Four Army Soldiers and a Civilian Medic

This article was published in "Vietnam" Historical Magazine, August 2008 edition: "Personalities" section.

As a civilian medic serving in the midst of war in Vietnam from 1965 to 1972, I had my share of close calls. I found myself in plenty of hairy experiences, often alongside GIs who displayed remarkable acts of courage and compassion, but who typically remained nameless to me. After serving four years in the United States Marine Corps and then becoming a medic with the Montana National Guard Special Forces unit located in Kalispell, I went to Vietnam in 1965 as a civilian field medic for the American RMK-BRJ Construction company. I diagnosed and treated diseases, administered emergency care for war wounds and industrial accidents, and performed minor surgery such as suturing minor lacerations. In fact, we acted as a  primary care physician to the company employees and others in need in areas where doctors and clinics were unavailable. On two separate occasions, I was the sole medic treating 14 plague patients in my clinic. Since I was in a war zone, however, my relatively routine days were sometimes punctured by the most frightening and bizarre events.

 

    In early 1969, I received an emergency call at my Chu Lai dispensary, which sat a few hundred yards from the perimeter of the military compound. Highway I was being rebuilt and

resurfaced with asphalt by our construction company, and an accident was reported near the construction site. My interpreter Nhan, and I immediately left in our white ambulance with its red cross markings.  Earlier in the morning, the army had cleared the road of mines and booby traps, enabling us to speed along in the hot, bright sun. We arrived at the accident scene on the road next to a small Vietnamese hamlet with small thatched huts. As was my habit, from inside the ambulance, I quickly scanned the area, check out the gathering Vietnamese.I saw five US Army soldiers on a jeep with a mounted machine gun. It appeared to be a tense, but orderly situation. Based on experience, however, we knew to be on guard on guard.

 

   Pulling the ambulance over to the side of the road, I jumped out, medical bag in hand. A small, handsome boy, about eleven years old or so and clad only in black shorts, was lying next to the massive

wheels of an earth mover-trailer. The boy appeared to be dead from the massive abdomen and pelvic crush type trauma. With a stethoscope, I examined the boy by auscultation, listening for heart sounds, but found none. His pupils were fixed and non-reactive to light or to finger touch. To demonstrate care and respect for the boy, particularly given the gathering crowd of villagers, I was careful not to rush my movements.

 

   Nhan and I placed the boy in a green body bag. As I was starting to zip up the bag, a young girl ran up to put something in the bag. As I partially unzipped the bag, she shoved body parts in front of my face. I realized what they were when she opened her hands to drop them into the bag. It was the boy's testicles. Somehow, I managed to maintain my composure and zipped up the bag. Nhan and I placed the boy in the ambulance until the village chief could determine what to do with him.

 

   I walked to the hamlet and found a clearing between the thatched huts and the jungle where I could spend a moment gathering my thoughts. Then I saw a frail old man with a grayish, stringy "Ho Chi Mein" beard, and dressed in black pajamas, slowly walking from the cluster of huts toward me into the clearing. He was in tears and howling uncontrollably. I later learned that he was the boy's grandfather. Suddenly, one of the five American soldiers screamed, "GRENADE!" Now I saw clearly that the old man, arms stretched above his head,  had a hand grenade clutched between his hands, his fingers grasping the pull ring. Two of the soldiers ran up and grabbed the old man. As one soldier wrapped his hands around the old man's hands and the grenade, the other pinned the old man's arms. A third soldier ran up, a spare safety pin at the ready to insert into the grenade. In the meantime, I looked around the area for any other hostile action, but the old man appeared to be acting alone. One of the soldiers yelled. "Doc. we need you!"

      I was already reaching into my medical bag and was preparing a syringe with a sedative. The old man was so small and frail that I prepared half of the normal adult dose. I raced up to the tightly joined group and swabbed the old man's arm. I looked up, and there in front of our terrified, sweating faces was this grenade, with Vietnamese and American hands wrapped tightly around it. Looking away from the grenade in front of my face, I realized the grass and sky were never so bright with green and blue. A nice day to die, I thought.

