The Purple Heart Hickey: Yes, war really does suck
From time to time, usually around Veterans Day or Memorial Day, my mother likes to play a little "Unsolved Mysteries" game with my father, a proud American veteran.
"Michael, it's been 50 years, the war is over, and you have never answered my question,” the Old Gal began, “Tell me where that hickey came from!"
I've heard this story. Before Pop married the Old Gal, he was a tall, handsome young man enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard. The two hit it off well, and things started getting serious. That is, until Pop came home on shore leave to court my future mother, and he had what appeared to be a large, fresh hickey on his neck.
For those of you who may not have sailors in the family, a hickey is a bruise-like mark typically caused by heavy kissing or sucking on the skin around the neck and/or earlobes. The British call them “love bites,” but here in the dirty South we describe that kind of “necking” as “marking your territory.”
Hickeys on the neck, in case you were wondering, definitely require another person’s participation. And apparently, when Pop pulled up in Hampton, S.C. on shore leave that long ago weekend, wearing his freshly starched sailor’s uniform and the damning evidence of a fresh necking session, he never really had a good explanation for it. He tried to tell Momma that, when the other lads on the ship heard he was getting into a committed relationship and thinking about “popping the question” and getting engaged, they held him down in the cabin and put that hickey on him, as a mean-spirited prank just to get him in trouble back home.
This is the same sailor, by the way, who once told us that every time the ship docked in Bangkok, Thailand, one of the most sinful ports in Southeast Asia, he went ashore just long enough to get a big plate of shrimp-fried rice and a Chinese Coca-Cola, then boarded the ship to read his Bible and wait on the other, more worldly sailors to return.
For some strange reason, the woman who would later become my mother didn’t buy his story, and after five decades is still looking for answers.
"Wanda, I'm sick of hearing about this!” Pop finally snapped. “It's been over 50 years! Do you really want to know? Do you really want the truth?"
"I do, Pop!" I yelped with joy, pulling up a chair and trying to be a helpful son. "I love a good story. Let's hear it!"
Pop threw me a look that would sink a ship, and then began a sailor's tale the likes of which I have never heard.
It was 1968 in the South China Sea, just off the coast of war-torn South Vietnam. The Coast Guard had taken a lot of heat from those U.S. Navy boys at the sailor bars back home, who called them “shallow water sailors” and “puddle pirates,” so now, finally in the war zone, they were itching for a fight and ready to prove themselves in battle.
But the 143 men aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mendota were on edge. They had been hauling munitions for the Navy and intercepting suspicious smuggling operations, lobbing their own mortar rounds into inshore Vietcong targets when needed. They had been running Navy SEAL support missions for Operation Silver Mace and Special Operation SEALORD, and now they were hauling Chinese and Cambodian mercenaries and Hoi Chi troops into hot combat zones.
Suddenly, the cutter Mendota came under heavy artillery fire! Pop was in the steam engine room, keeping the throttle wide open so the vessel could charge the guns – damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! – when the ship was rocked by a blast of enemy fire and began taking on water.
Something powerful detonated overhead, and the lights flickered deep down in the belly of that ship, sparks flew, and in the next instant a vacuum hose snapped loose and flapped around the cramped engine room with dangerous force, delivered nearly fatal wounds to two unsuspecting crew members, then whipped around and fastened itself to Pop's neck with over 100 psi of suction power.
It took two enlisted men and an officer, with the ship's chaplain standing by reading scripture from the Bible, to tear that sucker loose from Pop's neck as he held on for dear life and thought about his girl, Wanda, back home, my father recalled, then he got misty eyed and stopped.
“A couple of inches toward the Adam's Apple,” he told the Old Gal, gulping thick-throated with emotion, “and I would have come home in a body bag and never got the chance to marry you and have such a wonderful life!”
"Wanda," Pop added quickly, when Old Gal started to ask a follow-up question. "No more, it's still too painful to talk about."
A tear ran down my own cheek. No matter if Momma believes that incredible tale or not, Pop, you will always be a hero to me and you deserve a Purple Heart, if not for valor for storytelling. God Bless America, the mighty Coast Guard, and all the brave seamen who sailed the ocean blue and put their necks in jeopardy to keep this nation free.
(Pop has now been been married to the Old Gal for more than 53 years, they have three sons and several grandchildren in quiet, small town Hampton, S.C., but he still doesn’t like to talk too much about his experiences overseas.)