Twice in the last few months I have helped people move from apartments where the buildings had cockroaches. So, I'm looking at them and thinking first of all they seemed tiny compared to those I saw in Vietnam. The second thing I fought about was having some flesh eaten by one of these.
It was a rare night when I was not on duty and was in my bunk sleeping. It was a restless sleep and I remember my right hand was hurting a little where I had a wart just under my little finger on the palm of my hand. I was thinking/dreaming that gee, I'd better get it cut off. Maybe there was something going on there. My hand hurt more and more and I was becoming more awake. Then I felt it. Something moved. I literally fell out of my bunk and got a light on. It was a cockroach and it had eaten off the wart on my hand. I now had a small hole that went down a under the palm of my hand past where the wart was and it was bleeding some. Talk about "Oh Shit, how did that happen". Well, I found out later that it can and did for me. Anyway, I killed the cockroach and poured alcohol in the wound and when it grew back I had it cut off in the E.R. It had to be cut off two different times but that did the trick.
So, there you go. I don't think I have ever really told this story to my family or anyone else except the ER and my immediate fellow GI's, but I look back at it with a BIG smile. After all, how many people can say they were bit by a cockroach?
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