Hurricane Street | Ron Kovic | Disabled Veterans

Kovic volunteered for two tours of duty in Vietnam, was injured in January of 1968. It was then that he saw the war had not only injured him, but was destroying an innocent people as it was murdering for too many young men of America. During subsequent years, he wrote, picketed, and was arrested twelve times for his activities.

After the war ended, while he was "serving time" in various Veterans hospitals, he and a few of his friends decided that the men who had given their all for their country should be treated honorably in rehabilitation as well. He also knew that the only way to change the conditions of treatment then available to disabled veterans was by direct action. This is the story of Hurricane Street.

For many of us disabled, Kovic is a double hero. He served with distinction and honor in a dispicable war. And, once injured, he vigorously protested that his country would send what used to be called "the flower of youth" to be exposed to possible injury or death, and, at the same time, force them to learn one of the hardest lessons of war. That is, that it turns all involved in it bestial.

There is a powerful chapter in Hurricane Street where each of the protesters tell of a personal experience of inhumanity in the field - - - the clipping off of ears, and fingers, and noses and, in once case, setting fire to a Vietnamese woman's hutch as she trembles watching, helpless, her baby in her arms.

We were sent over here to help these people.

The best part of Hurricane Street is Kovic's story of the seventeen days with his pals camped out in Cranston's office, there in a fancy Los Angeles high rise. The protesters not only did a sit-in, they fasted, while, all the while, turning the Senator's conference room into a miniature VA hospital, with all the smells and appurtenances of a VA hospital - - - caths, bandages, swabs, support equipment.

And as the news got out, they fielded calls days and night from newspapers and radio and television stations, watching themselves on their small black-and-white television set, listening to their voices on radio.

He also tells of the strain of the evening meetings, the protesters often at odds with each other, complaining of the cramped conditions, the lack of the facilities to do their personal care, so vital for one who has neither feeling in nor protection for their atrophied limbs. Several of them rebelled, wanting just to get it done with, to abandon ship, but were often talked into staying by Kovic. He prided himself on being a cadgy, non-stop fighter, and a hell of a good leader of those who do not necessarily want to be led.

Sometimes they ended their evenings' meetings telling stories of their fighting and their agony, at one point reciting the date and place of their wounding, being "a day none of us can ever forget. . . . January 20, 1968, Cua Viet, Vietnam," I finally say, biting my lower lip.

We only learn the true extent of Kovic's disability half-way through Hurricane Street. He repeats for us a weird discussion that he had in 1969 with an official of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs:

"Let me see," he said, looking down at his papers. "One hundred service-connected, totally disabled, complete loss of bowel and bladder functions, injured in combat, gunshot wound, paralysis, T-4 level.

"Is this correct," he asked, still staring down at his papers. It's really quite simple," he went on.

For instance, if a soldier or marine loses an arm or a leg in combat, they might get, if they're lucky, 30 to 40 percent disability, but in your case - - - that is, those of you who have lost everything: legs, bowel, bladder, sexual organs - - - you'll be receiving the maximum payment. Unlike the guys who lose fewer body parts - - - loss of a nose, an ear, a finger - - - that had to be decided on a case-by-case basis. I know a guy who got 10 percent disability payment for having his pinkie shot off; and a navy corpsman who lost his left ear while trying to save a marine - - - he get 20 percent, I think. It's crazy.

"It's crazy," he says. He's right. War is a nation gone mad. Apparently, there are still those who wallow in the heroics of it, but their numbers may be diminishing. Part of the reason may be this man Kovic and his buddies, so long ago, taking over the office of a disinterested Senator, making the politician's office into "a makeshift VA hospital ward," which action finally ended up getting the attention of the director of the VA.

All the medical supplies that Eddie got are now lined up perfectly along the office windowsill: twenty-four irrigation-solution bottles, eleven boxes of latex rubber gloves, sixty tubes of lubricant for cleaning out our rear ends, six dozen plastic bags to put the crap in, seventeen urine bags or "nighttime drainage bags" as they are called, twenty-six catheter-change kits used to insert the catheters into our penises and inflate the little plastic bulbs inside our bladders, enabling us to urinate without wetting our pants. Several boxes of government diapers have been added for those who are incontinent.

By his singular acts of rebellion, Kovic taught many of us that the price of international violence is high, for it not only destroys "the enemy," whoever that may be, but also those who are supposed to be on "our side," which ever that may be.