The Medic's Unwanted Memory

I have been rewriting this poem on and off for over 20 years. It started with a creative writing class sometime around 1985 and was inspired by a picture of my brother that was in his personal belongings that were sent to my folks after he was killed in Vietnam.

It is a particularly haunting photo. The eyes. You could see the war in his eyes. Trauma, fatigue, despair. They were all over his face. Damn that war to hell, and the sonsofbitches in DC who wasted those lives.

The story of his death is full of the most bitter irony. He had less than a month before his rotation out of Nam and his discharge from the Army. He was no longer sent on Medivacs or patrols. He was finishing his tour at the Base Camp Aide Station of the 28th of the 1st. The camp was being expanded. The mine fields were being skimmed by a bulldozer. One of the mines had spilled out of the dirt and detonated far enough from the blade of the bulldozer to injure the operator. Practically every medic at the aide station went to his aide. Having followed the bulldozer track marks out to the injured operator, they had treated him and were ready to carry him out when another mine detonated in their midst. It may easily have been one of the mines produced at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant... where my father was employed as a millwright.

In honor of my brother, SP5 Hugh Conrad Clausen, 8/10/1944 - 9/22/1966, SM/BS/PH

THE MEDIC'S UNWANTED MEMORIES

• With furrowed brow and vacant eyes,
• he stares from under the brim
  
• of a canvas covered helmet,
• unable to not remember
• the riotous fright
• of that last fire fight.

• With the unfocused glare
• of a thousand yard stare,
• he looks through you,
• not at you,
• you're not even there.

• In blood stained fatigues,
• jaw slackened by despair,
• his mouth hangs agape
• in the eternal unspoken
• "Why?"

• His mind has been scourged,
• flailed into a fugue
• by the lead beaded whip of war
• as he tried to reweave
• a tapestry of young flesh.

• The warp and weft
• of his company's fabric
• tattered and unraveled
• by the ordnance of
• explosive political failure.

• Frigid fingers of grief
• claw through the jungle
• to seize his soul
• in the icy hot grip
• of unwanted memory.

• Shuddering ever so slightly,
• his empty medical kit
• slips from his fingers.

• A tear begins to puddle
• in the corner of one eye
• as the medic remembers
• and stares vacantly
• from under the brim
• of a canvas covered helmet.