THE GATES OF HELL

Spoiler: This is a very dark tale about Starsky’s time in Vietnam. There is graphic violence dealing with scenes of torture and abuse in a POW Camp.

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.

CHAPTER 8

The young medic frowned when he saw the empty bed. Quickly, he hurried off to find the nurse on duty. When he found her talking to another patient at the far end of the ward, he signaled for her attention. Excusing herself, Abigail Cole walked over to the irritated medic. “He’s gone again.” The young man told her

“Not again.” Abigail said with a soft sigh. She knew exactly which patient the medic was referring to. “Check outside. You know where to look. If he’s there, bring him back in but be gentle, don’t spook him. I hate to do it, but we’re going to have to restrain him again. He has to stay off that leg or he’s gonna end up losing it. Get someone to help you in case he gets agitated…” she ordered “But don’t hurt him.” She added firmly.

Abigail turned on her heel and walked back to the supply room. She hated to restrain the patient in question but she had no other choice. Until they could get through to him and make him understand that he was safe now and that he had to stay in bed so his leg could heal, this was all she could do. The young man had been brought to the hospital over a week ago along with several other prisoners who had been rescued from a POW camp deep in the jungle. At first he had been passive and docile but then he had become agitated and hard to handle. Even with his severely injured leg, he kept trying to escape every chance he got. They couldn’t seem to make him understand that he was safe now and no longer locked in a tiny cage in the middle of the jungle. Usually, he could be found outside somewhere around the building huddled in a corner sleeping.

She found a set of restraints and walked back through the ward. When she reached his bed, the medic and one of the doctors had the young man settled back in bed and sedated for the time being. With the medic’s assistance, Abigail fastened the restraints around the young man’s wrists and then to the bottom of the bed rails to keep him from escaping again. She also placed a security belt around his waist which she also fastened to the bottom bed rail. Satisfied that he was secured and wouldn’t escape again when he woke up, she put three pillows underneath his left leg to keep it elevated. She didn’t want to see him lose his leg and that would happen if he didn’t stay in bed.

She quickly took his vital signs which were all in normal ranges although his heart rate and blood pressure were both a little on the high side. With his dog tags missing and his present mental status so confused, she didn’t even know his name, rank, serial number or the branch of the military that he was a part of. So for now, he was simply listed in their records as John Doe #731. Once they got him cleaned up with a shave and his hair cut, he had turned out to be handsome young man with dark brown curly hair and a natural olive complexion. The only other thing she knew about him was that he had a slight east coast accent. The only reason she knew that was because he talked in his sleep. Being from New Jersey herself, Abigail recognized his dialect.

Assured that he was resting comfortably for now, Abigail hurried away to tend to her other patients leaving the young man’s care to the nervous young medic. The medic had only been in Viet Nam for a short time and was already more than ready to go back home. He had seen so many terrible things over here in such a short period of time, so much death and so much pain. So many broken bodies and more than a few broken minds. Like the young man he was tending to now. A young man not that much older than he was who should be back home dating girls and having fun, not fighting in a war that made no sense to anyone.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, David could sense the activity going on around him. But he was afraid to believe that he was finally safe. He was terrified that if he let himself believe that then he would open his eyes and discover that it was all a dream, that he was really still in that tiny cage in the jungle waiting to die. Whatever hope he’d had died with Charlie. And he had buried a part of himself in that shallow grave with him in that god forsaken jungle.

Abigail finished her round and grabbed a bite to eat before returning to the ward. As she walked down the aisle, she glanced at each bed as she passed by, automatically checking on the occupant. When she reached the bed of the young man she had tended to earlier, she noticed that his eyes were open. It wasn’t the first time he had opened his eyes but it was the first time that she noticed an alertness in those gorgeous sapphire depths that hadn’t been there before. She walked to the side of the bed and gently reached down to touch his shoulder. “Hello, soldier.” She said with a warm smile “Can you tell me your name?” She held her breath as she waited to see if he would answer her question or not.There was a moment’s hesitation and then he said in a husky voice

“Where am I?”

