Lending a Hand

It had been a long, long day. I’d been through a safety inspection, a full equipment inventory and a surprise cash count. I’d just finished 12 hours sweeping and picking up old water bottles that had been half filled with tobacco spit. I’d picked up trash, pushed in chairs and helped soldiers connect with their families. I’d checked out computers and started movies all day long. I hadn’t been able to sit down for more than a few minutes and my feet were hurting.

I climbed down from the shuttle van and said goodnight to Oleg. “Have a good night,” I said, varying my sentence slightly from the last time so that he could notice the difference. He smiled. “Havagoo night,” he answered with a Russian accent. My laptop bag was heavy and I was hobbling up the alley toward my building. All I wanted to do was take my shower and crawl into bed. I struggled past a small flower garden surrounded by a wrought iron fence. A woman worked there, tenderly plucking the tiny weeds from around the beautiful purple and white flowers. On the concrete wall behind her she had painted a sign that said, “Nye ervaht tsvi-TEE,” “Don’t pick the flowers.” Where the fence ended I glanced toward an old woman who sat peacefully on a concrete block next to the garden. She smiled toothlessly at me as I glanced over and I smiled back. A tiny playground was huddled next to the back door of one of the shops that faces Sovietskaya Street and two young girls played on the steel bars. Across from them was a concrete block storage building that had been painted with graffiti by some local gang, and in English, next to a hand-painted image of 3 street hoods, were the words “3 Angles.” I smiled at the misspelled word and limped on. As I neared the apartment building I noticed a young mother pushing a stroller. At her side was a little girl, maybe three years old, pushing a miniature stroller and mimicking her mother. They both turned and pulled the strollers up the steps to the green steel door of my building and went inside.

I pulled the steel door open and climbed the last few steps to the “lift,” or elevator. There the mother and daughter stood, both looking sad. I reached over and pressed the button to the lift, but the customary hum didn’t start and I looked at the mother and asked, “Lift nye rabotayet?” “Doesn’t the lift work?” She just shook her head. “Ya pah-mah-GOO.” “I’ll help,” I offered. The little girl smiled, probably at my accent or my strange white hair. “Which floor do you live on,” she asked. “I’m on the sixth. I’ll help.” She seemed a bit relieved. She took the baby from the stroller and carried the blanketed bundle in her arms. The little girl picked up her own stroller and carried it up the stairs, bouncing ahead of her mother as she found more energy than the rest of us combined. I picked up the big stroller, a heavy one with four large wheels, more like a buggy than a stroller, and hefted my computer a bit higher on my shoulder as I began to climb the stairs behind the small group. “Which floor do you live on,” I asked. “The fifth.” I was relieved. I thought that she would certainly say “the sixth.”

We climbed stairs and I huffed and puffed as we moved from one floor to the next. Finally, on the fourth floor I called out, “Ot-dee-XHAY!” “Rest!” The young mother paused, smiling, and resettled her baby. The little girl was already on the fifth floor waiting for the rest of us. I gasped for air for a couple of minutes before I finally said, “Ya ga-TOF,” “I’m ready” and we started again. That last floor was the hardest. I set the big stroller down and the mother reached under the seat and removed a large bag of groceries! That’s why I thought it was more like carrying a box of dumbells than a pram! “Spa-SEE-buh,” she thanked me. “NYE-zuh-shtuh,” “It’s nothing,” I puffed back as I limped up the stairs to my final destination of the evening.

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all…” (Galatians 6:10)

The Vice-Grip Effect

As I’m contemplating the mere act of relating this story I can just imagine my grandkids rolling with laughter as their parents read to them, parents horrified that I would expose their precious little ones to the dankest corner of the lowest cellar of story telling. But, since the story is true, and since it typifies life on a military installation, I’ll go ahead with it. And parents, don’t worry too much if your children are briefly exposed to a fourth grade tale that will soon be spread among all of their friends everywhere because no matter how much you may want to walk around with brown paper bags over your heads after reading this to the kiddies, neighborhood opinions and comments are, after all, not a true reflection of your personal parenting skills.

