Lesson Learned

There it was. The cry MEDIC rang through the battle with a heart-stopping peal secreting a surge of adrenaline that could raise the dead. The noise from the battle didn't dampen the shrill cry at all; the way the cry of your child finds you from the midst of a crowded playground. It was like being shocked, in the literal sense. My legs convulsed with a violent twitch almost incapacitating me.

I was twenty, and for years I had mulled this scenario wondering how I would react when faced with it. Would I act appropriately or freeze-up as I had heard others had done? Sheer fear-of-fear catapulted me off the tank towards my first casualty. Not only were lives at stake, but my performance was under uncommon scrutiny. I was the new medic for G-troop, but I was also a Conscientious Objector, a medic without a weapon, or track record. I had to concentrate; I had to relax; I had to act. Although they never beat me either, the boys in the 11th ACR, up to their jungle rot in jungle, viewed me with a little more scrutiny and pragmatism than did that Louisiana training base a half a world away. There was more at risk and they questioned my proposed role as medic without a weapon. He would be riding on the back of a tank without a weapon? What about covering our backs when the turrets traverse? No one wanted me on their tracks, so I was stuck with the platoon leader and his disgruntled crew. No one knew how I was going to act under fire, least of all me. Although I had no intention of firing a weapon, I was cognizant enough to remain aboveboard knowing that when it comes to him-or-me scenarios in life, the "I"s have it most of the time.

This, my first combat experience was probably two or three weeks into my tour. G-troop, which encompassed armored personnel carriers with one Sheridan tank per platoon, was pulling security for bulldozers as they cleared strips of jungle facilitating night time picture taking to detect enemy troop movement. As the enemy would cross said strips they were being photographed by strobe flashes from night time reconnaissance planes. This practice had replaced the spraying of Agent Orange which had been banned by then.

I was seated on the rear of a Sheridan with my cool Byrds-type wire-rimmed sunglasses I had just purchased days before from a peddler near An Loc, and without an M-16, except the three on which I was sitting belonging to the driver, loader, and TC (tank commander). Although physically uncomfortable, sitting on three M-16s when you were not issued one was emotionally comforting no matter the strength of one's resolve.

When the RPG hit the bulldozer, despite my combat virginity, I knew exactly what it was. RPGs were the most feared weapon to the CAV., and the most distinguishable with its two explosions in one. BA-BOOM. The first blast would produce enormous heat which would burn a small hole in the 3-inch steel wall of a tank. The core of the rocket would pass through this hole exploding (the second blast) inside the tank. Although deadly, they had one fortunate flaw: they were very sensitive. Leaves were known to trigger that first blast causing the second to be deflected rendering it ineffective. What the North Vietnamese Army Regulars had been doing with the roam plows in this particular region was hitting them, waiting on the medic, then hitting again. I called it the old hit-and-run-and-hit routine.

The call for the medic came as quickly as the rocket. I was so scared I shook like a dog passing peach pits. The shaking seemed to localize to my left leg allowing me to perform though I probably looked like Elvis on stage. It seemed somewhat a compromise: I give my leg, I get the ability to function with the rest of my body. I recall experiencing an almost visible presence of my mother, who was 13,000 miles away in Arkansas, as soon as the fighting began. It was as though her face was as big as the half the sky, staring down at me but somehow oblivious. In an instant regression to my childhood I screamed-in my mind-to her: Mama, they're trying to kill me. She should reach down and pluck me up, away from these strangers, these mean men. This apparition of Mother augmented my fear. Had I not been so engaged, I could have dwelled on this to the point of freezing, I'm sure.

I grabbed my aid bag and ran towards the front of the vehicle and jumped off just a meter away from my first casualty, the South-Vietnamese (ARVN) driver of the bulldozer. I hadn't seen him when I jumped off the tank and almost landed on him. He was lying 20 meters behind the plow which had been hit by the rocket. I guess he had tried to run back to us for protection and ran out of steam (read, blood)-probably when he saw his left arm dangling by only a two inch strip of skin. I dropped to my knees by his side; eerily, Mom is muddling my thoughts. The noise is incredible. With all the tracks firing everything they've got, one incredible blast after another, I'm surprised I could hear the blood soaked GI who appeared from out of nowhere and told me, There's a GI hurt up here. "GI" was accentuated implying that I should leave the ARVN to run forward to treat the GI.