“You’re in a field hospital just outside of Saigon. My name’s Abigail and I’m a nurse here.” She told him, relief washing over her as she realized he had finally come back from the blackness of his own mind. “Now, can you tell me your name, rank and serial number?”

“Private First Class David Starsky. United States Army. Division C. Serial number 433-26-4058.” He responded automatically.

“Nice to meet you, Private Starsky. Where are you from?”

“New York originally but I’ve lived in California since I was thirteen.” David told her. He took a deep breath, the simple task of talking exhausting him. He looked at Abigail intently for a moment and then demanded “Why are my hands tied down?”

“Because you kept trying to escape and we can’t have that. Your leg needs to stay elevated unless you want to lose it. You got bit by a snake, didn’t you? A little yellow and green one?”

“Yeah, how did you know?” he asked with a puzzled frown.

“I’ve seen the bites from that little critter before. They get pretty nasty when they aren’t taken care of right away. Just like yours did.”

“How bad is it?”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately? You look like death warmed over.”

“That bad, huh?” David asked with a short laugh that he cut off quickly as his chest tightened painfully making him cough violently.

“I wouldn’t do that just yet.” Abigail told him “You’ve got pneumonia in both lungs….that’s why your chest hurts so much.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Other than the fact that you’re severely dehydrated and you’ve lost almost thirty pounds….naw, I think that about covers it.”

“If I promise to be good and stay in bed, will you untie my hands?” David asked with a ghost of his smile. He hated being strapped down. It still made him feel helpless and afraid, too much like he was still a prisoner.

“I know you don’t like being strapped down….especially after what you just went through….but I need to leave the restraints on just a little bit longer….just until I’m sure you’re back with us and that you won’t try to slip away again. Can you handle that? Just for a little while?”

“How long?” David asked in a tightly controlled voice, struggling to control his fear even though he knew it was irrational.

“Four more hours.”“Will you come back and talk to me once in awhile?” David asked hating the pleading tone he could hear in his voice.

“Of course I will.”

“Okay. Four hours.” David agreed reluctantly

“If you really can’t handle it….I’ll take them off before that.” Abigail told him with a gentle smile. “Deal?”

“Deal.” He told her with a grin.

“Great. I’ll be back in a little while….I’ll go to the mess tent and see if I can get you something to eat. How does that sound?”

“Great.” David told her, his stomach suddenly growling at the thought of some real food. He watched as Abigail walked away and tried to relax in spite of his restraints.

He let his gaze sweep across the room, noting the activity and the noise. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that his hands were tied down.

True to her word, Abigail returned shortly with a tray in her hands. Raising the head of David’s bed, she sat the tray on his lap and sat down on the edge of the bed to feed him some Jell-O and chicken broth. Since he hadn’t eaten regular food in so long, he could only tolerate a few bites before his stomach cramped violently. He fought back the urge to vomit, breathing slowly until he got the nausea under control. Noting his discomfort, Abigail sat the tray of food aside and gave him a few sips of water.

“It’s okay. You’ll be eating steak again in no time.” She reassured him with a smile. “Right now your stomach just needs a little rest too.” She glanced at the restraints around his wrists and said “I think we can go ahead and take these off but I’m going to leave on the belt around your waist.” David breathed a deep sigh of relief as she carefully unfastened the restraints from his wrists.

“Thank you.” He said in a grateful voice as he rubbed his wrists to restore the circulation to his hands and fingers.

