Annette Herfkens: The Only US Plane Crash in Vietnam
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Annette’s Story: Surviving the Jungle Crash
Table of Contents
The Rescue
After eight days she is found and brought to the hospital as a pile of bones. Her wounds are full of gangrene (dead tissue) and she loses parts of her toes. Her jaw and hips remain damaged and a leg is shorter than the other.”those physical defects still cause pain. At that time everyone thought I should be happy that I had survived,including myself.But I might have had to pay more attention to that pain.”
Psychologically the experience also leaves traces.”I always have to have a bottle of water with me,” says Annette. “Certainly in the beginning I got panic if I didn’t have access to water. If I have water with me, I have peace.” Yet Annette still gets on an airplane, despite her claustrophobia and fear of flying. “I always want to sit in the front and have enough space. My knees are not allowed to hit the chair for me, because that reminds me of the oppressive moments under that chair in the wreck.”
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Processing
Annette is not bothered by survivor’s guilt. “I had the feeling that I had pulled the shortest end.my fiancé was dead and I had to go alone.When they found me, I didn’t really want to leave the jungle, because I was dying so beautiful.”
She still feels the loss of her fiancé.”He was mine soulmate, My everything. The entire grieving process only came later, when I got home again, but that remains the biggest wound. The way someone dies does not matter in the end. You have lost them and you have to go through that. ” What she finds especially difficult is that her fiancé has never been allowed to have children. Now I have them, and I think that’s one thing.”
Back to the Mountain
In 2006 Annette returns to the scene of the crash. “I was terrified, but courage does not mean that you have no fear. It means that something else is more crucial. I felt that I had to do this.”
During her days in the jungle in 1992 Annette saw a man in a shining orange outfit a few times. She still thinks he is a hallucination, a product of her fatigued spirit. But during her journey in 2006 she meets a guide who lets her know that he was that ‘man in orange’. He saw her after the crash and went to get help with which he saves her life. annette: “That has to be like that.”
Stronger than you think
Although the jungle almost