So on Christmas day, we all sat on the sand, in the position of honor right in front of the stage, and watched the Bob Hope show, live and in person. Bob was at his best, Ann-Margaret was in her prime, and all the other young lasses in his entourage were visions of loveliness. About halfway through the show, the bottom fell out of the sky and it rained like hell, but nobody cared. And nobody left. It was a far better Christmas than any of us had expected.
All good things come to an end.
Two weeks later, I learned that one of my fellow ward P patients, an infantry lieutenant from the 199th Brigade, who had become a good friend, was killed in action on his first day back with his platoon. About a week after that, I learned that the Special Forces snake bite hero also was dead. The interlude on the beach at Cam Ranh Bay suddenly seemed never to have happened. As if to punctuate that idea, in the wee hours of one morning the following April, North Vietnamese sappers came in from the ocean and ran through the hospital, throwing satchel charges in all the wards. Ward P was completely destroyed.