Spooked - Corporal Cummings

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

It’s 1967. Jerry has been drafted and just landed in Vietnam. He keeps meeting another young soldier, Cummings… and every time they run into each other, something terrible seems to happen. This episode does contain scenes of war and combat violence, sensitive listeners please be advised. Thanks, Jerry, for sharing your story with us! Learn more about Jerry on his website and Facebook. Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Daniel Riera Artwork by Teo Ducot Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mr. Knox takes rocks from dogs, sir, and beats them that we caught the pox, sir. Nox knocks rocks on them with pox, sir. Those with pox, nox, nox, with rocks, sir. Well, this can't stand. Where is this, nox, sir? Well, I'm afraid he's done with pox, sir. You're listening to Spooked. Stay.

I am not old yet. but I'm old enough to imagine old and I'm sitting with my nieces in the living room recently and the middle one she tells a story with the punchline featuring a fellow they met at the mall who is impossibly aging for them

and he was 37 years old they fall out peals of pure laughter I laugh with them even though 37 years is younger than I am now. And I have entered a season.

A season where when tragedy strikes, instead of looking to the older generation to handle it, to send the announcement, to say the healing words to be the center of calm in the storm, that instead of me turning to them, they turned to me. I never knew how strong they were before, how invisible their burden,

how I took their curse, courage, their patience, their solidity for granted. I never knew how hard it is to shepherd someone else's grief even as you are staggered by your own. I never knew this, and I marvel. And how they gave me an anchor they could not have had, how they gave me comfort from their despair. And these are lessons I do not wish to learn, but wishes are wishes. So for now, what it was, to be 37 years old. But some think the Reaper will never come for them. Out their right is back to 1967.

Jerry Glazer, he's 23 years old. He's on his way to Vietnam. And his first stop is the Comran Bay Transient Company to be checked in and assigned. So the plane arrived in Vietnam on a warm sultry night. And when the plane landed, there was a, Jeep. On the back of the Jeep, there was two signs, one handwritten, welcome to Vietnam, and below that, a illuminated sign, follow me for the pilot. I stepped out of the plane,

and I walked down, and as I walked down, I could hear in the distance artillery. Soft, muffled sounds of artillery. That's what I heard. Now, I wasn't upset by it, but that was the first impression of being there. From there, Jerry boards a bus and is taken to a base not far from the airport. We were in a row of barracks buildings, and that was a transient center. So they assigned me to a bed. That place was busy. 24-7.

Jerry spends the following day in a crowded room, waiting to be assigned. But by the end of the day, his name hasn't been called, so he heads back to his bunk. I go to take out a pack of cigarettes, and I'm down on the last pack of cigarettes. I can't figure it out. I thought I had more. Jerry does not want to run out of cigarettes, so he decides to go buy some more. He leaves the barracks and starts walking across a field to a kind of general store, called a PX. We weren't supposed to leave the holding area. Do I care? Of course not. I do what I want to do.

I go and I walk across the field. Everything is dark. There are no lights on the field. I'm walking alone. The field was all gravel. So my boots are crunching below me. And somebody says, hi. I didn't see him. He just was next to me.

He was a stocky guy, a short, but he was a stocky guy, well-built, and a red face. We were just walking in the same direction. He just came for the company. And we're talking as we're walking. I introduced myself as Jerry Glazer. He introduced himself Cummings. I said, where do you live? I lived in New York.

He said, in the Bronx, where I grew up? I said, no, I lived on Walter in the 184th. I said, I lived on 161st in Jerome. I said, no, we were neighbors. I never saw you. This is the banter. We get to the PX, right? I'm going to the B.

PX to buy my cigarettes. He says, well, I'm going to go in and I'll meet you outside. He said, okay. So I bought some Rigglies gum. I bought some postcards, some stamps. You know, I got myself ready. Now, when I came outside, he was just standing there. He didn't buy anything.

We start walking back. I take a cigarette. I put it in my mouth, right? And I offer him one he doesn't want it. Right? I said, you have a light. He said, yeah. And he throws me a light.

The lighter bounced off my hand into the darkness. So I go searching for it. I'm bending over, right? Looking, feeling around, but you can't see anything. I didn't have a light, flashlight. And something hit me in the back and sent me in flying forward. It was like a kick. It hit me so hard and shook me, shook my teeth.

And when I got up, I turned around, I got up. And I was ready to kill this guy. I thought he was like making a joke. Like he was like pulling a chair out from under me. You know, he saw me, he saw my ass up in the air, and he had to kick me. That's what I thought. What the hell? And I tried to find him.

I didn't find him. I searched. I felt around. Now, I figured he ran away. He kicked me and he ran away. Jerry's angry, but he knows he doesn't stand a chance of finding comings out here in the pitch dark. So he gives up his search and walks back to the barracks by himself. He climbs into bed and before he knows it, he's asleep.

