His mind didn’t even register the sound
of gunfire and explosions coming form the direction of the main camp. The two
guards turned and ran back towards the camp, David momentarily forgotten. But
that wasn’t all they forgot. They also forgot to close the door to his cage.
At first,
David was too scared to move, afraid that it was some kind of trick. But then
his own survival instincts took over and David half fell, half stumbled out of
the cage. He fell on the ground beside Charlie’s battered body, too weak to
escape now that he was free. As he looked at his friend’s dead body and empty
eyes, something deep inside of David snapped. Even though he was so weak he
could barely move, somehow David managed to scrape a narrow grave out of the
loose dirt in front of his cage using nothing but his bare hands and tearing
loose every fingernail in the process. The hole wasn’t very deep but it was
deep enough so that he could bury his friend. It was the last thing he could do
for him, the only respect he could show for Charlie. He never even noticed the
tears that streamed down his face as he struggled to complete his task.
Relying on
sheer will power, he managed to pull Charlie’s body into the makeshift grave
and gently covered him with dirt. By the time he had finished, he was totally
exhausted and panting from the physical exertion. He collapsed on top of the
grave and finally let his shattered mind drift far away from this place and all
the horrors he had been forced to endure here.
CHAPTER 7
The rescue
team consisted of men who had been searching for the prison camp for months.
When they found it, they killed every Viet Cong solider they came across and
freed the prisoners in the main camp. They would have missed finding David if
one of the prisoners hadn’t told them about the cages hidden in the jungle
clearing. Two the rescue team made their way into the jungle and soon found the
tiny cages. They saw David lying face down on the ground on top of a pile of
loose dirt. At first they thought he was dead. Only the warmth of his skin and
the faint rise and fall of his chest told them that he was still alive. His
eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the sky overhead, and he didn’t respond
when one of the soldiers rolled him over onto his back and tried talking to him.
His condition
was deplorable. His hair was dirty and tangled, grown out from the regulation
military cut, his face unshaven and covered with a heavy beard. He had also
lost at least thirty pounds since his confinement, leaving his face and body
gaunt, the skin pulled tightly over clearly outlined bones. He was dirty and
covered with bites from insects, along with numerous bruises and open sores
from his previous injuries. The swelling from the snake bite had advanced up
into his leg almost halfway to his knee and his skin was hot and dry to the
touch. His two rescuers gently lifted David, one of them grabbing him under the
arms while the second man grabbed his legs, and carried him back to one of the
Medi-Vac helicopters that were standing by in the main camp.
As David was
carefully placed on a stretcher inside one of the choppers, a nurse quickly
accessed his condition. She determined that he was severely dehydrated and
malnourished with a severe weight loss. He had several bites and lacerations
that were seriously infected, not to mention the nearly critical infection in
his left foot and leg. She knew it had been caused by a snake bite; she’d seen
similar infections before caused by the untreated bite of that one particular
little snake. He could end up losing the leg and she was worried about his
mental status. He seemed to have withdrawn deep inside of himself and wasn’t
responding to any verbal stimuli. His responses to physical stimuli were
sluggish and barely detectable, a clear sign that his central nervous system
was compromised. She carefully strapped him down to the stretcher, preparing
him for the flight to the nearest Mash Unit. She tightened the straps across
his chest, over his hips, around his wrists and around his ankles, taking care
not to disturb his injured leg any more than necessary. He would be uploaded
with the rest of the most critically injured or ill prisoners. Other prisoners
who were not as seriously ill or injured would be evacuated on a second group
of copters that were already on their way in. Once she had David secured to the
stretcher, she tapped the inside of his left forearm searching for a useable
vein. Due to his severe dehydration, she finally had to use a vein in his groin
to start an IV to get some fluids and antibiotics into him as quickly as
possible.
The nurse
examined the young man’s face. He couldn’t be much over twenty or twenty-one.
So many of the soldiers she dealt with were young men in the prime of their
lives. She said a special prayer for each of them. She had become a good judge
of which ones would survive and which ones wouldn’t and she had a feeling that
this young man would survive if they got him to the hospital in time. She just
hoped that they would be able to save his leg and bring his mind back from wherever
he had retreated to. After she finished tending to him, she signaled the pilot
that he could take off. A breeze filled the inside of the helicopter as they
lifted into the air. As they started to fly towards the closest field hospital,
the young man started to get extremely agitated and she was forced to sedate
him to keep him calm and quiet.
Forty-five
minutes later, the helicopter landed at the Mash Unit and medical personnel
came running out to help unload the injured men. Briefly the nurse on board
gave them a quick assessment on each man as he was unloaded from the chopper.
The young man with the snake bite was one of the first ones unloaded. As she
watched them carrying him towards the hospital tent, she smiled and whispered
under her breath, “God Bless, soldier.”
Inside the
hospital tent, there was an organized chaos as the wounded soldiers were
assessed with the most critical cases being tended to first by the surgeons and
nurses. David was quickly assessed as needing immediate attention and was
shifted onto one of the operating tables. A highly skilled team of nurses and
doctors worked on him for the next three hours. Various lacerations were
cleaned and sutured; other wounds were simply cleaned and covered with
ointment, then bandaged. The main concern was his leg. An incision was made
from mid-calf to his ankle and the infection was cleaned out of the wound. The
wound was left open and tubes were inserted to continue to drain the infection
from his body. He would also be given massive doses of antibiotics to fight the
infection that still lingered in his system. The next forty eight hours would
determine if he would lose his leg or not. He was also found to have pneumonia
in both lungs, a dangerously high fever and intestinal worms from the poor
diet. He would be given additional medications to combat those conditions. His
condition was still critical but he at least had a fighting chance of surviving
his ordeal.
Once his
immediate physical injuries were cared for and he was moved to a bed, his
primary nurse took over his care. After checking and making note of his vital
signs, she gently bathed the young man and shaved him. His dark curls were so
tangled she had no choice but to cut them, trimming the hair short and then
treating him for head lice. Since he had no dog tags, he was simply listed in
the medical records as John Doe # 731.
Since he had
been combative on the Medi-vac copter, he was heavily sedated to keep him from
re-injuring himself and disturbing the draining wound on his leg. But even with
the sedation, he appeared to be agitated, tossing his head from side to side on
the thin pillow and mumbling incoherently beneath his breath as he struggled
with his own private demons. His primary nurse had seen far too many young men
like him in the months she had been in this place, men who never returned
completely from the wasteland of their own tortured minds. She prayed that this
young man would be one of the lucky ones who would be able to find his way
back.