Now to begin with, we normally get our drinking water in 12 oz bottles that are regularly delivered by the pallet load and when I open a bottle of water, I usually finish it quickly, partly because I can drink a lot of water and partly because I don’t want to walk around with a half-empty bottle in my hand for hours on end. I drink it up and throw it out. Well, because we have a new delivery man on the base, three days ago the water all arrived in 1.5 liter bottles, and for you who don’t know what that means, it’s about a quart and a half. It’s a big bottle—Super Big Gulp sized.

You might note, too, that our cleaning crew consists of local Kyrgyz people and they walk around the base in their bright white uniforms and they keep the place pretty clean, at least as far as the Kyrgyz standard of clean goes. One of the hardest things to get used to is the fact that in the bathrooms the stall doors are simple plastic shower curtains that stretch between two plywood walls. All have large gaps at the sides making it easy to see whether or not the booth is occupied. The showers are in the same building, making the atmosphere steamy when there’s hot water and icy when the water is cold, so it’s mostly icy. It’s a bad feeling to be sitting (you know) in the frigid bathroom when the cleaning crew begins to come in for one of their twice-daily cleanings. For some inexplicable reason the women always come in first, half smiling, glancing sideways into the stalls as they saunter past, and they always seem to reach the showers just before their molasses-slow security escort shuffles in and calls out, “Cleaning crew, women in the facility!” The notice is always too little, too late and there’s usually a flurry of plastic shower curtains and flying towels whenever the cleaning crew shows up.

Anyway, in the afternoon it was warm outside and we had kept the doors open to our building to allow a light breeze to whisper through and clear the air of the heavy aroma that accumulates with all of the tired, dirty troops who have either just finished their exercises or just landed after a year in Afghanistan. For either reason, the air gets a bit more than stale in Liberando’s and it needs to be cleared out from time to time. While the doors were open and the warm air was blowing through, I picked up one of the large bottles of water and sipped at it for a while, but soon tired of carrying that heavy container around and decided to finish it off. It wasn’t more than ten minutes before I felt the sudden repercussion of my last few gulps. I was struck by a sudden urge that was not going to be ignored. At the time, though, I had a large crowd at the front counter that needed to be taken care of, so I gripped a little tighter and postponed my walk to the building next door.

When the crowd in Liberando’s had finally thinned out enough for me to break away I walked out squinting into the bright sunshine and made that desperate right turn toward porcelain salvation. I should have expected it. It’s happened a hundred times before. There was the bathroom door, propped open using the fire extinguisher as a door stop, which, by the way, is a pet peeve of mine, and the big steel sign had been slid into place in the door’s opening that declared, “Closed for cleaning.”

“Jeeze!” I thought, “Can’t these guys ever clean the bathrooms when I’m not desperate!” Now, it’s fortunate that the building actually has two bathroom/shower facilities in it, one on each end, and so I walked, connected at the knees, another hundred feet to the other end of the building where I found a very long line of desperate Marines waiting for their opportunity to visit one of the five stalls. “The line’s too long! I won’t make it!” I moaned to myself as I bounced up and down and sprinted through my options. Just a hundred yards down the road, near the dining tent, there was a Porta-John and although I’d never visited it personally, I had noticed it on several occasions, making a mental note that could save me from embarrassment at some future time. I left the shower facility and danced around the corner just like Michael Jackson, gripping my crotch as my feet magically covered the ground without ever moving my legs at all. In the distance I scanned the Porta-John and couldn’t see a single person waiting for it. “What timing!” I thought as I broke into a quick, skipping jog toward the booth that meant final relief from the ever increasing discomfort. I kept scanning the area around the booth because I knew that camouflaged uniforms could make it hard to see anyone standing in front of the backdrop of huge Poplar trees. “Nobody’s there! I’m going to make it!” I could feel my muscles tense into a solid clench as the thought of relief suddenly started the involuntary relaxation of my bladder reflex. I hurried my steps, bouncing my bladder and making the reflex more pronounced. I clenched harder, forcing my muscles into what I call the “Vise-Grip” effect, when you squeeze tight enough to lock the grip into position.