“You’re welcome, David.” Abigail told him. “Try to get some rest and I’ll check back on you in a little bit.” Even before she had finished speaking, David’s eyes had closed and he had drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER 9

David picked at the food on his tray. Even after being on a starvation diet for almost 6 weeks while imprisoned in the camp, he still didn't have much of an appetite. It seemed like whatever he did manage to choke down, he just threw back up again. He looked up in surprise when Abigail walked up to his bedside and sat a bowl down on the bedside table in front of him. He grinned broadly when he saw the hot fudge sundae. “Hey, thanks.” he said in a pleasantly surprised voice

“Well, you need to eat something. So it might as well be something you’ll enjoy.” She said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Figured that might suit you a little bit better than the stuff they been serving you.”

“That’s what I like. A woman after my own heart.” David said in a teasing voice, his eyes sparkling with pleasure.

“I expect you to eat all of it too.” Abigail warned him. It did her heart good to see David looking happy about something for a chance. She watched as he took a bite of the sundae, a look of pure pleasure on his face. Satisfied that she’d finally found something he could eat, she smiled and walked away to finish helping to pass the supper trays.

After he'd finished eating, David lay there and stared at the ceiling. There really wasn't much else he could do. He still couldn't get out of bed because of his leg and if he tried to read it gave him a headache. And sleep was pretty much out of the question because when he slept he had terrible nightmares where he was back in that cage in the jungle. The only way he could sleep at night was when they gave him something to knock him out so he wouldn't dream. He’d been in the hospital almost three weeks. He knew he was safe now but there was still a part of him that didn't feel safe, not as long as he was in Viet Nam. He often wondered if he would ever feel safe again.

The only break in the boredom came when the nurses changed the bandages on his leg. He tried not to think about how close he had come to losing his leg because of that dang snake bite. His leg was still swollen but the doctors had finally closed up the wound and took out the drainage tubes. He had a six inch incision on the side of his left calf, a permanent reminder of how close he’d come to dying in this place.

Over the next two weeks. David slowly started regaining his strength and his stamina. He had regained fifteen of the pounds he’d lost so his face didn’t look so gaunt anymore. That afternoon, he’d finally been allowed out of bed for the first time. He was still weak and unsteady on his feet but it still felt good to be standing upright again. He still couldn’t put much weight on his injured leg but he remembered how to use the crutches from when his ankle had been broken when he was thirteen.

David wondered if anyone had notified Ma and Aunt Rosie that he was all right. He knew they had to be worried sick since he hadn’t written in so long. He had written them religiously twice a week since he’d been shipped to Viet Nam. It was hard to believe that it had been almost two years since he’d actually seen them. David was pulled from his thoughts when Abigail stepped up to his bedside. Smiling, she handed him a long white envelope with the familiar insignia in the upper left hand corner. New orders. He fingered it nervously, not sure that he wanted to open it. Noticing his hesitation, Abigail said “Would you like me to open it for you?”

“Would you mind?” David asked anxiously, handing the envelope back to her. He knew he was being foolish but he knew that his immediate future rested inside that envelope. Abigail took it and tore it open, taking out the single sheet of paper it contained. Unfolding it, she skimmed through it and then looked at David with a huge grin. “Congratulations, soldier.” She told him “It’s a medical discharge. You’re going home.”

“Home?” David repeated, his heart pounding frantically in his chest, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Home.” Abigail told him “Just as soon as you’re strong enough to travel.” She was genuinely happy for David. He didn’t belong in this place. She handed the discharge paper back to David, who scanned it for himself. He blinked back the tears that gathered in his eyes, feeling foolish at his display of emotion. Realizing that he was finally going home, he was having trouble controlling his raging emotions. Suddenly the floodgates opened and he found himself crying uncontrollably.

Abigail gently slipped her arms around him, holding him close as he let out all the fear, pain and horror of the past two years. She had been waiting for this to happen. It usually did with the ones who had been in the prison camps. She was glad that he was finally letting out some of the emotions instead of keeping them bottled up inside. Finally, he calmed down and gently pulled away, wiping away the traces of his tears with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry.” He mumbled, lowering his eyes to avoid looking at her, ashamed of his emotional outburst.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, sugar.” Abigail told him “You’ve earned yourself a good cry.” She grinned and leaned in close so she could whisper in his ear “I think I can sneak ya a beer as long as you don’t tell nobody. It’s even a real beer from the states and not that crap they call beer over here.”

