My Uncle Lonny served in VietNam and was injured when a plane accidentally sprayed napalm on friendly troops. One half of his body had the skin peeled off and his lungs were seared. Uncle Sam stuck him in the Veteran’s hospital when he got back to the States, located at Fort Grand River.
The injuries were not only to Uncle Lonny’s limbs, trunk, and lungs. His mind was affected. He’d seen too much. He’d done too much. The official diagnosis was paranoid psychosis.
My cousin, Betty, and I made regular drives to Fort Grand River to see Uncle Lonny. There was a lovely pond and landscaping done by patients who would never go home. When the weather was nice, we would roll Uncle Lonny down by the pond. He seemed calm there, looking at the daffodils and watching the pair of swans who were inseparable. Sometimes Uncle Lonny’s eyes grew moist watching the swans. Aunt Malva had run off with Uncle Lonny’s best friend, Wilbur, while he was in Nam. Wilbur wasn’t drafted because he’d carelessly lost a finger in the saw in high school shop class. We knew Uncle Lonny was thinking of Aunt Malva when his eyes got misty.
One day Betty and I got to Uncle Lonny’s floor and were headed to his room when we were stopped by a terse nurse. All she would say is, “He’s not able to see you today.”
Being the kind of loved ones who want to know the people we care about are ok, we decided to walk past the nurse and see for ourselves. As we approached Uncle Lonny’s room, we could hear him screaming at the top of his lungs, “It’s a trick! It’s a trick! It’s a trick!” over and over. We pushed the door open and saw Uncle Lonny, strapped to his bed, food all over his face, and his bedding all wet. A burly orderly was trying to force feed our uncle.
We ran to Uncle Lonny’s side and told the orderly to back off. He tensed up for a second, then smiled and said, “OK, ladies. He’s all yours.” and left as light as a daisy.
We found warm washcloths and cleaned Uncle Lonny up. I turned pandora on my phone to music from the 50’s, his favorite. We started dancing to a Lawrence Welk tune and Uncle Lonny seemed to snap out of it. He made eye contact and started smiling, but his eyes again were a little misty.
Fandango’s FOWC is terse, the Word of the Day Challenge is fort, Paula’s 3 Things Challenge Words are daffodil, swan, napalm , and Teresa’s Story Starter Challenge phrase is “It’s a trick!”
Tao Talk 
Thumbs up, a hundred percent.
(And my eyes are misty.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Marleen
LikeLike
A sweet story.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Sadje
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re welcome Li
LikeLiked by 1 person
No one should ever be force fed like that, it is so demeaning. There is such a thing as tube feedings that will deliver liquid nourishment to the patient.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jim, I’m sure you’ve heard horror stories about nursing homes and veteran’s hospitals where these abuses go on. Nobody should be force fed but it happens. My granda broke her hip years ago and had to convalesce at the county nursing home, she told us all kinds of horror stories. Thank goodness she only had to stay a short time. Think of the poor souls who will never leave except in a pine box.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is one of the best things you’ve written, at least in my opinion. It seems very real and true and from the heart. It is a slice of real life that has been told simply. I would have never known it was from a writing prompt. It felt like you were sitting with me and talking to me. Whatever creative mindset you tapped into when you wrote this, it worked!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I appreciate your sincere comments on the story. It’s a composite of people and circumstances from real life woven into a story that needed to be told. Thank you very much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very powerful writing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Trent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Those places were terrible for the most part. I went into one when I was a kid. All I remember was it being cold and dreary. Not like a regular hospital.
We were visiting some friend of my uncle.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sadly they still exist and are filled with forgotten soldiers :( It must have had a big impact on you that you remember it so well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes it did. It sure as hell didn’t make me want to join in the future. But….it made me thing of something else….that is one thing that pisses me off about the 60s and 70s hippies…now…I don’t think it was a majority at all…but some would scream hateful things at the soilders and that was wrong…most didn’t want to go over there…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Max, I hear you on that. They were soldiers and they knew what they were signing on for. I don’t think they ever expected their own people to treat them so badly when they got home. I know for a fact some soldiers never got over the pain of those words that were screamed at them :(
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yea and many of them were drafted…I can’t imagine that. In the 80s there was a time when we thought we were going to be drafted at times…I remember thinking what a helpless feeling. In the 60s and 70s it was real.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally forgot the drafting part! My ex-husband was about to get drafted and so enlisted so he could have some control over where he went.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The problem was that you cannot get a good soilder out of someone who is scared to death…they get killed or get their troop killed. I can’t imagine being in that situation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Until the lottery made it a little harder for middle class white kids to get out of going, the army draftees tended to be poor and Black. While they may have known what they were signing on for, the alternatives were prison and Canada – and going to Canada was easier if you were white.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Who didn’t — and doesn’t — ever go are the f*cks that decide to wage war. Another tactic they used was kids who had gotten into some trouble with the law and they used it as leverage (enlist or go to jail.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m glad you understand it wasn’t the majority of us. Most of us hated the war, not the soldiers. The fact that Uncle Lonnie was accidentally napalmed (instead of deliberately napalmed like the people who lived there) tells a lot. The Viet Nam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) led the Memorial Day Parade in which I marched as a high school senior – they put out a call on the radio for people to form an impromptu marching band. We played the theme from Hogan’s Heroes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh yes…I knew it wasn’t all and correct me if I’m wrong but I would think it was a minority at the time. If I would have been of age at the time…I would have been with you.
