Uh the irony was some guys joined the Navy or Air Force or Coast Guard in order not to be in the army or the Marines in Vietnam because they were almost all death destined for either infantry or armor um so most of the guys who went in
The Navy and got assigned to the Medical Corp had no idea at the time that they might very well end up being the Corman with the Marines in in the tropics that’s where I wanted to be that’s what I was thinking about doing when I left
College to go in is I to go do that I didn’t realize I would be able to fly and be with the Marines so I told the chief petty officer and he and I were on good working relationship so it wasn’t insubordinate but I said just give me a
Green uniform get the hell out of the way and I went that’s I literally told him so I went back to California to Camp Kendleton which is just North of San Diego where I’d gone to boot camp and original Hospital core school so then you went to Fleet Marine school and the
Marines then take Hospital Corman and put them through four months of pretty intense training so they can a keep up with the Marines B know what to do when Marines are wounded or sick a lot of treatment of combat injuries kinds of training pretty intense and then of course major physical fitness work
Because the average Navy Corman was nowhere near as fit as the average Marine coming out of Marine Corps basic training those people are really tough and strong and and they absolutely to a person live up to their reputation and it’s not only about physical strength and the ability to run toward the fire
Which is what we call it but it’s also about honor there’s just a real focus on how you carry yourself both on and off base both in and out of uniform and I really like that stuff because you know I was a boy scout and my dad was a man
Of tremendous honor and character so I went through four months of of Marine Corps uh Fleet Marine Marine school and uh you know you’re up at 5:00 a.m. and you have about a half an hour of of intensive calisthenics then you run about a mile in combat boots to the
Mess hall and have breakfast and you run back and then you start whatever you’re going to do for the day and at night you have calisthenics again and so you know how to break down an M16 and clean it and put it back together which came in
Handy cuz I carried one uh how to break down a 45 semi-automatic pistol which I also cared and reassemble it after you’ve cleaned it um not much hand-to-hand combat training only one day of that that was that was scary that you know I’ve never been a brawler and
So I I always assume I’m going to be the one on the bottom of the pile but they they taught me pretty well how and so self-defense came natural and the the Gunnery Sergeant staff sergeant excuse me who was in charge of our training group again about 30 Corman said you
Know he says if you get into hand-to-hand combat doc we we’ve been overrun and the game’s over anyway is you’re not going to you’re going to be surrounded by Marines if you’re in hand toand combat we’re all in exploitive deleted you know okay so I didn’t worry
About that very much you know time on the rifle range learning to shoot straight I grew up part of where I where I grew up in Colorado was was on a cattle ranch and uh you know my grandpa and my dad were used to hunting Venison
And um and and that’s what we ate is we at more venison than we did beef growing up so I knew how to shoot already I knew how to fish I knew how to build a shelter I knew how to build a fire so a whole lot of that stuff including the
Land and sea surviv I didn’t like the sea survival part of the aviation training you know they they one I’ll just tell you one thing they strap you into a parachute harness because if you eject over water and you got a high wind the parachute will come down sideways
And drag you through the water to you drown you have to be able to get out of it while it’s moving so they put put you in a parachute harness put you up on the back of a landing craft like the Marines go ashore in it’s got a big tower on it
As high as that ceiling and you’re in your parachute harness and it’s on rollers like a little railroad track and when at a signal they fire up to LST and take off and you roll off the back of the thing and you hit the water and they
Tow you through the water at about 12 knots or so until you can get out of your parachute harness If You Don’t Panic it’s easy you just roll over on your back and the motion causes the water to be hit you about here then you just have to get the things undone in
The right order and just roll out I didn’t like that part very much cuz I’m not a big Open Water person but I did great at the land survival stuff because we lived off the land at egland Air Force Basin which is East of Pensacola down on a panhandle huge place like Camp
Pendleton is we lived off the land there in a Ponderosa forest for about five or six days with somebody to teach us a lot of what I already knew but nonetheless and that included good orienteering with the map and Compass how to find your way
Without roads or trails and I did I did great at all of that and then you had a three-day period where you had to get from one point to another point and it was 5 miles by 5 miles and you had to get across or around or without being
