Then our helicopters came, and the enemy soldiers who were
left ran away.
An hour later, I was out of there and on my way to the hospital in
Danang.
Chapter 6 The White House
I was at the hospital for two months. After the first few weeks my
leg was getting better, and one day I went down into the little town,
to the fish market. I bought some shrimps, and one of the cooks at
the hospital cooked them for me. Two days later, I went back to the
fish market and talked to a man who was selling shrimps.
‘Where do you get them?’ I asked him.
He immediately started talking fast in a language that I couldn’t
understand, but he took me somewhere ─ past all the boats and the
beach. There he took a net and put it in the water. When he took it
out again, it was full of shrimps!
Every day for the next few weeks, I went with Mr Chi (that was
his name) and watched him while he worked. He showed me how
to catch shrimps with the net, and it was so easy that an idiot was
able to do it!
Which I did!
Then one day I got back to the hospital and a Colonel Gooch
said, ‘Gump, we’re going back to America together! You’re going
to see the President of the United States, and he’s going to give you
a medal because you were very brave.’
♦
There were about two thousand people waiting for us at San Francisco
airport when we got off the plane! What a surprise! A lot of
them had beards and long hair. I thought perhaps they were there to
welcome us, but I was wrong. They were shouting unpleasant