Love the playing of Hogan’s Heroes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It made good press to try to pit us against each other. It is always useful to try to divide working people. Granted, there were people who spit on or yelled at soldiers (or at least I saw photos to that effect). And there were guys who wanted to go, who were convinced we were doing the right thing (propaganda works).
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yea I’ve seen that happen on tv shows. I watch Adam 12…and Jack Webb is the one that created it and wrote some…they always show the worse of hippies imaginable. They did tone it down in later episodes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You talk as if that pitting working folks against each other is in the past. It’s the bread and butter of power mongers and has been throughout time.
LikeLike
I’m sorry if it seemed like that. When I said “It is always useful to try to divide working people” I thought that was clear I meant it continues. The first sentence refers specifically to the press about anti-war protesters and soldiers during the invasion of Viet Nam, and that the media (and government) tried to make the anti-war protests appear to be anti-soldier, because that fit the agenda.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, ok, sorry I didn’t catch the nuances of that. I probably read through too quickly. Question: do you use Strava for your bike rides? If so I have some questions for you :)
LikeLike
No Strava for me. No Garmin. I just switched to the bike with the computer on it yesterday. Until then I knew I was going fast enough not to fall over and slow enough that I didn’t get speeding tickets.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m on a 30-day free trial of it, and frankly not impressed. You can create a route on it, which I can do for free on Map My Ride, but how to import that route into the logging of the activity isn’t readily apparent. What I want is an app that tracks my ride with gps then I hit a button and it records and shares it, which I think Strava can do, it’s just I have continued to forget to start it when the ride starts. Ack! How do you know how far you are going if you don’t have a tracking system??
LikeLike
Some days I don’t. Some days I follow a known route or a prepared cue sheet. I always know my net distance is zero. I end up where I started. Numbers sometimes just get in the way of having a good time and enjoying the beauty. I know I can always make it back. If I take a wrong turn and add a few miles, who cares? I’ve never been one of those who say “if it isn’t on Strava, it didn’t happen.” That’s like saying the first 50 years of my riding didn’t exist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I understand that philosophy. When I lived in town I had my neighborhood routes and knew how long they were and that’s all I needed to know. Now that I have a bike carrier and a trail map of Michigan’s 2400+ miles of trails with maps, and the ability to share them with a riding community it’s changed. If the old odometers on bikes would have ever worked properly the app would be an unnecessary irritation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
p.s. I don’t have a computer on my bike. The bike odometers (whatever you call them, with sensors wired to the wheels) I’ve had to date are crappy at best and non-functional at usual. Strava is an app on my phone and on my desktop computer.
LikeLike
Computer is the term usually used for the device that measures speed and distance, since it also can compute average speed and remember maximum speed. they may be simple computers, but they are all computers unless they are of the style from my youth, which just had a mechanical counter of wheel revolutions.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the info. I had one that counted wheel revolutions but also tracked speed and distance but the damned thing never worked right no matter how many times I had the bike shop “fix” it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I think there are always the soldiers who come back to “the cave,” like Socrates did, to enlighten the cave dwellers. Thank goodness for them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So real, Jade. War never ends for its casualties. (K)
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a very powerful story, Lisa. And quite horrible to picture!
LikeLiked by 1 person
War is hell for everyone except the monsters who wage war and let others die, get maimed, etc. in it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re right, the “brilliant leaders” who start wars rarely are the ones fighting the battles.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Christian, I think it is less often than rarely. How about NEVER. That perhaps is the biggest evil of all, using human beings as objects on a game board while never getting your own hands bloody.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sometimes I stumble on posts that it is not clear at the outset, whether they are true stories or fiction and this was so well written it felt like true…
Excellent!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks. It is a composite.
LikeLike
Wow, Lisa, reading this again, this is truly heavy and heartbreaking stuff. I just wish those brilliant political leaders who start these crazy wars would have to experience the horrors themselves they bring on so many oftentimes young men and women they send to the frontlines!
LikeLiked by 1 person
EXACTLY SO, Christian.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What happened to Uncle Lonny is horrible but true, Lisa! When I was a rehabilitation counselor, one patient was a Vietnam veteran. He said every time he closed his eyes, he saw his dead buddy next to him.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Miriam that is so awful and I’m sure there are a lot of veterans who suffer this way. Did you work mostly with veterans?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was a rehabilitation counselor in downtown Los Angeles for a couple of years before going into education. My clients were mental patients transitioning to the workplace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Miriam I’m sure you saw a lot of heartache in your population. I’m also sure you were a positive force in their lives who helped them as best as you could.
LikeLike
A heartbreaking story
LikeLiked by 1 person
:( It breaks my heart every time I read it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
🥲
LikeLiked by 1 person