Captured and there were Air Force personnel looking for us you know being so I did real well at all at all that so when I was at Camp Pendleton I was already in better shape than most of the other Corman i’ had already been through rougher stuff than some of it but there
Were you know obstacle courses and ropes to swing over the mud holes and walls to climb and and got to call through a culvert it’s kind of Muddy and half full of water and under machine gun under under barb wire with machine gun B live machine gun bullets overhead I mean so
It very intensive Marine Corps training but also the medical training of what do you do with a wounded marine and after I got done with that um there was a little Airfield right at Camp pen they had you know about six or eight huis a single rotor on top the huies and
Um they needed an aviation medicine Tech so right out of Fleet Marines courp and again I had made friends in town and I had a little apartment off campus as soon as I got done with my training and I and I stayed at this a at this little
Airfield for about 8 months and again primarily in charge with the flight surgeon of doing the flight physicals for the pilots and Air crew we had there and that’s where I first was flying around in Hues as an as an air crew member uh on training missions for the
Pilots mostly and I arrived at a place uh in in November uh of 1970 and I had gone in in November of 67 and typically a tour of Duty in Vietnam was 13 months long um so I thought I don’t have 13 months left so so the likelihood of my being sent over there for less than a year is
About next to zero cuz they weren’t and plus there was some talk of starting to draw down already even in 71 there was some question about you know Nixon’s Vietnamization of the war turn it over to the to the South Vietnamese soldiers so I thought you know it’s not likely
That I’m going to go I was willing to go I was trained you know but I was getting to fly and I was a happy camper well when there only 90 of your military occupational specialty MOS when there’s only 90 of you in the whole Navy and
Marine Corps and a couple of guys get injured or killed in Vietnam flying that they they that’s different and so I got the the chief P officer different guy came in and said doc you’re not going to believe this I said what he said you got orders to Vietnam
And I said really when and he said yesterday he said it’s expedited that means you got three days to be on a plane for Vietnam so I literally that day turned my files over to the other Corman got off early went to my bank closed my bank account went to my
Apartment shut it down it was a furnished apartment so I just had to gather up a few things at a little Studio it’s all just that place off base and uh drove over to Phoenix where Glendale Arizona where my parents lived left my car and my guitar and my best
Wishes and got on a plane in Phoenix and went to Norton Air Force Base and next thing I know I I’m and I was on a civilian Airline that’s what’s nuts you fly to Hawaii change planes and then fly right into dang which is up dang is is
Up in iore which is where the Marine were are you familiar with those that iore term okay and army had two core and three core down near the Delta so I was at the so I got orders to the marble it’s called Marvel Mountain Air facilities but it was Marine Air Group
16 mag 16 it was all Marine helicopters a big helicopter base literally right on the shores I mean most of the base was sand the shores of the of the South China Sea uh the the the evacuation Hospital Army hospital that was just up the road from us where we often dropped
Off patients that was the model for the TV program China Beach so that’s where we were as right what’s called China Beach that area and um I flew into I flew into the Air Force Base there it was across the river and across dang from where we were but we’re literally
Across the river from and the main highway from dang guys three Marines picked me up in a jeep with a machine gun on the back you know I climbed in and the Scotty the sergeant with the was driver handed me his M16 he said welcome to the Nom doct
You know how to use this and I said I do he said okay let’s go and I had one Marine in the back Scouting Around looking and the other guy standing behind the machine gun and it’s because as I later found out that we Tang was
Off limits for us we couldn’t go in there for anything without being armed and then only because we were doing something we were on a mission of some kind because there were snipers everywhere you know waiting for troops to come into the and this is the second
Largest city in all of Vietnam and and of course it was Guerilla Warfare you’d expect snipers of course but it’s not what the American people tended to think they were still stuck on what conventional Warfare looks like you know they didn’t get Guerilla Warfare you know a war where there was no Geneva
Conventions I mean there were no rules which showed up a lot in what happened you know on sometimes on our side but a lot on theirs so that’s what happened is I went to Vietnam I got there in early December of 1971 um I was already an E5 I outranked
Most of the Corman who were already there there were only two of us Aviation medtechs the other guy didn’t want to fly and flying was even if you had my MOS flying was voluntary nobody in the in the medical group was ordered to fly Medevac and the reason for that is it