“That sounds great.”

“Be right back.” She told him with a wink. She hurried away, returning shortly with a paper cup that she handed to him. It was filled with ice cold beer that had never tasted so good to David before.

CHAPTER 10

David sighed softly as he joined the other passengers leaving the plane. The military had given him extensive training on weapons, how to slip through the jungle without being seen or heard, and they had taught him how to kill. But no one had thought to teach him what it would be like to return to the real world after being in Viet Nam for eighteen months. The Army didn’t give any training on how to be a Viet Nam veteran. While he hadn’t exactly expected a welcome home party, he didn’t expect to find an angry mob of college-aged war protesters at the airport terminal either.

Luckily, he had been warned at the military hospital where he’d spent two weeks after getting back to the states to dress in civilian clothes and take a commercial flight for the last leg home and he was grateful that he’d followed that advice. But in spite of that, somehow the protestors seemed to know that he was a returning soldier. Everywhere David looked, there were student protestors waving signs and yelling ugly obscenities at anyone who looked like they might be military personnel. Hobbling across the hot tarmac, David kept shooting anxious glances at the faces of the boys and girls his own age who were calling him all sorts of names. As he passed through the gate into the main terminal, a pretty blonde stepped in front of him and spat in his face, hissing at him and calling him a baby killer. David held his tongue as he brushed past her and hurried out of the terminal.

Pausing just outside the main entrance, he took a deep shuddering breathe and exhaled slowly to calm himself. So much had happened in the past six weeks that his mind and body was having trouble adjusting to all the major lifestyle chances. He might be a civilian again and back home in New York, but his mind was still somewhere over in the jungles of Viet Nam. Pulling a crumbled pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, he stuck one in the corner of his mouth and lit it, inhaling deeply. Smoking was just one of the bad habits he’d picked up over there that he knew he should give up, especially now that he was back home. Ma and Aunt Rosie would never approve. But right now he needed something to calm him down and keep him grounded. Shifting his duffle back up to his right shoulder, he hailed one of the cabs circling the lot for passengers and climbed into the back seat. He gave the driver his mother’s address and then leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes to avoid any unnecessary conversation with the driver.

Half an hour later, the cab pulled up in front of his childhood home. David dug some bills out of his wallet and handed them to the driver as he climbed out of the vehicle. As the car pulled away, the front door flew open and his mother came running down the sidewalk towards him. “DAVY!” She cried happily, as she threw her arms around her oldest son and hugged him tightly. “THANK GOD YOU’RE ALL RIGHT.”

“I’m fine, Ma.” David said reassuringly, wrapping his arms around his mother’s waist and breathing in the familiar comforting scents that he always associated with her. “Just tired. It was a long flight.”

“Well, come inside. I’ve got supper on cooking and Nicky should be home soon.” David let his mother take his hand and lead him into the house where he had spent the first thirteen years of his life. Nothing much had changed. If anything, everything seemed smaller and more faded with time. And in spite of the familiarity of his surroundings, this was no longer his home. His home was in Bay City. But he had decided to spend his first month back in the states with his mother and his brother, reconnecting and reestablishing the bonds that had been strained throughout the years of his enforced absence from this place.

Rachel Starsky looked at her eldest son with a critical eye as he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. It was obvious that he had lost a lot of weight, his clothes hung loosely on his slender frame. But it was his eyes that bothered Rachel the most. They held the same haunted look she had seen in the eyes of other young men returning from a war a long time ago. She knew that David had seen things over there that no man should ever have to see and that he had done things that could scar a man for life. She just hoped that David was strong enough to learn to live with his experiences over there. Her heart ached with pain for her son and what he had gone through but he was a man now and would shy away from the comfort of his mother’s arms.

