She had been shot once. The bullet tore through her green uniform and into her buttock and out through her groin. She lay on her side, sprawled against a paddy dike. She never opened her eyes.
She moaned a little, not much, but she screamed when the medic touched at her wound. Blood gushed out of the holes, front and back.
Her face lay in dirt. Flies were all over her. There was no shade. It was mid-afternoon of a hot day. The medic said he did not dare squirt morphine into her, it would kill her before the wound did. He tried to patch the holes, but she squirmed and twisted, rocked and swayed, never opening her eyes. She flickered in and out of consciousness.
“She’s a pretty woman, pretty for a gook. You don’t see many pretty gooks, that’s damn sure.”
“Yes. Trouble is, she’s shot dead through the wrong place.” A dozen GIs hovered over her.
“Look at that blood come, Jesus. Like a fuckin’ waterfall, like fuckin’ Niagara Falls. She’s gonna die quick. Can’t mend up them bullet holes, no way.”
“Fuckin’-aye. She’s wasted.”
“I wish I could help her.” The man who shot her knelt down. “Didn’t know she was a woman, she just looked like any dink. God, she must hurt. Get the damn flies off her, give her some peace.”
She stretched her arms out above her head. She spread her fingers wide and put her hands into the dirt and squeezed in a sort of rhythm. Her forehead was wrinkled in a dozen long, flushed creases; her eyes were closed.
The man who shot her peered into her face. He asked if she couldn’t be given shade.
“She’s going to die,” one soldier said.
“But can’t we give her some shade?” He swatted at a cloud of flies over her head.
“Can’t carry her, she won’t let us. She’s NVA, green uniform and everything. Hell, she’s probably an NVA nurse, she probably knows she’s just going to die. Look at her squeeze her hands. Trying to hurry and press all the blood out of herself.”
We called for a dustoff helicopter and the company spread out in a wide perimeter around the shot woman. It was a long wait, partly because she was going to die, helicopter or no helicopter, and partly because she was with the enemy.
Her hair was lustrous black. The man who shot her stroked her hair. Two other soldiers and a medic stood beside her, fanning her and waving at the flies. Her uniform was crusted an almost black color from her blood, and the wound hadn’t clotted much. The man who shot her held his canteen to her lips and she drank some Kool-Aid.
Then she twisted her head from side to side. She pulled her legs up to her chest and rocked, her whole body swaying. The man who shot her poured a trickle of water onto her forehead.
Soon she stopped swaying. She lay still and seemed either dead or unconscious. The medic felt her pulse and shrugged and said she was still going, just barely. She moaned now and then, almost talking in her sleep, but she was not being shrill or hysterical. The medic said she was not feeling any more pain.
“Damn, she is pretty. It’s a crime. We could have shot an ugly old man instead.”
When the helicopter came, she was still. Some soldiers lifted her onto a poncho and took her to the chopper. She lay curled up on the floor of the helicopter, then the bird roared and went into the air. Soon the pilot radioed down and asked what we were doing, making him risk his neck for sake of a dead woman.