Was just really really hazardous and they so and and you know they were I think at the time I was there I think there were 12 of us uh and we rotated we had a 12-hour either dayl daytime shift and you know sometimes you go and get on a helicopter
And you’re except for refueling you know you’re you’re you’re going all day um and then we’d have a couple days free and then we rotate into a 12-h hour night shift and we’d be over on the flight line sleeping in a quanset hut there ready to go I mean fully dressed
Ready to go sometimes we have a night when we didn’t have any missions at all uh night medacs are called only when there are emergencies meaning the guy will not make it till morning and we would always go out and sometimes you’d have none sometimes you could be lifted
Off and if there was a lot going on you could be flying all night long WR you know but then of course they let you get some sleep the next day and all that so there were 12 of us all volunteered we called I didn’t come up with this they
Called themselves The Wild Bunch the oh they also had they nicknamed the mag 16 flying docks kind of this Elite group that was they were all really really good at what they did by the way they were really skilled and they were about half nuts so but nobody well I
Immediately volunteered and we tried to discourage anybody with children there was some guys who were married and had kids and you know yeah and uh some married guys chose to fly but most of the guys I mean they were young guys they weren’t married yet you know I
Was older than most of them and I was I turned 23 in the spring of of 71 and and I was considered one of the older more most of them by the time they finished their tour in Vietnam they were e4s would be like a Corporal um but I went
There at e 5 and I had been in the Navy longer than anybody except the career non-commissioned officers a chief petty officer and we had one E6 who did supplies anyway so that’s what I did is I flew metac from dang marble Mountain Area all the way up to the DMZ and from
The South China Sea over to the border of La uh which we were not allowed to go into for combat reasons except uh when Tom when uh what was it called uh it was called tonson something or rather oh l no Lamson uh Lamson nut I think but it was a
Vietnamese term but it’s when the Arvin soldiers went in because we were not allowed to by our Congress they went in they went into LA to cut the hoim men Trail and we put their infantry in there the helicopters went in to allow us to put there in there and picked up wounded
When they had them and brought them out but our infantry troops were technically were not there now I I know for a fact that there were some long range patrols that weren’t measuring where the border is sometimes when they when they went in but by and large units did of infantry
Did not go in and try to cut so it was that whole thing was just a disaster but that’s what I did and I and and then when I wasn’t when I wasn’t flying if I didn’t have a flight shift then I was busy taking care of the flight physicals
Me and one other guy for all the pilots and Gunners we had we had machine guns on all our helicopters and we had 250 calibers on ours and we had a an NCO on our helicopters with each 50 cal then there was a crew chief and me each with
An M16 so we had we had four lines of Fire coming out of helicopters and I flew in what’s called ch46 is the the twin rotors on top the Army has big ones ch47 shanuk these are about 2/3 that size but they’re the same principle twin rotors on top
And they’re a little smaller uh a little bit more maneuverable because they’re smaller than than a big snook is and they’re called a ch46 cite K N I G HT um we call them frogs p r OG because sitting on a Runway they looked they slightly sloped up and they had a stubby
Wing tank on the back where the rear wheels were and so it looked for all the world like a frog getting ready to jump so that’s what we called them as frogs but pH RS and we would always have two gunships with us um when we went out and
To do Medevac there were we were always protected by and reinforced by these Huey gunships or cobras which were like a little Ferrari with everything you can imagine on it a two-pilot thing but they had they had the newer ones had two turbine engines on them you could blow
One out all together and still do everything with the other so they would be out here and they would be a lead bird which I most cin was on by choice and then they had a Chase bird so if we couldn’t get all the patients these guys
Are going and get the rest or if we got shot down they would come in and get us so so a Medevac flight for us was four helicopters pretty well armed very distinct from how the Army dust stof did it they took one Huey and at first they
Had a big red cross on the nose of them but there was no Geneva Convention so what’s what’s the point but they would go in with one helicopter and they would be in and out real fast they couldn’t carry as many people and they couldn’t return much fire but they often had
Their own support aircraft around them but dust off we thought they were nuts cuz they were in and out and you know not much able to shoot back and couldn’t take as many patients but they were in and out quick when we go in if we drew