The aroma of Rachel’s famous fried chicken soon filled the air, one of David’s personal favorites. To celebrate his homecoming, she had prepared all of his favorites for supper. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes with white gravy, buttered corn, hot rolls and chocolate ice cream for dessert. She was just sitting the food on the table when the back door slammed open and her youngest son, Nicky, came into the house.

“Hey, Davy.” Nicky said, as he grabbed a bottle of soda from the refrigerator and sat down at the table across from his older brother. “How was your flight?”

“Long.” David mumbled with a crooked grin, his exhaustion starting to catch up with him. All he wanted to do was sleep. Seeing that David didn’t feel like talking, Nicky ignored him and started telling his mother about his newest scam to make some money as quickly as possible with as little work as possible. After finishing his meal, David excused himself and went to his old bedroom, the same room he had shared with Nicky when they were kids. Nicky no longer slept in the room; he had taken over the other upstairs bedroom when Rachel moved her room downstairs to the guest bedroom. But the room still contained the twin beds they had slept on as children. Stripping down to his boxers, David threw himself across the bed, face down, and was soon sleeping soundly.

Suddenly, David awoke with a start, his heart pounding with fear and his eyes darting around the room anxiously. It took him a minute to realize that he was in his childhood bedroom in his mother’s house in New York and not locked in a cage in the jungle. He was shaking violently; his face covered with sweat, as he shoved himself out of bed and quietly crept down the stairs. Turning on the kitchen light, he made a pot of coffee. He knew he wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep, not tonight anyway. He had finally stopped shaking but his heart was still pounding frantically and he could taste the fear that lingered in his mouth.

“Can’t sleep?” his mother’s voice said softly as she stepped out of the darkness of the living room and into the kitchen, startling David with her unexpected appearance.

“No.” David said, lowering his eyes and avoiding her gaze, stirring sugar into his coffee to hide the shaking of his hands..

“David, are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” He said but the words sounded hollow even to his own ears. He knew that his mother was worried about him, he was worried about himself too, but he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t seem to control the crazy things that were going on in his mind. And he couldn’t talk to anyone about it, if talked to someone about it, he would have to tell them about the things he had seen and done over there, and what he’d gone through in that prison camp and he had no intention of reliving all that again.

Rachel frowned but didn’t question her son’s answer. She knew that David wasn’t ready to talk about it and she didn’t know if he would ever be. But she also knew that she couldn’t push him, if she pushed him, he would only shut her out completely. Things had been strained enough between them in the past few years; Rachel didn’t want to alienate her son any further. He was no longer the thirteen year old boy she had sent away from home, he was a full grown man with his own demons to conquer.

CHAPTER 11

It was the Fourth of July and David had accompanied his brother and his mother to the fireworks display at the park near Rachel’s house. David would be returning to Bay City in a few days and he wanted to make the most out of the time he had left to spend with his mother. The years apart had left a rift between David and Nicky. The two brothers were literally strangers to one another and even though David had tried, Nicky had his own life that David would never be a part of. He had separated from David and his mother as soon as they arrived at the park, wandering off in the crowd by himself.

There were several activities going on at the park that day, a flea market, a farmer’s market, arts and craft booths, a wide variety of food concessions and a small carnival for the kids in the crowd. For the first time since he’d come home, David seemed to be relaxed and having a good time. He socialized with some old friends and flirted with all the pretty girls. He seemed more like himself again, not as tense or on edge as he had been. Rachel smiled as she watched him, hoping that he was finally starting to adjust to being back home again.

When it started to get dark, David and his mother found a place to sit on a hill overlooking the fireworks display and spread out the blanket Rachel had brought for them to sit on so they would be comfortable. As soon as it was dark enough, the fireworks started with flashing flares of shining color and loud explosions of sound. Suddenly, David shoved himself to his feet and walked away, disappearing into the crowd. “DAVID!” Rachel called out after him, as she jumped to her feet and tried to catch up with him but she lost sight of him in the horde of people in the park. The fireworks display forgotten, Rachel continued to search for her eldest son.

