Commander Hawkins started out with a plastic prosthetic nose, but it was easily detectable, so he decided to make the best of a bad situation by wearing the tin nose and being up front about it. He was always quick to point out that he, more than anyone, realized how absurd his condition was, and in doing so he attenuated in part the sniggering he was subjected to for wearing a tin nose. What bothered him more was what he imagined people said about it in private. He became a virtual paranoid in this regard.

I was sent to Pendleton’s neuropsych facility—that bleak, austere nuthouse—some weeks after defending my title as the 1st Marine Division Middleweight Champ in a boxing smoker at Camp Las Pulgas. I lost on a K.O. My injuries resulted in a shocking loss of weight, headaches, double vision, and strange, otherworldly spells. EEG readings taken at the hospital indicated that I had a lesion on my left temporal lobe from a punch to the temple that had put me out cold for over an hour. I was a boxer with over a hundred and fifty fights, and I had taken a lot of shots, but this last punch was the hardest I had ever received and the first punch ever to put me down. I had seen stars before from big punches; I had seen pinwheels; but after that shot to the temple I saw the worst thing you ever see in boxing—I saw the black lights.

There I sat in a corner of the dayroom on the kelly-green floor tiles, dressed in a uniform of pajamas and bathrobe, next to a small, tightly coiled catatonic named Joe, who wore a towel on his shoulder. Here in this corner—the most out-of-the-way place in the ward—was one of the few windows. Occasionally a Marine would freak out and bolt for the window, jump up on the sill, shake the security screen, and scream “I want to die!” or “I can’t take it anymore, let me out of this motherfucker!” At these times Joe would actually move a little. By that I mean he would tilt to the left to give the screamer a little space. Except for me and one of the corpsmen, Joe would not let anyone touch him or feed him or change him.