Maddog and Miss Kitty

I pressed the transmit button and said, "We are clear on the right, Sir."I released the button and heard Bob, the crewchief say, "Clear on the left, Sir.


"Captain Petty's voice boomed into my headset with the same words he spoke every day, as we were leaving our final landing zone and heading home, "Then, Gentlemen, we are out of here."

As we lifted off, I remember thinking that's it, five more days and I'm out of here with over 600 missions and not a scratch.

We weren't more than ten feet off the deck when the tree line ahead lit up with what looked like a million muzzle flashes, and a mortar round went off directly under out ship.

I must have been knocked out for a while.
The next thing I heard was Bob saying, "You're going to be OK, Maddog, just hang on."

"You wouldn't lie to a short-timer would you Bob?"

He laughed, "Not a chance soldier, not a chance."

I grabbed his hand and said, "How about Captain Petty and Mr. Jacobs?"

"They're fine, Maddog. Nobody was scratched but you, and you've just picked up a little shrapnel from the mortar. There’s a dust-off on the way to pick you up.  It's no more than five minutes out. "I knew he was lying about how bad I was hit because I'd said the same thing more times than I cared to think about.

I must have blacked out again because the next thing I remember was hearing a lot of turbines winding up. I felt a hand on my arm, opened my eyes expecting to see Bob. Instead I saw the face of the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life.

"Is this heaven?" I asked.

She leaned close so I could hear her above the whine of the jet engines. I smelled her hair and a touch of perfume as she said, “It’s close to heaven, as close as you’re going to get for a while. We’re in an Air Force Skylifter. We’re going home soldier." 

We didn’t go home, at least not to my home. We went to San Antonio and then to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, where I spent the next eight months. The “few pieces of shrapnel” I’d picked up had almost taken off both my legs.

The angel who held my hand most of the thirteen hours it took to fly back to the states was Lieutenant Kathleen Timmons, an Army nurse, on board the hospital flight, because she had finished her tour of duty in Vietnam and had been reassigned to Brooke.

During the eight months I was with her, I told her my whole life story at least five times – it wasn’t very long in those days. She told me her nickname was Miss Kitty after the character of the same name in Gunsmoke, her favorite TV show. I told her that my nickname was Maddog, and it had nothing to do with dogs, but was directly connected to my reaction whenever I was shot at.

Miss Kitty wasn’t the angel I had originally thought she was. She was in charge of my therapy and took her responsibility seriously. In spite of my begging, threatening, and on more than one occasion, crying, she never let me miss a single step of therapy. More than once I told her that I’d kick her cute ass if that were a physical possibility.

Every time I said it, she laughed and said, “You’ll thank me for it one day, Maddog.”

Through the pain I managed to say, “Yeah, fat chance that will ever happen.”

Somewhere in the countless miles we walked together, we fell in love, but we never admitted it, not to ourselves, or to each other. We were both too busy fighting the demons of Vietnam that had come home with us. The same ones who came home with everyone who served there.

Late one night, about a week before I was discharged, Miss Kitty came into my room. She sat down beside my bed, took my hand in hers, and said, “Don’t say anything Maddog.”

I opened my mouth and she said, “Hush.”

I did. Then she said, “I’ve resigned my commission. Tomorrow I’m going home. I love you, and I think you love me, but I have to get my head on right before I can think too much about that.  I know you have to do the same thing.”

She stopped talking, and we just held hands for a long time. Then she stood, leaned over, and kissed me so gently, I barely knew it had happened. “When the time is right we’ll be together Maddog; don’t ever doubt that.” And she was gone.

I week later I was home, alone, angry, hurting. Inside of a year I was fighting to kick alcohol. Two years later I was married. Four more years passed and I was divorced. Two more years went by and I remarried. Eight years later I was again divorced and alone.

Spring came to Georgia, and I knew I couldn’t keep going the way I was going. Within a week I’d resigned my corporate job, cashed in my retirement, sold my house, sold my Mercedes, and bought the big Harley I’d imagined owning for longer than I could remember. I rolled out of Atlanta at ten on a Friday night and headed north on Interstate 85.

An hour before sunrise ,I parked the bike in front of the Lincoln Memorial, saluted Abe, and turned toward The Wall. I don’t walk fast. I haven’t since getting shot up, but thanks to Miss Kitty, I do walk. After walking the length of The Wall, stopping often to listen to the hushed voices of those whose names are carved in the granite, I turned toward the Women’s memorial. I was the only person moving in the area. The sound of my footsteps seemed to be amplified.

I didn’t notice the small figure sitting on the sidewalk beside the Women’s Monument ,until my footsteps got her attention, and she turned toward me. “Maddog? Maddog, is that you?”

I stopped cold. “Miss Kitty…”

She was in my arms before I could say anymore. Neither of us said a word for a long time. Hell, we couldn’t talk. Finally, she managed to say, “I heard your footsteps. That sound is branded on my brain. Oh, Maddog….”

Again it took us a while to regain the power of speech. When we did, we couldn’t shut up. Thirty minutes later I shifted the Harley into fifth gear and let it ease up to 70 miles an hour, I dropped my left hand off the handlebar and reached back until she grabbed it, and placed it on her thigh. Leaning forward she shouted in my ear, “It’s finally time, Maddog.”

I didn’t try to answer, I just squeezed her thigh. For the first time in almost twenty years the world was right.