Finally, she spotted David sitting on top of a picnic table at the far end of the park near the playground. “David?” Rachel said softly, taking care not to startle him as she came up behind him. “Are you all right, son?”

“I just had to get away from the noise….” David told her with a deep shuddering breath, his voice soft with shame, embarrassed by his actions. Rachel kept silent, knowing that there was more. “The fireworks…..they sounded just like the bombs over in ‘Nam….” He finally said in a choked voice, his words short and clipped. Suddenly, David broke down and started to cry, hunching over and hugging himself as he began to rock back and forth. Instinctively, Rachel reached out and pulled her son into her arms, holding him close and letting him cry. It had never occurred to Rachel to associate the sounds of the fireworks display with the sounds of battle in Viet Nam.

“Shhhh…..” she said soothingly, as she ran her fingers through her son’s tousled curls the same way she used to do when he was a child and needed to be comforted. “It’s okay….you’re home now, baby….you’re not over there anymore….”

“That’s just it, Ma.” David said with a muffled sniff against her shoulder “I am still over there….I can’t get it out of my head. I close my eyes and I’m back there again…” Rachel held tightly as he continued to cry, knowing that this was what David needed more than anything else. He might have grown up quicker than he should have but at the moment he was a child again needing the comfort of his mother’s embrace. Finally, David seemed to get control of himself and slowly pulled out of his mother’s arms. Rachel remained at his side, patiently waiting for him to talk to her.

“Go on, David. Get it out….it’ll help to talk about it.” She told him in an encouraging voice.

“It was horrible over there….” David told her in a whisper, struggling to keep his emotions under control. “I was so scared all the time….I watched some of my best friends get killed right in front of me…..a couple of them even died in my arms. I was so afraid that it’d be me the next time….” He paused and swallowed hard to regain his composure “Then I got caught…” his voice trailed off and Rachel squeezed his hand gently. She knew this part of his story would be the hardest part for him to talk about and the hardest part for her to hear. “They put us in these cages like we were nothing but animals….and that’s all we were to them.” He stopped unable to go on as the horrors of the camp flooded back into his mind. “They hurt me, Ma….they hurt me so bad.” Rachel felt her own tears flooding her eyes as David began to cry again, burying his face against her shoulder once more as he sought the security of her arms. Rachel continued to hold him until he had no tears left to cry. Still he stayed in the loving warmth of her embrace, too exhausted emotionally to move. For just a few more moments he wanted to stay a child again and pretend that the horrors he had experienced as a man had never happened.

“Oh, Davy…” Rachel said, using his childhood name affectionately. She cupped his chin in her hand, tilting his head so she could look into his eyes. She smiled fondly. He looked so much like his late father that it was almost unnerving. She tried to find the words to soothe his battered spirit. “No man should ever have to see what you saw, to do what they made you do, to be hurt the way they hurt you……not even in the name of freedom. No mother wants to think about her son being hurt the way you were…not to be able to something to take away that pain.” She sighed softly and touched her forehead to David’s in a childhood sign of affection and love she had used with both of her children. “I can’t take away your pain, darling….all I can do is be here when you need me.”

“I’ll always need you, Ma….” David said, wrapping his arms around his mother’s petite waist and squeezing tightly. He had his emotions tightly under control once more and was determined not to worry his mother any more than he already had.

The fireworks display was over and most of the crowd had gone home when Rachel and David finally left the park. David was quiet and subdued, still embarrassed by his emotional breakdown in front of his mother. It was hard to cope with to a world that didn’t want him there, filled with protestors that resented and hated what he represented.

Protestors who would never understand what it was really like over there. Idealists who listened to the ‘vanilla’ news reports about what went on over there and then took things out of context to fit their own radical ideas.