Fire we were ready for a fight and the Marine Corps model was if they shoot at you shoot back you know so it was a it was a major operation when we did that so that’s what I did in Vietnam was uh go in now not just wounded
Marines um but civilians a lot of times civilians get caught in a crossfire including children uh AR the army of the Republic of Vietnam the South Vietnamese soldiers we did all the medical EV act for them we had uh a Detachment of Korean Marines on our air base they had
Their own little place on down near the flight line and they had one little Piper cuup looks like a Piper Cub water plane but we did all of their troop inserts and extractions as well and medical evacuations when needed uh and those guys those Korean Marines were
Probably the scariest people in the war CU they had all been studying martial arts and you know some kind of hand toand combat stuff and uh they didn’t they they were their Corman came over with a translator CU they needed supplies and we went through everything gave him everything he could possibly
Want except we were not allowed to distribute morphine they had to they had to get their own and they had to get it from the doctor which which they did but every battle dressings and tourniquets and all the stuff they needed so we kept him supplied he was a very friendly
Quiet guy but uh he they had their own medical person and he just got supplies from us when he got short I didn’t have much interaction with him but you could put eight or 10 of them on your helicopter and they just sat silently until you got to they didn’t chat they
Weren’t nervous they you know these guys are fierce but the Marine could hold their own no no doubt in my mind I I never felt like I was at a disadvantage being in a war with Marines you know I I believe the safest place to be in a war
Zone is surrounded by Marines even if you’re the Corman so yeah so I don’t know what else you want to ask me do uh any of those uh those medical evacuations stand out in your mind for whatever reason well yeah yeah uh I’m going to have to
I’ll try to tell you about a few one of the worst was we we were up somewhere and again I never knew where we were unless the pilot said we’re going to way or we’re going to Kon or you know but I never knew I just knew we were somewhere between the South
Trinness and Laos and the DMZ and and Marvel Mountain area but you know it was it was beautiful by the way flying over over Vietnam there were a lot of bomb craters and and some burnout Villages and that’s not pretty but generally speaking you know this tropical rain
Forest and all the rice PES thing it’s just stunningly beautiful beautiful and we were past um the monsoon season the rainy season you where it just poures for six months ends about in late December early January so we were cast that there would still be rain clouds it
Would still Cloud up and rain in the afternoon but it’d be like Thunders showers and then gone um so we’re up there somewhere up to up north of of marble Mountain Air Base and we we and I didn’t know how many patients or what we were going to
Receive we just got you know we were get we were already in the air doing something I forget and they called for an emergency and we were in the neighborhood so we we took our medac flight and went right down in there and um the standard operating procedure was
That when when you’re going into a hot LZ that means where there’s live fire going on and high risk of being shot at okay um it’s called a strike Mission it it’s it’s counted differently than just you know what we call the milk run where you’re delivering somebody from here to
There uh we went down and and there was a firefight that erupted between a marine platoon and a village that was a suspected Viet Kong Village this is what I learned afterwards and and when you’re going down into the Zone um your primary job is to be ready to suppress fire so you
Have a machine gun over here and then me sitting over here and then the crew chief sitting over there and a machine gun there so either side of the helicopter you can get fired and of course the crew chief and I could cover the back if we needed to and when we
Landed one of us was usually down near the ramp in the back this is a bird that lowers a ramp and people run on so typically we would get there they would the Marines would bring their wounded on sometimes I could see out of the corner
Of my eye what we got and what we don’t but mostly I was locked and loaded and staring out the window because you know if you saw green tracers coming at you you knew where to aim and suppressing fire was was important so then I would
As soon as we lift it off and you know took off I’d put safety on my M16 put it down turn around and start taking care of Marines whatever we got I turned around and there were no Marines but there were two kids little kids about
Uh about 6 to 8 years of age and they both had multiple strap wounds and the little girl was missing her left arm from here down and they had some had a battle dressing on her arm and a turnic it and I know the Corman had done as
Much as he could quickly but they we went in pretty quick and I think he might have been tending to Marines and so I put these two little kids on well they were both bleeding badly they’re little kids they got caught in a crossfire somehow and I had to make a choice about