In that instant it reminded me of the famous picture taken of the Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima, only this was not a flag but a live grenade. Another odd thought struck me as I was swabbing the old man's arm. Here I am, by habit and with due diligence, disinfecting the arm of a man who wants to kill me. I injected the sedative into his upper arm, and the old man slowly relaxed, as I supported his lower body. The GIs then very carefully eased their fingers under the old man's and squeezed the grenade handle as another replaced the safety pin and yelled, "Grenade secure!" finally the old man fell into my arms. Then, led by a small girl, I carried him to a thatched hut and laid him down on a simple bamboo mat. After the village chief took possession of the dead boy and waiting an hour or so to ensure that the situation was reasonably calm, Nhan and I headed back to the Chu Lai dispensary.

 

   I will never forget those GIs. Even though I never knew their names, I will always remember their faces. They were so young, in their twenty's or so, but they demonstrated so much

maturity, compassion, and discipline in the face of likely death. I would do almost anything for these GI's, and I was confident that if I were in a jam, they would do the same for me.   

 

     In Vietnam, the military ordered their medical staffs to report personnel who were unfortunate enough to get the venereal disease more than once. If that happened, they were subject to disciplinary measure. Of course, this policy, which was meant to reign in the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, created other more serious problems as men sought to avoid punishment, didn't go to the medic. As a result, some soldiers suffered from incorrect self-treatment, or used diluted or contaminated antibiotics they purchased on the Vietnamese black market.

 

   Occasionally, a GI would come to my dispensary with classic symptoms of gonorrhea. Being somewhat desperate, he would ask me for help, and I treated them with injections

of both fast and long-acting penicillin, take lab tests to validate my diagnoses, and proceeded with follow-up treatment. I always provided care with the strictest confidentiality and at no expense to the patient. One time I asked a GI how he knew about my dispensary. To my surprise replied, "Everybody knows about you and where to go if we need care." I hoped that their commanders did not hear about me.

 

   It had been a long day for Nhan and me when we responded to another accident between Chu Lai and Quang Ngai on Highway 1. A Vietnamese on a small motorbike ran through a construction stop and was crushed by a heavy bulldozer. After the police investigation, we loaded up the fatality and drove over the rough road to Quang Ngai, where we stopped at a Buddhist temple to inquire where the deceased's home was located. The Buddhist priest offered to accept the body until the family could claim him.

 

   The sun had begun to set as we started driving back, and I grew increasingly worried on the bumpy road. The Viet Cong controlled the area at night, and nobody in their right mind would be out there without a damned good reason and plenty of firepower. By this time, the ARVN were beginning to hunkering down in their roadside bunkers, and the white-clad uniformed police scurried to secure US military areas or cities for the night.

 

     As we approached a bunker about a third of the way back to Chu Lai, suddenly alone Vietnamese soldier darted out to roll out a barbed wire fence on wheels across the road in front of us. In the bunker, another soldier pointed a .30-caliber machine at us. With Nhan translating for me, I identified myself and requested permission to pass. They agreed to let us through but refused to come out of the bunker to move the barrier.  I negotiated with the soldiers to allow Nhan to move the roadblock so our ambulance could pass. I  assured them that we were not armed, they nervously kept their weapons trained on us.  Nhan put his arms up and moved slowly to the barbed wire barricade to pushed it off the road. After I drove through, Nhan pushed the barricade back onto the road and jumped back into the ambulance.

 

   We continued our slow journey down the pothole-filled road, alert for suspicious activity. I never admitted to Nhan how, in that sweltering heat, I had broken out in a cold sweat fearing we might never get back to Chu Lai.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

   About halfway back to the dispensary, we saw a military vehicle drive toward us in the distance and then stop. There were several troopers and a machine gun mounted on the jeep. I stopped the ambulance, and we sat, sizing each other up, neither one moving toward the other. I felt a bit foolish for not driving forward but thought it better to remain in passive mode and allow them to control the situation. After what seemed to be an eternity, one of the soldiers dismounted from the jeep and slowly walked the distance between us. The other soldiers covered us with their machine gun and M-16s.

   An American GI came into focus and walked up to my window. "We received a report that you had not made it back," He said, " so we came out to find you." With great relief,  I thanked him, and awkwardly tried to explain why I had not driven up to them. They then escorted us back to Chu Lai and safety.

 

I should have stopped them to buy them a drink, but they waved me on as they turned to another crossroad. I don't think I ever saw my rescuers again, but like so many of the extraordinary and selfless soldiers I met in Vietnam, I have never forgotten them.