I was almost there! I could smell (literally) the success at hand as I continued to break dance toward the green booth. The side facing me didn’t have a door, so I veered slightly to the right. No door on that side, either. I continued around the booth and found that the door wasn’t on the back side, either. When I finally found the door (if I’d just gone to the left in the first place I could have saved valuable, painful time) the “Vise-Grip” effect had fuzzed my mind so that it had to tick around for just a minute before it dawned on me that a heavy combination padlock and a chain locked the door! My mind paused momentarily to contemplate the sick person who would lock a Porta-John as I desperately looked back at the building behind me and noticed that the line of Marines had only grown longer. I looked up the street and down the street to see if another Porta-John was in sight, but the view was vacant and my forehead started to bead with sweat in spite of what would have been considered a pleasant spring breeze at any other time.

I crossed the street and headed toward the main fire station knowing that there would certainly be a Porta-John somewhere along the main road! There just had to be! I was dancing as fast as I could, but the sweat was dripping from my forehead and I wasn’t walking like my normal self and I suspect that the troops I passed along the way all imagined that I was crippled with the palsy. I passed the fire department and looked down the street. There, just a block away were two Porta-Johns! I turned and began to gallop toward them as the “Vise-Grip” effect increased. I tried the first door as soon as I arrived. It was occupied and locked. I pulled the second one and it opened, but the door didn’t have a lock on it and there was a gaping hole where the lock should have been. It didn’t matter at that point and I pulled it wide and stepped in, briefly glancing back at the road as I disappeared behind the door. Again, with my mind still fuzzy, it took just a moment to realize that a platoon-sized crowd of desperate-looking Marines was following me down the street. My shaking hands fumbled with the brass zipper that was the last obstacle blocking my relief as I could hear the approaching desperate mob.

Relief was painful, kind of like spraying a fire hose up your nose. Outside I could hear the approaching crowd crunching across the gravel and I realized that they were headed toward the Porta-Johns! My door was about to fly open exposing me to the elements and probably embarrassing some poor 20-year-old Marine, so I carefully reached back with my right hand and slipped my fingers through the hole where the lock should have been—an impromptu banner to let everyone know that the booth was being utilized. I imagined a frustrated, angry Marine pounding my fingers from outside with the butt of his M-4 and it was at that precise moment when I came to understand the meaning of the phrase “the agony and the ecstasy”—the agony of knowing that at any moment I would have my fingers crushed and the ecstasy of that sudden depressurizing gush of relief. So there I stood, partly dizzy due to the sudden drop in blood pressure, my back to the door and my right arm stretched backward to hold the door shut against the desperate mob.

And then the miracle happened. The rifle butt smash to the phalanges never came. The flying door and the sudden swirling wind didn’t happen. Instead, the grinding, crunching gravel that had grown in volume soon began to soften and fade as the platoon passed by and continued on in their shortcut to the tents where they were camped. At last the tension all evaporated and the sweat subsided from my face as I finally found critical relief from the dreaded “Vise-Grip” effect.

The Day of Victory

For weeks the excitement has been building in the community as preparations continued for the huge celebration. Every television station broadcast the same movies over and over and over again. One in particular kept my attention, “Poslyednye Bronopoezd,” “The last armored train.” It played again and again on every station until I could almost recite the dialog. Yesterday the celebration finally took place with horn honking and yelling and loud music, and the television stations dropped a lot of their usual “reklamy,” or commercials in order to broadcast the celebration live from Moscow. Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvyedev sat in prominent positions in the front of the sea of uniforms and white hair. It was the 65^th anniversary of “the Great Victory.”