David went to his room as soon as they got home, politely refusing his mother’s offer to make some hot chocolate. Right now, he just needed to be alone. Tossing his duffle bag onto the bed, he opened it up and dug through it until he found the two small boxes buried in the bottom. Pulling them out of their hiding place, he opened one to reveal the Bronze Star, a medal he had received for meritorious service and bravery. Closing the box with a sharp snap, he opened the second box to reveal a Purple Heart, the highest medal awarded by the military, and one he had been given because of the wounds he had received in the service of his

county. To David, the medals were just pieces of metal that represented nothing but pain, blood, sweat and tears. He had never felt that he deserved them. Walking over to the closet, he opened the door and hid the medals in the corner of the overheard shelf behind a pile of his old comic books. They represented a part of his life that he wanted to forget about. He no longer had any idea who in the hell David Michael Starsky was supposed to be.

He threw himself down across his bed without bothering to undress and threw his arm up over his eyes, trying to calm his racing thoughts so that he could sleep. He needed a good night’s sleep, undisturbed by the nightmares that still woke him each night with a silent scream on his lips. He was still awake when he heard Nicky creeping in just before dawn. A short time later, he heard his mother moving around downstairs in the kitchen and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee drifted up the stairs. Shoving himself out of bed, David went downstairs to join his mother in the kitchen.

“Good morning.” Rachel said brightly, sitting a cup of coffee on the table in front of him along with a plate of blueberry pancakes. “How did you sleep last night?”

“Okay.” David said, lowering his eyes, as he took a cautious sip of the coffee. His mother had added plenty of sugar and cream, just the way he liked it. He had stopped smoking and was on edge from the withdrawal symptoms from the nicotine. The excess sugar helped to soothe his ragged nerves while the caffine gave him a much needed morning jolt. But nothing could hide the barely noticable tremble in his hands, especially from the sharp eyes of his mother.

Rachel took one look at her son’s drawn face and the exhausted look in his eyes and she knew that he was lying to her about sleeping but she decided to let it slide. Whatever demons he was battling, he would have to battle them alone. All she could do was be there to pick up the pieces if he needed her to. She knew that he would be going back to California in a few days. She had debated about trying to talk him into staying in New York but she knew that this wasn’t his home anymore. It hadn't been since he was thirteen. She made a mental note to call Al and Rosie before he left to alert them to his current mental state. Maybe Al could help. He’d been in his own war and fought his own demons when he returned.

Rachel stepped to his side and affectionately ruffled his thick curls. Dropping a kiss on his cheek, she said "Eat. You're still too thin. David smiled faintly as he did as his mother ordered.

CHAPTER 12

David smiled as he stepped off the Greyhound bus in Bay City. It felt good to be back in California. He had enjoyed his stay in New York with his mother but New York no longer felt like home. It was just a place he visited now and then. “Hey, soldier boy….over here!” yelled a familiar voice. David grinned as he turned his head and spotted Huggy Bear standing on the corner, leaning casually against the side of a building. As tall and skinny as ever, the black youth was dressed outrageously in a pair of bright red slacks, a bright yellow shirt, and a brown fringed jacket.

“Hey, Huggy.” David said as he shouldered his duffle bag and walked across the street to join his friend.

“Looks like you lost a few pounds, my friend.” Huggy said, noticing immediately the loose fit of his friend’s clothes “Gotta tell ya, white boy, it just don’t look good on you.”

“Look who’s talking.” David snorted with a short laugh “A stiff wind comes along and it’ll blow you away.”

“Yeah, but the Bear’s got style, ya dig?” Huggy said with a grin, throwing an arm around David’s shoulder and leading him over to the curb where a white Ford sat. He opened the door on the passenger’s side and motioned for David to toss his duffle bag into the back seat. “Your ride home, hero.”