Which one to help first uh if I did the same for both of them right away the high probability was they would both you can bleed to death in three minutes if you got arterial bleeding so I had to choose which one to help first and she was more badly hurt
Because of her arm and I didn’t know for sure if I could get to both of them but if I tried to get to both of them in their condition this is just something you know from months already of taking care of wounded Marines you might not be able to save
Either either of them this is called triage you have to sort out what to do very quickly so I reinforced her tourni it got battle dressings on her worst wounds turned to help a little boy and he was already going into shock you know he was cyanotic and blue lips and
Fingertips and all of that and I did the best I could with him while monitoring her and when we got to the 95th back to drop them off she was alive and he wasn’t and no matter how many wounded marines that one was hard and I’ve never forgotten the face of
That little boy you know and in truth I had nightmares I had pcsd symptoms for decades before they finally figured out how to treat it and um sometimes I used to have a dream in which I’d be there with those two kids only in the nightmare as he died I
Looked at his face and it was my face as a little boy so what I believe is that something in me died when he did you know it’s hard to say I have to say here that I’m not a person who’s uncomfortable with my own tears I’m a professional psycho
Therapist my training is in Psychology and I’m a professor ameritus a graduate Professor from University where I trained Mental Health Care therapist for 20 years so I don’t see uh sorrow as weakness um I see weakness as weakness but not sorrow so that was a hard one um there
Was another one where there was a this was north of way and it was sometime again in the late spring uh of 71 you know may maybe early June I don’t know but you know the when things happened are all a blur but what happened is
Isn’t much uh the there was there was uh a marine unit out on Search and Destroy Patrol and they ran into an NBA unit somewhere North way but south of the DMZ and I mean a pits battle began and the NVA start bringing more and we start
Bringing or pretty soon there’s a major Ruckus going on you know with you know I mean aircraft coming in and working out and all kind of stuff so we uh and when I was again in the lead bird we went down into a preactive LZ and you know occasional round in the
Helicopter you can hear it when they hit it sounds like a thunk it doesn’t go bang it sounds like thunk um and again I turned when we lift off I turned and you know put down my M16 by the window and and turned and there were seven wounded
Marines in the helicopter and one Corman and where we were was far enough North it was going to take us we averaged about 20 to 25 minutes in the time we picked up a wounded Marine till we had him either at an an an army uh field unit hospital or the US Sanctuary
Which was a hospital ship right off the coast about 3 miles uh down near da and depending upon how close we were that’s where we would would take them but we were far enough North it was going to take us a few more minutes five or 10
Minutes longer to get to where we’re going so that having been said not not one of them had anything of significance done to help them they were all wounded bullet wounds and shrapnel you know pitch firefight with hand grenades and mortars and all that stuff so um their Corman apparently on the
Ground had either been killed or wounded because these guys wouldn’t have had no no no battle dressings or anything you know when the time it took us to get there a few minutes to get so by the time we got to the the the the army field surgical hospital which was a
Little closer than the hospital ship I did real quick triage and by God’s grace they all were breathing they had intact Airways because trying to fix a guy who’s face is all battered up or who’s got a neck wound you have to do a little minor surgery to just create a
Way for him to get air into his lungs which is hard to do in a bouncy helicopter but you’re trained to do it uh they were all breathing so I had to do a quick assessment about who’s bleeding the worst and I had one guy with a partially amputated arm I think a
An explosive round of some some kind had L went off next to him and another guy had a bad shoulder wound uh that I think it hit a break your artery be that’s a major artery runs down this way so you know he’s spurting blood and trying to push it
Back and me so I did those two first and and a couple of guys had smaller shrapnel wounds and uh you have to lift them all if they’re laying down you got to lift them up and look behind them because if you miss an exit wound you
Can fix everything on the front and they’ll bleed to death out the back without you knowing it so everybody you get a look at their exit wound you know on the leg if it goes through the thigh and you got an exit wound it’s probably
Going to be okay you can just crank it right down so what’s what am I saying this was a significant one to me I’ll never forget it cuz I had them all bandaged and all of them but one had received morphine um for the pain so they weren’t
Going in shock and that one had a what we call a sucking chest wound you you get a piece of straple or a bullet goes in here and it creates a hole and when you breathe it sucks air in between your lungs and your rib cage and pretty soon