Now the next morning, you can't get out of bed. I can't sit up. I felt like I was, they tied me to the bed. You know, like I was like, I couldn't move. What? And then I twisted. Oh, the pain. The pain.

The minute I try to twist off the bed, oh my God. So what happened was there's a barrack sergeant. So everybody's gone. I'm still in bed. He comes over. He comes over. He says, I don't know. I can't get out of bed.

He said, when do you can't get out of bed? So he takes my hand and he pulls me up by the arm, right? Oh, oh. That was so painful. He says to me, what's it matter? I don't know. So I take off my T-shirt. He says to me, take a, take off your pants.

Take off your pants. He said to me, you're black and blue from the, from the kneecap to the shoulders. Jerry doesn't want to go to the infirmary. That's not the kind of guy he is. Instead, he takes some aspirin and a hot shower. Then he goes to check in and wait to see if he'll be assigned. But once again, his name isn't called, so Jerry decides to walk back to the field. After all, he still has cigarettes to smoke.

And that lighter is still missing. And I'm walking the field looking. And I see the hole. I see the blast. It was a crater. It was a crater the size about one and a half times the size of a sewer entry. Of course, it was uneven, and it was in a cone shape going down. And I realized I knew then from my training that an ordinance hit that, an exploding

ordinance from the top. Jerry understands now that what he felt the night before wasn't a kick. It was the force of an explosion. So he starts to worry. Is Cummings okay? Did he get hit? What I did was I went back to the barracks. And I said, you know, you have a Cummings here?

The person working the desk looks up the name Cummings and tells Jerry where to find his bunk. So I go to the bunk. And there's a duffel bag at the bunk. What does he say are? Maybe that's him. So I wait. I wait. Go to sleep.

Sleep the whole night. Next morning, he's not there. I go back to the company. But this time, they can't find the name Cummings in their files. You don't have a coming that's supposed to be a sign? No. It's strange. Right?

The bag's there. So the next night, I went back again. I slept, didn't show up again. For all I knew, the bag had. has been there for two years, three years. If there's a bag attached to a bed, the concept that someone is there. So nobody checks. The next night, they called my name.

I was assigned. So I had three full days and a half day in Cam Ran Bay, before I got on a C-130 and made the first leg of my journey north. Once Jerry leaves Camran Bay, he doesn't have time to worry about Cummings or what happened to him. I have other things to worry about. Big a fish to fry. I'm focused on my next stop. Now I have to wonder where I'm going and what's going to happen. That's the next phase.

So at night, where we were, every night, they shelt. Rockets would be coming over from the air base. What we would do, we would lay on the bunker, on the sandbags. And we would watch the rockets, smoking, drinking. One night I was there, I was watching the rockets come over. And a rocket actually landed in the base. It hit something. Holy shit.

So I go into the bunker. I'm not staying anywhere anywhere anymore. So I go into the bunker and everybody's playing cards. And, you know, that playing cards passing around a bottle of booze, smoking, playing whatever. So I'm just standing, standing around. There's a guy sitting there playing cards. You got a cigarette, buddy. Yeah.

He throws me up to pack of cigarettes. I take out a cigarette. I throw it back. I just got a light. The soldier tosses his lighter in Jerry's direction, and Jerry reaches out to catch it, but he misses. The lighter bounces right off of his fingertips, through the door just outside of the bunker.

And I look up, and who's standing there? At that entrance, it's Cummings. He was wearing the same uniform, the same hat, the same face, same everything. No change. I recognize them immediately. just standing there, smoking a cigarette like I remember him. Same guy. Jerry can't believe his eyes.

This whole time, he's been worried that Cummings is dead. And now there he is, standing just a few feet away. What the? I wasn't a strangle him. I ran out of that bunker. And the moment I ran out, that blast collapsed maybe 2,000. pounds of sandbags on those guys. Three men died. Three men died in that bunker. I was outside. The sandbags fell on me, but didn't hurt me, didn't break anything. They took me in for observation

as I was unconscious. I woke up in the hospital. I kept thinking to myself, huh, the son of a bitch tried to kill me again. That was the thought that, uh, I got it. It's coming for me. That's my time. I'm supposed to die. Jerry is released from the hospital and returns to duty. Pretty soon, he forgets all about comings again. With bullets flying and bombs dropping, it's hard to focus on anything, but surviving. We didn't talk about home. We didn't talk about the past. We didn't talk about the future. We used to have an oath. We took an oath.

We were going into a desperate situation. We would kneel. We put one hand on top of the other. And we would repeat together. Hold the line. Hold the line. It means that you don't give up, you don't surrender. No man left behind. And we call it to Nathan Hale. I regret that I have but one life to give for my brothers and my country.

And then we added a fourth. See you in Heaven's Cafe. Which was if we died, we would all meet again in Heaven's Cafe. It was a... A hut on a pristine beach. Blue skies, no clouds. Facing an azure sea, calm. You could see a face in it.