David laughed as he slid into the front seat and slammed the door. Huggy slid under the wheel and started the engine, carefully pulling into the street. As they headed towards Rosie and Al’s house, Huggy told David all about his newest venture, working in his Uncle’s bar and grill. Huggy’s plans including taking over the place when his uncle retired in a few years. It felt good to be hanging out with Huggy again and the two friends made plans to get together later that night. Unlike David, Huggy had avoided the draft because of a partial hearing loss in one ear that earned him a medical deferment.

Huggy dropped David off at his aunt and Uncle’s house, declining his offer to come in for a while because he had to get to work. Rosie welcomed David home enthusiastically, with plenty of hugs and kisses. She was already working on a huge welcome home meal, determined to fatten him back up as quickly as possible. While Rosie finished her cooking, David took his stuff up to his old room and started to unpack.

He planned on looking for a job in a few days. He had a good chunk of his discharge pay left but he knew it wouldn’t last forever. He could always go back to work for Al at his garage but David wanted to try something different until he decided just what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Going to college was out of the question. There was no way he could afford it, even if he did go on the GI plan, plus he didn’t think he had the discipline to tolerate four more years of school. He felt so much older than most of the other young men his age and he knew that he had absolutely nothing in common with the college students out there who were protesting the war he’d just given eighteen months of his life to.

He had seriously been considering applying to the police academy and becoming a cop like his father but he had to wait until he was twenty-one to do that and his birthday was still eight months away. He wondered how his mother, Rosie and Uncle Al would take the news when he told them that he wanted to become a cop. He decided to go and visit the Police Academy in the next few days and at least get some information on enrolling. Al and Rosie’s next door neighbor, John Blaine, was a good friend who had taken David under his wing when David moved to California and helped him through the hard times. John was also a cop and David knew that he would be glad to give him a referral for the academy if he decided to go. David had no illusions of what a career as cop would be like. He knew the danger that went with the badge far too well. But he also felt the need to do something with his life that really had some meaning. And he didn’t plan on being a patrolman for his whole career; he wanted to be a detective and to be actively involved in solving the cases he worked on.

After supper, David met up with Huggy and they spent the night catching up and talking about old times. They quickly fell into the laid back easy going friendship they had always shared. After a good night’s sleep, without any nightmares for once, David went out job hunting. By the end of the day, he had a job driving a cab on the night shift in downtown Bay City. His life finally seemed to be getting back on track as he forced the memories of Viet Nam to a place deep inside his mind and locked them away. But there were still scars that would always remain, scars that had shaped the man he was and would continue to be. He had lived through his experiences in Viet Nam but the price he had paid for surviving was high indeed.

Shortly after he returned home, the draft was discontinued so no other young man would be forced to fight in a war while he was caught somewhere between being a child and a being a man. He would never have to see the things David had seen or suffer through the things he had suffered. He would not come home changed in so many ways from the boy he had been when he left. He wouldn’t lose the last of his innocence and a part of himself in a jungle a thousand miles from home. He would never be David.

David continued to have nightmares off and on for months after he came back home but over time, they slowly faded away. Sometimes the strangest things, a sound or a smell, would trigger a memory and for a few moments, he would be back there again in the middle of the jungle fighting for his life. But over time, the flashbacks occurred less often as David adjusted to being back home again. He had a few talks with Al who shared his own experiences in war with his troubled young nephew. In his day, they had called what David was experiencing ‘shell shock’, but in the seventies they were starting to refer to it as Post Traumatic Stress

Syndrome. Talking to Al helped and David promised to come to him if he continued to have any problems he couldn’t handle on his own.

He had finally told his Aunt, his uncle and his mother about his decision to go to the police academy when he turned twenty-one. None of them had been that surprised. His mother told him that she had expected him to make this choice when he was old enough and, in spite of her own obvious concerns and fears, she respected his choice and supported his decision. John Blaine supported his decision too, which also meant a lot to David. As long as he had the support and encouragement of the most important people in his life, David knew that he would succeed no matter what.

THE END