DAVID M. SIMMONS & CAPT. DONALD L. MERRY (#63): My brother died from exposure to an illegal weapon our government intended for use on the North Vietnamese, and our government covered it up. David’s birthday was July 21st, 1952. Like me, he went to Gulfport Elementary, Disston Junior High, and Boca Ciega High School.
David was serving on a United States munitions ship off the coast of North Vietnam in 1972. He was helping unload pallets of bombs, and scratched himself on the fin of one of the bombs. He went to Sick Bay, but the ship’s Surgeon was out. A Corpsman applied antiseptic and a bandage to his forearm.
The next morning his arm was swollen with a red line running up to his shoulder. He went back to Sick Bay and saw the ship’s Surgeon who asked, “Why didn’t they give you the antidote?” He told David that the bombs were coated with a poison that would kill enemy soldiers when they were hit with even a small piece of shrapnel, adding “it will take a few days and keep a comrade or two out of battle because they’ll need to take the wounded man for treatment.” After he was given a shot the ship’s Surgeon said, “You’ll be OK, but you’ll need to keep an eye on you liver and kidneys when you get older!” None of this was in his medical records.
In the mid-1980’s David started having seizures. His falls from the seizures caused neck and back injuries that made it hard for him to keep a good job. In June of 1998 he was hospitalized in the VA because be was so disoriented he didn’t remember being at my birthday party at the Friendly Fisherman the night before. He wasn’t drinking or doing drugs, just didn’t know where he was. He was discharged after two days and told his Sodium Levels were off. In October, just 4 months later, he was told he needed a new liver! How could the VA discharge him in June with “your sodium levels were off”, and 4 months later tell him “you need a liver transplant.”
In addition to the VA, David was seeing a private Doctor with an office in Pinellas Park. By then he didn’t drive and the Doctor’s office was closer to his apartment. Also, he didn’t like the way he was treated at the VA. The Doctor had privileges at Tampa General Hospital and that was where David went for treatment for his liver problems.
One evening when I was arguing with a doctor about discharging David after another two day stay, things got heated. “This is the 4th time you have hospitalized and released him, and we haven’t even started talking about a liver transplant. You know he’ll be back in two weeks.” Luckily David’s Doctor’s nurse, who was also the Doctor’s wife stopped in to check on David.
I talked with the Doctor’s wife about the possibility of taking David back to the VA. David explained about the poisoned coated bombs, and the ship’s Surgeon’s warning about possible liver and kidney problems. I added, “But it isn’t in his medical records. I can’t find any evidence that we used poisoned coated bombs. No one believes us!”
The Doctor’s wife said, “I do! Do you know the Doctor only has one eye?” She told us that the Doctor also served in Vietnam and was wounded by a piece of shrapnel in his eye. “While they were operating to remove his eye, two MPs were waiting. Then they put the Doctor’s eye in a metal box and took it away. We could never find out why! Now it makes sense!” Before she left she promised she would set an appointment for David with Life Link the next day.
We met with Life Link in two weeks and astonishingly, David had a liver transplant 5 months later. His liver disease was never treated as service related, he never received a Purple Heart, we could never find anything about his injury in his records, he never received full disability from the VA.
David died of kidney and heart failure in January 2016. He considered himself a casualty of the war in Vietnam and hated Robert S. McNamara, “The son of a bitch lied to us!”
DONNY MERRY was my Father’s best friend and they roamed Pass-a-grille Beach growing up. As my Father once wrote, “When I was growing up, my friend Donny Merry and I spent a great deal of time at Harry Bell’s Fish House. In fact, that was where I learned how to swim. One day when I was 8 years old, Donny and I were pestering Harry Bell. He grabbed us both and threw us off the back of the fish house into the water. He then watched over us as I learned to swim.
Dad also had me write a short article for “The St. Petersburg Times”, “My First Car”. Here is a portion: “My first car was a maroon two-door 1937 Cadillac Convertible with leather interior and a rumble seat.
My parents were longtime friends of both the owner and manager of Dew Motor Company and the car was purchased there shortly after my 16th birthday in 1945. It was a trade-in that had been in storage during world War II and only had 15,000 miles on the odometer. It was a beautiful car and is still my favorite. We were living in Pass-a-grille, and my best friend Don Merry enjoyed the rumble seat on double dates.
I was attending Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and in 1947 we traded my first car in for a new gray torpedo-back Cadillac from Dimmitt Cadillac. It wasn’t a convertible and didn’t have a rumble seat, but my Mother thought it was safer for me to drive back and forth to school in Virginia.
My father also told us that when he first met my Mother, she was Donny’s date. Evidently, they both had very good taste in women, my Mother was a beauty.
As I said in #62, I’ll never forget the night the phone rang and I heard my Father scream and then cry. Capt. Donald L. Merry was shot down and killed on his last mission over Vietnam before coming home.
Years later my Mother called and said she want me to go to a gun show the next day with my Father. Dad collected antique guns and I appreciated them, back in the days before mass murder became a sport for the sick. Mom said Dad had come back from the gun show that Dad in a very strange mood, “Something is bothering him and he won’t talk about it.”
I went with Dad the next day. He stayed at his table and I walk around. Then I saw it! No wonder Dad was upset. On one 8’ table was a display of Donny Merry’s life. After he was shot down, all of his belonging had been packed in his footlocker and shipped home. Medals, commendations, and the flag over his coffin had been added, and then the footlocker was put in storage.
Recently the storage fee had gone unpaid, and the contents had been auctioned off. Here was my father’s friend life as an adult on sale for $500. I thought we should buy all of it but my Father said, “No! And I don’t want you to buy it either. It just makes me too sad.”
I obeyed my Father’s wishes, but I am sorry I did. I should have bought everything, put it back in the footlocker and stored it at my house. It would have made a heart wrenching exhibit at The Gulf Beaches Historical Museum in Pass-a-grille: “The Life and Death of One of Our Own in Vietnam.”