The wide Moscow street was lined with countless numbers of spectators and the special bleachers were reserved for the veterans, those white-haired men who continue to deck themselves out with their blue uniforms. Their medals swayed in the breeze, flashing gold as they caught the sunlight. On the street companies of soldiers marched by in perfect cadence, their heads held up and turned to the right as they smiled at the crowd. Their arms swung back and then forward, breaking at the elbow for the final part of their trip as each forearm came to a horizontal position across each soldier’s body before beginning the arc again. The Russians don’t “goose step” the way the Germans did, but they definitely have a high-stepping spring as they march that makes each head bounce up and down as it strains to face the sun.

The old veterans whispered to each other and grinned at the newest generation of Russian warriors.

Then the street was filled with tanks, rolling in perfect precision down that wide street. And then came the missile launchers and then the armored personnel carriers and Russian might was evident. It was an endless display of military power. Vladimir Putin addressed the crowd after the parade had passed by saying, “We are grateful for our great heroes who have given our people such great freedom.” His speech ended to the rising music of the “Gimn Rossy,” or Russian Hymn just as the chorus was brought to prominence. “Slavcya otyechestva,” “Praised be the fatherland.” That was the phrase that said it all. “Praised be the fatherland.” There was no praise for God. It was all about the greatness of the government and the “management of the creature” as the Book of Mormon calls it, and I was handed a vivid reminder of the miraculous difference between the United States and every communist and dictator-ruled country on earth.

Last night I lay in bed and contemplated the bright visual display of power that I had just witnessed when I was rocked by one loud explosion after another. “Mortars!” was the first thought that shouted in my head. The building shook with each explosion and I jumped out of bed to look for shelter. Then I saw the green, then red light that brightened up the building across the street—fireworks! I opened my window and looked south toward the spectacular Ala Too mountains. Boom! A red star spread itself across the sky. Boom! A green star spread from the center of the explosion. Again and again they spread themselves across the deepening black sky and shook the building.

This morning there were drooping, dying flowers that had been laid at the bases of all the heroic statues in the parks, including one golden statue of two obviously Kyrgyz soldiers that we pass each day that catches my attention because of its inscription, “мы шли в бои за коммунизм,” “We went to fight for communism.” Oleg, our driver, laughed out loud as we passed it today. “Now communism in Kyrgyzstan is dead,” he chuckled.

Medal of Honor

“I have a headache this big!” I said as I indicated the length of a Giant Grouper with my arms extended out as far as they could reach. The Marine laughed. “I don’t know how you can stand this,” he added. “We’re staying in the same tent with them and there are 35 Marines who are ready to pound them. They keep us up at night with their noise and they don’t care that we’re even there.”

The last three days have been frustrating and crazy at the same time as troops from one of our Eastern European coalition countries have been lined up four deep to get their hands on our laptop computers. It’s been an endless barrage of Russian as I’ve stood and listened to the same questions over and over again.

“How long for laptop, five minutes?” I’m not able to paint an optimistic picture, I’m afraid. They stand staring at the pile of laptops that are waiting for a charge and occasionally one of them taps his watch with his finger to let me know that they’re still waiting.

“How long?”

“About six hours,” I tell them again, and I’m not kidding.

“Sir I leaving for Afghanistan in 30 minutes. Can I get laptop,” one of them asks with a sad, pleading expression.

“I’m sorry. Everyone is leaving for Afghanistan in 30 minutes. You’ll have to wait your turn.” Of course, not one of them left in 30 minutes, but it was a nice ploy. American troops walked in, scanned the crowded, stinky room as they tried to comprehend the situation, and then walked back out the door just as frustrated as the rest of us had become. The huge crowd of men didn’t just write their names on the list and then sit down to wait, either. They wrote their names down and then stood waiting at the counter, anxiously watching the list as if it would grow shorter just because they were staring.

“Sir, I think I need to throw up.” Elmira was tired of the endless questions, shouts and odors too. “I never thought I would say this, but I miss the Americans.” I just nodded with an understanding, worn-out smile.

