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the fire had flown right into my face and eyes—my face was covered with a thick, gooey liquid that I thought was blood. We had to call for a corpsman to be sent from Company HQ since we didn’t have one with the platoon—I don’t recall how he got there—chopper—most likely—they immediately helilifted me back to Battalion and the Base Clinic—during this time I could not open my eyes because of the excruciating pain. Soon, a doctor examined me and cleaned out the debris from my eyes which included little flecks of metal, sand and ashes—he did this while I was awake—no anesthesia. They cleaned up the liquid that I thought was blood—turned out to be ‘pork and beans’ —one of the C rations we all had often eaten—someone had apparently left their unopened can of pork and beans in the fire and forgotten it—it exploded while I was bending over the fire! They wrapped my eyes in bandages after applying medication to them—still in pain. I was out of commission for several days, unable to see while the medical staff sorta steered me out of the way at the clinic to make room for serious combat injuries coming into the clinic. I was seriously concerned that there may permanent damage to my eyes—something I wouldn’t know until the bandages came off. I couldn’t return to my unit for obvious reasons so I simply had to wait until the bandages came off and we could determine whether my eyesight was seriously damaged . The doctor didn’t think there would be any serious problems but admitted he didn’t know for sure—we had to guard against infection and the possibility that some of the debris was still in my eyes. I spent several days with the bandages covering my eyes—finally, we took the bandages off and as I tried to open my eyes, the light felt like acid had been thrown in my face——they
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