My tithes all day long, with little umbrellas sticking out of chill glasses. We died. That's where we would meet. That was the fantasy. We were sent in support of a landing zone, and we were attacked. And we're losing.

The guys who were there before, they built this perimeter so that if they were attacked, they would be able to fire from behind something to protect them. I'm in a, it was like a foxhole, a hill, the back, and a little metal plate in the front, and I was firing down. Rockets were coming in, killing people. I was focused. Jerry is trying to hold back the opposing forces while helicopters evacuate his unit. The helicopter came in, whoever got on got on, but you needed like four, five or six helicopters to get everybody off there.

There wasn't. There was only two. And then they had to go and then come back. And you had to hold out for that 30, 40, 60 minutes until they came back again. They came back again. As the helicopters start taking groups to safety, Jerry stays behind to hold the line. I hear someone calling my name. Jerry, Jerry, Glazer, Glazer, Glazer, Sarge, Glazer. I look up, there's a helicopter who's standing in the door. Comey, standing in the door. I ran to out helicopter.

Moments after he leaves his foxhole, it's hit by a rocket. And then everything goes black. I can't remember the bullet hitting me. I can't even remember falling. I can't remember anything. All I know is that I woke up, I woke up in a hospital. That's all I know. Jerry is in the hospital for a month, and he still has a long recovery ahead of him.

Eventually, though, he gets better. He returns to duty. And then about a year later, Jerry goes home. It's a tough transition, but over time, he starts to adjust and makes a life for himself. I found a wonderful girl. I married her, and she gave me a family. Jerry starts his own business and begins traveling a lot for work. 20 years go by.

I went to China for this three-week trip. I had a cold when I got on the plane. In China, I was very sick. I was terrible. And as the trip goes on, Jerry just keeps getting sicker. He just wants to stay in bed at his hotel. But he has another stop to make in Hong Kong. That was the plan, focus.

You came for business. That's what you're going to do. Finish your business. So he goes to the airport, even though he feels miserable. He finds the counter to check his luggage and gets in line. And then, as he's standing there, waiting his turn, I look up and there is cummings. With a cigarette in his hand, because you allow to smoke in those days in the airports.

And he was in his fatigues and his cap, same fatigue cap. And he was clean like he always was. He looked good. The same bill, same guy, same face. He's exactly the same. Cummings hasn't aged a day. And he was just looking at me. He didn't say anything.

He didn't wave at me. He just was looking on me. And I just again, I just was filled with anger. Because what was the reality? I didn't know anymore. 20 years later, where did he come from? Why is he back? So I ran.

To get him. This time I'll get you, but he's right there. Of course, when I got to the county, he wasn't there. And I didn't look for him either. I didn't even look around to find him. I wasn't going to find him. I knew it by then. When I stood at the counter, I realized how sick I was. Then it came to me. You're so sick. Go home. Jerry cancels his flight to Hong Kong and flies back to New York, where he spends the entire weekend in bed. On Monday, guess what? I felt better. I didn't feel good, but I felt better.

I go to the office, take a taxi to the office. I walk into the office, everybody jumps up, you're alive. Huh? What are you talking about? Of course I'm alive. What's wrong with you? Cherry, you were supposed to go to Hong Kong. I said, yeah, but so I didn't go to Hong Kong.

What the hell does that do with you? I wasn't feeling good. Jerry, that plane that you were supposed to be on crashed, Bullshit. He turned on the news. And there it was. I said, was that my flight? Just listen to the flight number.

Holy shit. As he watches the footage on the little television in his office, Jerry suddenly remembers Cummings, standing at the baggage counter. And it only came to me then. Imagine 20 years after it began, 20 years after it began, I came to realize that he had come to save me. He wasn't coming to take me. All those times, he was coming to save me.

You so much, Jerry, for sharing your story with the spooked spoosters. Jerry has more stories about his experiences in Vietnam. You can find a link on our luminary page. And one more thing, Jerry is a spooked listener. He reached out to tell us this amazing story if you are sitting on your own frightening, transportive, immersive story kind of like Jerry's

do not be shy drop us a line spook at stepjudgment org the original score for that story was by Daniel Riera was produced by Zoe Frigno

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It's storytelling. Spook was created by the team that is not afraid to grow old, not a bit. Except for Mark Ristich, I keep telling them that skinny jeans they're made for someone else entirely. That's Anna Sussman. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen Nguyen Wynne, DeVey Kim, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzogorio, Teo de Kott,

Marissaude Dodge, Zoy Fregno, Doug Stewart, Greta Weber, Tiffany Leza, and Ann Ford. This is the theme songs by Pat McSeedie Miller. My name is from Washington. And not all mysteries lead us through shadow. Not all castles are constructed of nightmare. No, but friends, I'd advise a simple insurance policy.

One thing you can do to face the other side on your own terms. Listen to me when I say. Never, ever. Never, ever, never, never, ever. Never, ever.