That lung collapses and you can suffocate so you have to stop that from happening and you do it with Saran Wrap you right over thing and then tape it down and then you put a battle dressing over and you tie the knot right over the wound then you put him on his injured
Side which seems counterproductive but if he’s laying on the wounded side his other lung can go unimpaired and breathe and keep him alive but you never give morphine never give morphine to a chest wound a sucking chest wound because it suppresses respiration you don’t want to limit their breathing all seven of those
Guys were alive and and got to be really fast and I I saved them all and and when I was done I got to clean up my Marine Corps language here we had dropped them all off and and uh they frequently knowing we’re coming they’ll run out with coffee for us all
That stuff so I was walking down the end of the ramp with the crew chief and one of the Gunners and coo Chief’s got seven M16s like cordwood I mean he’s car they don’t want all those automatic weapons on the bird so carries them down and gives it there’s always Marines there
You know to or army soldiers and you just handed to them and they take care of them they’ll unload them and all that this Gunner a staff sergeant probably he’s a career Marine probably on a second or third tour in Vietnam already and he came up to me and
Probably the best highest compliment or one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received he put his hand on my shoulder just like I’m facing aming you he put his hand on my shoulder and looked me from about that far looked me Square in the eyes and he
Said you can put in the Marine Corps expletives here but he said expletive deleted doc you are one snake eyed cold efficient exploitive deleted and walked to it and I went okay and what I didn’t realize is that I had become that I was just a n I had lots of
Training and I was 22 when I went to Vietnam so I was older than most of the other Corman and I was had more advanced training than most of the other Corman because of Aviation school but um it didn’t dawn on me that that shy naive brainy
Kid would become a person that was that focused and that skilled and that um I don’t know what adjective to put to it but um I was I had really I don’t know how El to put I had really changed now this was I was only there
About 6 months because my whole unit got pulled out in the summer of 71 and they sent me home two weeks early to do some prep for returning units so but I’d been there several months and I had not paid attention to how much I was changing but that was the day I
Realized holy cow that’s not me and that’s where I’m was wrong it absolutely was me who I was is who I wasn’t anymore so that’s a memorable Mission because seven wounded Marines and in 30 minutes had it all under control I mean that means about three or
Four minutes per guy on average some took longer than others I remember that one that for that particular Mission I got was called a single Mission air metal air metals are one notch below bronze star and you get TW when you fly 20 strike missions 20 missions Under
Fire that automatically leads to an air metal for Valor but on particular missions you can you can get an air metal for just what you did on one particular Mission just like you would any other you know Bron star Silver Star whatever and um that particular Mission I got a
Single Mission air metal and that day I remember because it was the busiest day of my entire time there we went back to that same spot eight times in one day so there there it’s not it’s not it’s not unheard of to get eight strike missions
In a day but it’s very unusual we were busy enough that halfway through the day the pilots switched and they brought on two new pilots the Gunners and the crew chief and I stayed but it was much more stressful for the pilots they got to fly
And they’re in and out of PL you know one of the times we went back there I remember this one because it was was really really busy and we touched down in an LZ they had two or three lzs cuz there were so many troops down there and
We were across a Big Field Meadow rice Patty thing and then there was just a ridge of tropical rainforest you know where they were hiding they were up there we were down on the we the Marines were down more on the level and we could see mortars as we
Tried to pick up Marines we could see mortar Fire coming from about a mile away and there’s a process they call walking the mortars toward the target you know they estimate the range they fire and from there they know they got to go forward or back right or left you
Know they do their and it takes about two or three rounds for them to get you zeroed in well they were they were clearly walking mortars right towards the helicopter and we were just getting the Marines on so it was a matter of seconds before one of the other okay and in
Comes a couple of f4 Phantoms their fixed wi bombers that were stationed uh at the Air Force Base across to name inom and I didn’t see or hear them cuz they were they were Treet topping coming in low and they came in and both of them dropped two pots of Napalm each