At 10:30 I picked up the short Kyrgyz straw broom to sweep the cement around the building for the second time because I was expecting some visitors. I was still sweeping the pads when the van pulled up, half an hour early, and the group began to pour out onto the gravel. “Alfred Rascon, Medal of Honor recipient,” was all he said as he shook my hand. “I’m Jed Clark. It’s my honor, sir.” Mr. Rascon was a large man, rounded and soft with age and wearing a dark blue golf shirt. The Congressional Medal of Honor peeked over the top of his collar at the base of his neck. His still-dark hair was brushed back, exposing the graying edges. His eyes were soft, keeping the secret of his Vietnam nightmare, and the fact that he had served the United States for years after his experience there and retired from the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. “You hang this thing around your neck and it becomes a burden for the rest of your life,” he told me as we watched the coalition troops playing pool. “I wish I could go back to the Boys’ Club in Jersey and play pool with the boys again. I could probably kick these guys’ butts!”

“Hi, Jed. Don Jenkins.” His greeting was a lot more casual, delivered with a thick Kentucky accent. He was tall and thin, except for the little belly that pushed his army green shirt forward, hiding his belt buckle. He was bald on top and he kept the sides shaved. Loose skin swung down below his chin to expose his age, but his eyes were piercing and his expression focused. The two of them had come to tell their stories to the troops, stories that they don’t share in polite circles, but this is a safe place with an understanding audience of men who have experienced the same horrors of combat first hand.

I was just a Junior in High School when Alfred Rascon faced his life’s worst hell. For the first half of that school year I’d been attending Kearns High School early in the morning as construction crews worked feverishly to get Magna’s Cyprus High School remodeled and ready for students. Around Christmas time the “new” old school opened its doors and we were back at home in our alma mater. I was spending my first year as a school photographer, working for the first time with a 35mm Pentax camera that had interchangeable lenses. That was the year that one of my Magna friends and fellow Boy Scouts, Kenny Maddy, was killed in Vietnam. I think it was my first recognition of just how real combat is. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be my last that year.

The date was March 16, 1966. Rascon, who had been born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1945, was assigned as a medic to a reconnaissance platoon with the Headquarters Company of the 1^st Battalion or the 503^rd infantry, 173^rd Airborne Brigade. As their platoon moved to reinforce a sister battalion that was under enemy attack the reconnaissance platoon came under heavy enemy fire. They were outnumbered and the bullets and grenades were tearing up the trees and ground around them as several members of the point squad were immediately wounded in the fusillade. Ignoring his sergeant’s instructions to stay behind shelter, Rascon pushed his way through the blaze of hot lead to his fallen brothers, but was driven back several times by withering fire as he tried to reach them on the trail again and again. Finally, without regard to his personal safety, he jumped to his feet and raced through the enemy fire to reach the wounded. He dived next to one fallen soldier and put himself in the way of the enemy’s fire. There he took several hits from grenade shrapnel and was wounded, receiving a very serious wound to his hip. Ignoring his wounds, he dragged the larger soldier from the fire-raked trail.

His story didn’t end there, though. As he dragged the soldier to safety, he heard a yell from a machine gunner crying that he was almost out of ammunition. Rascon ran through the fire again, retrieved a bandolier of ammo from a wounded machine gunner and passed it to the second gunner who was able then to continue his suppressive fire. Later, though, fearing that the abandoned first machine gun along with its ammo and spare barrel would fall into enemy hands, he crawled back to retrieve them, receiving more wounds to his face and torso. He retrieved the gun and ammo and it kept the battle alive, giving another soldier an opportunity to add to the suppressing fire from his pinned down squad.

Rascon continued to search for the wounded and found the point grenadier wounded by enemy fire. Again, without personal regard, he covered the grenadier with his own body and absorbed the full force of exploding grenades, saving the young soldier’s life. He was again critically wounded by shrapnel, but he remained on the battlefield, inspiring his fellow soldiers to continue the battle.

