Wounds of war tie 2 Vietnam soldiers for life
By William Kibler, bkibler@altoonamirror.comArticle Photos
John Gority's right leg was blown off in 1967 in South Vietnam when he stepped on an anti-tank mine.
Guy Archambault of Reno, Nev., said they were traveling on patrol through the Michelin rubber plantation after receiving word about a concentration of nearby Viet Cong soldiers.
Then Gority of Hollidaysburg stepped on the booby trap and ''kind of went heavenly on us,'' Archambault said.
''I thought I had walked over the booby trap and didn't see it,'' Archambault said. ''I thought I blew it, and he paid.''
For 30 years, Archambault believed the accident was his fault until he attended a reunion eight years ago in California. The Bravo Company, Third Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division holds semi-annual gatherings around the country.
While there, the pair talked about the explosion.
He ''told me it was not on me, it was on him,'' Archambault said. ''I was very much relieved.''
As Gority tells it, the soldiers in his platoon were walking in two columns, so they could get behind the enemy position and catch them in a cross fire.
They passed a road and came upon two trails that entered the brush on the other side.
Gority mistakenly took the trail on the left.
He'd gone a short distance when his commanding officer called over from the other trail for Gority to cut across the brush in between to get where he belonged.
Gority argued because the brush looked risky for booby traps.
It wouldn't have taken much time to double back to the road, then get on the correct trail from there, avoiding the worrisome brush, he said.
But the commanding officer gave him a direct order, thinking it was the best thing, so Gority came across.
When the mine detonated, ''The way John told it, he didn't think he'd come back down,'' Archambault said.
During his short time in the country, Gority had been afraid three or four times.
But there wasn't time to be afraid at that point.
''It just happened,'' he said.
Torn apart from the waist down, they took him to an aid station.
At first, no one could get an IV in to give him plasma because his veins had collapsed from loss of blood, he said.
Finally, a doctor sliced his arm and got one in, and they gave him blood.
''They were working fast and hard,'' said Gority, who remained awake. ''They saved my life.''
When they put him on a table to take an X-ray, he was screaming in pain, so the doctor said, ''OK, knock him out,'' he recalled.
Two days later, when he woke up, he was glad, not only to be alive, but to have his left leg.
He'd believed he was going to die, and he'd seen his right leg gone.
He also believed his left leg was gone because the explosion had twisted it behind his back.
Now he saw it wasn't that bad either way.
''The better part of two evils,'' he said.
He grew up poor, his dad dying when he was 8, his mom working.
He had friends who were poor like him, and others whose families had money.
''It probably helped me understand and realize life is a lot more complicated and challenging than people realize,'' he said.
It also probably helped him accept the loss of his right leg, he said.
''The worst thing that happens to you is death,'' he said. ''Anything less - you just deal with it.''
In the hospital afterward, he encountered soldiers who had lost legs and who were going ''berserk.''
''They couldn't handle it,'' he said.
His wound is the most grievous among the wounds of those who come to the reunions, he said.
He agreed it seems to confer a special status.
''Most didn't think I'd made it,'' he said. ''Some came to the reunion and said, 'I thought you were dead.'''
He actually feels lucky because his wound lifted him out of the jungle morass after just a few weeks.
Better than having it happen on the last day after suffering 12 months.
''A million-dollar wound,'' Archambault said.
The early wound spared Gority the deteriorating attitude that afflicted many soldiers, and might have hardened his personality permanently, Archambault said.
Yet Archambault wouldn't have traded places.
He didn't know Gority well, but they had a bond because ''neither knew anything'' and neither wanted to be there, he said.
Likewise, the reunions of that unit in the draft-heavy Army are like ''a gathering of reluctant lovers,'' Archambault said.
Life and death stresses create a special affinity, he said.
One of the best compliments he can give - and one he wouldn't necessarily give to his best friend - is ''I would dig a hole with you.''
It implies trust the other will do his part, so we both ''see the sun come up,'' he said.
Everybody handles fear differently, Gority said.
''I shook a lot,'' he said. But otherwise, ''I just went ahead and kept doing what my job was,'' he said.
He too feels the bond.
''They all respect me a lot and love me, and I love them,'' he said.
