A Confederate Yankee
By Bill Mayers
(Aug. 2013
) I don’t remember his name, but we called him “Jay-Jay.” I don’t know what branch of service he was in, but he was an American soldier. I don’t know where in “the Nam” his unit was stationed, but he was point man on a combat sweep when he took four bullets in his belly.
I remember his eyes – so brown, they were almost black. They stared a hole through anyone who came near. They spoke of a depth of pain inconceivable to most people. Even morphine had limited effect. If we gave him enough to completely remove the pain, it would stop his breathing.
Our efforts to help only increased his pain.
We tried to save him, but there was no saving him. Every 45 minutes, we had to irrigate his wounds and, if that sounds unpleasant, it was. Then we would pump his intestine full of baby formula. This was in the days before total parenteral nutrition and represented a desperate effort to get some sustenance into him.
It would curdle in there, and that’s why we had to irrigate. The curds would not digest and provide nutrition. Every 45 minutes. All day. And all night. They stunk.
He never spoke to me. He seldom spoke to anyone. His eyes spoke, not volumes, but whole libraries. I seldom spoke to him. What was there to say? He knew his fate. His eyes stared accusation. They stared anger. And they stared pain. What more could he say?
He was an American soldier.
Why had he come to this? What unspeakable sin must he have committed – sins we’d all committed – to bring this on? His chart said he’d been an exemplary soldier. It said nothing of his mother, nothing of his father, nothing of a wife or child left behind.
It said nothing of the empty chair at a family dinner table – a chair that would remain forever empty. A voice silenced. A voice that would never sing to a newborn child. A voice that would never cheer on a son in Little League. Never add its tones to a church choir.
He was an American soldier.
I don’t remember his name, and I don’t remember his branch of service. I remember his eyes… So dark they were almost black. They asserted a grip on my heart. Forty-five years later, they still do.
Jay-Jay was an American soldier.
Some three weeks passed, and one day Jay-Jay was not there.
“Died,” was all the ICU nurse said.
In the nation’s capital, there is a wall covered in names; I suppose his is there, but I don’t have to suppose the following: somewhere in America, there is an empty chair.
I imagine someone will wonder why this story wasn’t published on Memorial Day. Well, American soldiers deserve recognition every day. They didn’t serve only one day out of the year. And those chairs are empty all year, not just on one day of the year.
Jay-Jay was an American soldier, and he has a grip on my heart even forty-five years later.
I don’t remember his name, but I call him “hero.”
William D. “Bill” Mayers RT, RN, of Sullivan is a retired senior U.S. Army Corpsman. A certified healthcare professional since 1964, he holds two professional licenses, including that of Registered Professional Nurse licensed in New York, Alaska, Virginia and Louisiana. He has four children, two stepchildren, two grandchildren and is an avid analyst of current events.