 |
 |
|
A "PURPLE" CAN OF HAM & LIMA BEANS
|
|
|
One way
to "pass the beans"
The C-Ration cans were color OD;
perhaps this one should have been purple
It has been said that typical field duty
in
One day I was horsing around with some of
the guys in my battery. Seems we had
come up with a game of taking a huge mallet (for driving tent stakes) and using
it as a baseball bat. One of
the men was tossing up rocks and trying to hit them with that big, cumbersome
mallet. He wasn’t faring very
well, so I picked up a C ration can of ham and lima beans to give him a bigger
target. I tossed
it to him saying, “Here, try and hit this.”
He was standing maybe
I arrived at the 67th Med at
Qui Nhon. Diagnosis: torn ligaments.
Sure enough, I had torn the
ligaments in my left ankle but no break. I
felt embarrassed lying up in that hospital alongside guys who had been wounded
in battle. At one point an officer
and his assistant came by, going from bed to bed. They would stop and ask the
guy how he got his wounds. If it was
combat related, they presented him with Purple Heart right on the spot and took
down the info. When they got to me I
just said that it was NOT combat related and I wasn’t about to offer ANY
explanation whatsoever.
Perhaps I should have asked if they could
take the medal, remove the cameo of George Washington, and replace it with a
small replica of a C-ration can labeled “Ham & Lima Beans”.
Nah…somebody might have gotten the idea
that I got the medal because I was the only soldier in
Lt Gary "Dean" Springer