And even when he awoke on September 24, more than a week after the terrible fire that would change his life forever, Hathcock did not realize that he was away from Vietnam.
On the afternoon of September 16, (Stateside time) a message arrived at the Navy Annex of the Pentagon, located up the hill, next to the national cemetery, on Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia—a complex of buildings where Gen. Leonard F. Chapman commanded the Marine Corps. This message went to the casualty branch of the Marine Corps’ manpower division, bearing the names of eight Marines, their next of kin and home addresses: eight Marines burned on an amtrac a day ago, half a world away. And at the top of the list appeared the name Staff Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock II.
A day later, at 3 P.M., a Marine captain, a Casualty Assistance Call Officer, wearing his dress blue uniform and carrying a message from Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, with Staff Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock’s name and condition listed on it, left his office in Norfolk, Virginia, and drove to Virginia Beach. He took the Independence Boulevard exit off Route 44, and drove past the Pembroke Shopping Mall on his way to 545 Sirene Avenue and the house that Carlos and Jo Hathcock bought just before Hathcock shipped out to Vietnam. He had no way of knowing that Jo was out shopping since he avoided telephoning before hand for fear of exposing his grievous message. It is Marine Corps policy and tradition that all such messages will be made in person, without exception.
19. Beating the Odds
THE SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON heat sent Jo Hathcock shopping at Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach. It was cool there, and it helped to take her mind off Carlos and the dangers he faced in Vietnam.
It was well after 3 P.M. when she walked across the hot, asphalt, parking lot to get into her car and drive the few blocks home. The mirage made the cars look liquid and surreal, and the heat made her head throb.
Traffic was its normal afternoon jam. As Jo waited for the red light to go dark and the green light to flash on, she saw an olive-colored Chevrolet cruise past, just making the yellow light, as she moved out on Independence Boulevard. At .the second light, just before her turn, she read the yellow lettering on the trunk, “U.S. Marine Corps.” She saw the driver clearly—a captain wearing dress blue and a white hat. “He’s no recruiter,” she thought. And as the green car made a left turn, ahead of her’s, and swayed into the drive at 545 Sirene Avenue, she cried aloud, “My God! Carlos is dead!”
She saw the Marine casualty officer walking toward her door, and halting on her front walk, waiting for her to get out of the car.
“Mrs. Hathcock?” the Marine softly asked.
In a few days, Jo received a message from Brig. Gen. William H. Moncrief, Jr., the commander at Brooke General Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas, that Hathcock had arrived there on September 22 and that she could be with him there. She immediately made plans to go.
It was nearly noon when Hathcock opened his eyes. The ship wasn’t rolling. He could not move. He cried out from the horrible pain that blanketed him. His legs and arms and shoulders and neck and back, even his ears, crawled and boiled with intolerable pain.
“Carlos Jo cried out. “Carlos!”
He turned his eyes toward her and blinked. They were sore and red, and his vision was blurry and tilted. “Jo?”
“Oh, Carlos,” she said softly. She had tried to imagine the worst possible image of her husband’s bums. She felt that if she imagined the worst that when she confronted the reality of his injury, it would not shock her. But it did. She felt guilty because she could not even recognize the man she had loved for nearly seven years. She stood and looked down at him, “Carlos.”
He raised his mummy-wrapped arm and pointed to a table where a green bag sat. Each man had a green bag with black plastic handles, an item similar to the R-and-R bags given to Marines headed for two weeks liberty away from the war.
“Look,” he mumbled, pointing at the bag.
“Yes, it’s a nice bag. They give that to you?”
“Look,” he said again, pointing, “Look inside.”
Every effort to speak sent daggers of pain through him. Raising his arm tore open the eschar—the hard crust of scab and dried body fluid—that covered the third-degree burns there, leaving him breathless.
Jo brought the bag back to Hathcock’s bedside and opened it. On top she found the blue leather box with gold trim. She opened it and saw the Purple Heart medal.
“The medal is pretty, Carlos,” she said holding it up for him to see too.
“Yes,” he said in a soft whisper. “Look more.”
The only other thing was a small, square photograph. She held it up for Hathcock to see, “This?”
“Yes. Look. Look.”
It was the Polaroid photograph that General Simpson’s aide took that day on the USS Repose when he presented Hathcock the Purple Heart. Hathcock was always proud when a general officer presented him with anything, and he wanted to share that feeling of pride with Jo.
Hathcock smiled as Jo looked at it. She saw the general and saw her husband’s bums and bandages. It made her cry. To her, the photo looked horrible. She fought back the urge to scold Carlos for making her look at it, but she restrained herself. “That’s real nice, Carlos. Is he your commanding general?”
“Yes,” he struggled in a whispering, raspy voice. “He commands the whole division and came to see me.”
Hathcock closed his eyes. Jo sat again in the chair. The afternoon drifted away.
Hathcock had been lucky. During the fire his lungs had not suffered any severe bums. The immediate attention that he received from the corpsman greatly increased his survival odds. And the fast action taken to stabilize him on the USS Repose gave the doctors good prospects and hope for his recovery. They had set the stage for the burn specialists at Brooke to do the job of rebuilding the broken man, of keeping him alive through the long healing process that severe burns require.
The day Hathcock arrived at Brooke, he had a 102-degree fever, weighed one hundred fifty pounds and had second-and third-degree burns on his head, neck, anterior trunk, posterior trunk, right upper arm, left upper arm, right lower arm, left lower arm, right hand, left hand, right thigh, left thigh, right leg, and left leg. More than 43 percent of his total body area suffered “full-thickness” bums with several areas where that full thickness of the skin had burned completely away (third-degree burns).
With a partial thickness bum, a patient’s skin can regenerate from the epithelial cells lining the skin appendages—hair follicles, sweat glands, and sebaceous glands. Full-thickness burns destroy all these cells and prevent any regeneration. Small full-thickness burns can heal from the skin margins, but large areas require skin grafting.
They moved Hathcock to Ward 13B. There he made daily trips to the Hubbard tank where he could soak and soften the hard, crusty eschar that covered his bums, while the burn specialists examined diem. There they noticed a black spot on his hand, an infection that a biopsy later revealed was phycomycosis. But they felt that this fungal disease did not explain the fever that he could not shake—a fever that rose from 102 degrees on his first day there to 103 on the second and 104 degrees on September 24. They suspected malaria and treated him for it.
To complicate problems, on September 30, before doctors could begin burn therapy, Hathcock developed bronchopneumonia in his left lung. That deferred the therapy until October 6 when the pneumonia finally began to clear.
On October 13, the doctors began the burn therapy-thirteen different operations in which they stripped away the bum eschar and damaged flesh, and applied skin grafts. The operations continued until November 17. Hathcock received eight homografts (skin grafts taken from donors), three autografts (small grafts of healthy skin taken from his own body), and two heterografts (skin grafts taken from animals).