After the enemy finally broke off their contact, he continued to care for the wounded and disregarded his own wounds until everyone was safely on the evacuation helicopter. It was only then that he allowed himself to be cared for.

On January 5^th, 1969 I was working as a missionary in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. Elder Randall Pope was my senior companion and I was just getting the hang of the Spanish language. Vietnam seemed like another planet at the time, but even the people of Venezuela were getting fed up with the continual bad news from that part of Southeast Asia, and my former girlfriend, Becky Blair, had just lost her brand new Marine husband to small arms fire, raising the war high in my mind. I was still nearly a year away from that first draft lottery that would send me into the service upon my return to the United States.

On that particular morning Don Jenkins was standing in front of his First Lieutenant because the night before he’d accepted a bottle of rice wine from a Vietnamese acquaintance and had taken a drink. He didn’t know at the time that a member of the Viet Cong had laced the wine with C-4, a powerful military explosive, and the poisoned drink immediately made Don deathly ill. He told with chagrin how his lieutenant had taken his Staff Sergeant’s stripes and turned him into an “E-zero.” He had walked back to his bunker and was taking a nap when all hell broke loose outside. Some N.V.A. (North Vietnamese Army) soldiers had crawled through the wire and were on the attack within the camp, shooting and throwing grenades everywhere. Don came out of the bunker, bleary-eyed and found an N.V.A. drawing aim on his 1^st Lt. He said the thought flashed through his mind to just let the N.V.A. have a couple of seconds to finish the lieutenant, but he decided to “take care of” the enemy soldier instead. The lieutenant turned around to see who had just saved his life and Don, with a devilish grin on his face said, “I just gave him the bird.”

On January 6^th Don was acting as a machine gunner on a reconnaissance mission when they came under enemy machine gun crossfire from a complex of bunkered positions. Without hesitating, Don moved forward to where he was perilously exposed and began placing fire on one of the enemy positions. When his machine gun jammed, he grabbed a rifle and continued to place accurate suppressive fire on the position until his assistant could get the machine gun operating again. He repeatedly both ran and crawled across open ground to resupply the machine gun and continue his attack on the position. He picked up two antitank weapons and, by himself, maneuvered to within 20 yards of an enemy bunker and destroyed their position. He moved back to his team and picked up a grenade launcher and returned once more to an open position where he continued to place accurate fire on the enemy until all of his ammunition was exhausted. During that time he was seriously wounded by shrapnel, but he continued to move forward another 100 yards to help another squad that was pinned down by fire within only a few yards of the enemy. Three times, hindered by the pain of his wounds, the intense enemy fire and by darkness, he returned to the unit and pulled wounded men to safety.

That afternoon he was visited at the hospital by his lieutenant. “What are you going to take now,” he snarled at the officer. “You’ve already got my rank and my paycheck. What are you going to take now?” The lieutenant simply told him, “I’m giving you back all of your stripes and I’m putting you in for the Medal of Honor.” Jenkins finished his tour in Vietnam and flew home to America where he worked to forget about the war. One day, though, two FBI agents pulled up in front of his house and Don shouted, “What the hell are you guys doing here?” The agent in charge called back, “You need to call the White House. The President wants to talk to you.” Don then invited the agents into his house. “I’ll call him when I’m ready,” he told them as he turned to finish his bowl of chili. Of course, the call was to receive the Medal of Honor for his selfless valor in combat and he laughed as he related, “I think I’m the only person to ever get an Article 15 on one day and the Congressional Medal of Honor the next!”

Rascon came back to the microphone and said, “There are only 91 living recipients of the Medal of Honor. Your chances of being struck by lightning are better than meeting one of us. Today you’ve met two. We thank you warriors from the bottom of our hearts for your service to our great country.” The Wing Commander strengthened Rascon’s perspective when he added, “Rarely have men this brave lived to tell their stories. We’re honored to have them here with us today.”