Suddenly, the political dichotomy of the war was thrust upon me in the form of a life and death decision: Do I abandon the Vietnamese to treat one of my own, or do I treat each man equally, treating the nearest one first? The typical ARVN soldier, in general, was noted for a certain degree of apathy, justifiable by many standards, bordering on, or perhaps misinterpreted as, cowardice. I, of course, hadn't had time to formulate a judgement about an entire country of people. Curiously enough, the emotion I felt was anger directed at the messenger who would have me leave a wounded man of another race, solely for that reason, to run forward in order to treat his buddy. I completed tying the tourniquet-really the only thing I could do, except administer a morphine surette which could drop the blood pressure fatally-telling the Vietnamese he would be OK. He raised his head and his left arm to assess the damage and saw only about five inches of his arm raise from his shoulder, the rest lay on the ground beside him. He closed his eyes and laid his head back down on the ground with a look of woe as if to say, this is it. I assured him again,You're going to be OK.

I'm sure he sensed my inexperience if not my sincerity. He seemed only to have the arm wound which wasn't bleeding. So he was only going to lose his arm, not his life. After receiving that blessed assurance he-lying in a pool of his own blood and effectively one-armed now-watched his medic run off to help one of his own. My scorn runs to the hopelessness of the situation. I hated to leave that man when he needed me the most, but there were other things to do. We were still being fired on by small arms fire.

The downed GI was up ahead by the plow. He was a mess. I think he had been standing beside the thing when it got hit, catching the shrapnel. But it looked like small arms fire too. Two toes and two fingers were dangling like the driver's arm; holes in him every where, probably twenty holes that could have been small arms wounds. Just as I realized "I'm in the same location this guy when he got it," they fired the second time.

BA-BOOM! They missed but not by far. The old hit-and-run-and-hit routine. It was so close I felt it in my chest. Everyone knew what it was, I as well. I turned around for... instructions, or maybe assurance that they heard it too. I don't know. I remember seeing a guy named Clary, from South Carolina waving me to get down.

And down I got. And everyone responded, giving me close cover. So close I could hear the 50 caliber rounds flying not much over my head such that I just laid my head down in the bloody dirt and began opening IV bottles and tubing. The side of my face pressed firmly, so firmly, in the bloody dirt. I became the earth. The boy's blood pressure was so low, or perhaps mine was so high, that I couldn't start an IV. I would hold the bottle up to try to get the solution to flow and pull it back down when the bullets would whiz by, fearing one would take my arm or fingers as seemed to be the wound du jour. I was having a bad time. I threw my cool, Byrds wire-rimmed sunglasses into the jungle signifying a newly acquired weariness for all things cool.

I didn't know what to do. I was applying bandages to wounds that weren't bleeding, when from, quite literally, out of the sky an angel of mercy appeared. I turned and there was a Colonel, a Chaplain in starched greens who had crawled forward to my position from an evacuation helicopter, saying, let's just get him out of here. That sounded great to me. Why didn't I think of that? Well there was no place to go really until he showed up. The Colonel had brought his own evacuation helicopter-easy for him to say.

We loaded the guy on to a stretcher and began carrying him to the chopper. My arm was so tired from holding up IV bottles and pulling them down again that I thought I couldn't make it to the damn thing. Then I fell in a hole, knee-deep, somehow managing not to spill the patient. Keeping one arm up I was able to hold up my side of the litter until someone could come over and relieve me.

The battle still raging, I returned to my tank and sat on my three M-16s and looked around at everyone else, all the hard-nosed, tough guys, who had been there long enough for their teeth to have changed colors, fighting for their lives. They were just as scared as me. The blasts were so loud they hurt and they coming from every where. All we could do was fire everything at once. I realized that Mother was not coming to take me home; that I was no better than these guys who had just saved my life by covering me, not because they liked me, but because they were American, and that I too was; and that these three M-16s could very well save lives if I could keep the barrels hot and subsequently, the heads of the enemy down.

So I grabbed an M-16 and laid down a heavy volley of fire, just like everyone else, just like Daddy had told me I would the first time I got shot at. My goal was not living in peace with my convictions anymore nor was it simply living. It was being an American again. Something these guys were; something worth dying to preserve.

As we motored away from that spot in the jungle, I watched a Cobra helicopter gunship straff the area and I remember thinking, It's going to be a long year. I had almost jumped on my first casualty, I had failed to start an IV, I'd bandaged wounds that weren't bleeding, and I'd almost dropped a patient when I fell in a hole. And that night back at the perimeter the guys told me I had done good. Jesus, I thought, they're easy to please.

I guess they realized better than I that a quick med-evac was more important than any first-aid I could administer, and that a medic who will cover your back could preclude the need for his services. Lesson learned.

The ARVN died four days later in a hospital. The GI lived and went home minus a toe and a finger, and some minor shrapnel wounds.