A Blessing in the Mud

I was working at my desk at the Can Tho Airfield in South Vietnam when the phone rang.

“Are you a Mormon elder?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Yes. Why?” I said.

“A Dust Off (the call sign for a medical helicopter) is making an urgent request for assistance. A navy riverboat sustained several casualties during a ferocious firefight. One of the most seriously injured men is asking for a Mormon elder. If you can come, the Dust Off will take you.”

“I’m ready.”

“Be at the landing area in five minutes.”

I grabbed my helmet, flak vest, and side arm, then ran to the landing pad just a few hundred yards from my office.

The Dust Off landed, I climbed aboard, and we flew for approximately ten minutes to reach the location of the firefight. As we approached the banks of the Mekong River, we could see the tracers of machine-gun fire coming from both the navy riverboat and the Viet Cong on the opposite shore. On the southern bank of the river, we could see sailors carrying wounded and dead comrades from the flaming navy riverboat.

We landed, and I approached a navy chief who was sitting in the mud, holding a young sailor in his arms. The young man’s right arm was gone, and the bandages that covered much of his upper body were blood-soaked. A medic leaned over the boy, shook his head, and moved on to the other wounded.

“Do you know who asked for a Mormon elder?” I asked the navy chief.

“This sailor right here,” he answered.

I knelt in the mud and looked into the young sailor’s face, twisted with pain and suffering. As I knelt there, his eyes opened. I leaned over so he could hear me over the noise of the firefight and said, “I am an elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

In a voice so low I could barely hear it, he said, “Will you please administer to me?”

I nodded affirmatively and asked him for his full name.

Although I could see him struggle to answer me, he was unable to do so. I looked up and asked the navy chief for the boy’s full name.

“I don’t know his full name—only his last name. We just always call him Saint.”

I anointed the young man with consecrated oil and, leaning over to speak into his ear, pronounced the appropriate ordinance. I again laid my hands on his head to seal the anointing. As I invoked the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, sealing the anointing, and as I further sought the inspiration of the Lord so that I could pronounce a blessing on the young man, I literally felt the sailor’s spirit leave his body. I silently uttered a prayer, asking our Heavenly Father to bless the family of this young man. I looked again at the sailor’s face. The grimaces of pain had disappeared, and he appeared serene, almost angelic.

“He was such a good kid,” said the navy chief, with tears running down his cheeks. “He was such a good kid.”

At that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was one of the Dust Off crew members. “We have to get out of here. We’re taking fire.” The entire experience had lasted only forty-five minutes.

A couple of the crew members placed the young man’s body in a body bag. Then, quickly but gently, they loaded it onto the helicopter, and we took off.

Through the years I have relived that experience over and over. I have thought of that young man’s faith, of his request—surely a prayer to Heavenly Father that the priesthood would reach him—and of the remarkable timing of his spirit’s release during the administration. And above all, I have thought much about a young man who had lived his life in such a way that his fellow sailors called him Saint.