And the hill just be the whole hill became a fireball and the mortar stopped and we got out of there but I’ll never forget that all the helicopters all the gunships are just over the heads of the Marines that are in the grass and they’re pouring everything they got in
To the and you can even hear and our machine guns are you know you can hear them above the turbin and the blades both of them going off at once and here come the mortars and I’m was thinking oh and then and then fixed somebody called fixed wing and and they just
Turned the whole didn’t have to aim just drop them just Dro from there anyway and we got out so it was a really really hairy day and at one flight was the most I ever had on my helicopter it was seven at one time and again something had
Happened to their Corman because they normally they’d be all bandaged up and they’d be half of them would have morphine already and you know but they came on and it’s like I I had just been standing next to them and they got hit you know put them on and some of them
Laying down and some of them sitting up there were benches along the side of the helicopter canvas and that was a busy one those two um one one more and and this was when we went out and this one is the one that surprised me too it wasn’t so much a
Mission but after the mission that I was oh look at that um we went out to the USS Sanctuary we had two Hospital ships the USS sanctuary and the USS Repose I think there was a third but I forget I hadn’t never around it but and
That those two would rotate at 6 months intervals back to the States and they they just anchor or or float out there and they had after the Gulf of tonan they had uh Patrol boats and and a destroyer out there around them to protect the hospital ship and we dropped off Marines and
Again uh I had run out I mean it was a very busy day not that same day I told you about but I had I had uh a few wounded Marines we took them out to the hospital ship we had time to get out there but I was
Running low on supplies cuz I’d had two or three missions already and and you know you have a satchel like this you know but and you can start to run out of battle dressings pretty quickly so I told the pilot the pilot patched me through to the hospital ship as we were
Going in and so I could tell them what I needed so here’s the scene the crew chiefs coming down out of the helicopter with the M16s from the wounded guys I’m walking down out of the helicopter down the ramp okay looking for a cup of coffee
Frankly and I’m and I’m wiping the blood off my hand I got a blood stain you know flight suit I’m wiping the blood off my hands with a 4×4 it’s not my blood wiping it off just like you you know blow your nose with the kleenex or
Something and um I got on a flight helmet a bullet bouncer With A Kar that’s a combat knife strapped to it always carry that upside down like everybody else um I had a 45 caliber pistol underneath my left shoulder and I just set an M16 down and his wife and
You know all that stuff so out comes two Navy cormen in white uniforms okay and they were both e3s which means they had just gotten out of Hospital core School these guys were were uh newbies I’m cleaning up my Marine Corp language the these were new new and they were kids you
Know uh when when I went in the Navy I just a kid myself I was 19 but I was still older than most of them who went in so they came out and each of them had a canvas bag about 3 feet tall just stuffed with everything you can imagine
You know battle dressings and tourniquets and field surgical kits and Gauze 4x4s and everything you’d need and they’s come out carrying one of these bags to the ramp and I’m coming down the ramp and they both sat down their bags snapped to attention and saluted me and their eyes are big kind
Of like a holy look at this guy and you know anybody who knows me knows I’ve always been rather slender and I’ve never been much of a physical threat I’m very capable of doing what I need to in the woods I can survive I’m a Backpacker
I’m all that but I’ve never been a person who likes either competitive Sports especially contact Sports mostly cuz everybody else playing was bigger than I was you know when I got to Vietnam I was 5’10 and weighed 140 lb and that’s after putting on 12 lbs of
Muscle with the Marines you know in four months so I weighed 125 when I went in the Navy and I was 18 19 years old really a bean pole kid anyway these two these two young cormen and then I you know I just waved that salute off and told him to follow
Me they went up into the bird with me which I’m I don’t know if they’d ever been inside a helicopter or not but the everything’s still going it’s screaming you know the turbines are loud and I fortunately I’ve got my helmet on but they’re just in the screaming noise
Bless our heart so we stashed all the gear underneath the underneath the benches so it wouldn’t get blown away we took off and uh they kind of stepped around me and I don’t know how to put it they were like differential I don’t think they were scared I think they were
Uh it sounds like bragging but I don’t mean but it’s like they were a little a struck it’s like it’s like I might have been John Wayne from the Sands of inima or Clint Eastwood or something you know but because they they they had they they knew what
The war was with all the patients that were being dropped off they knew was some nasty stuff going on but they were shielded from any danger because they were on a hospital ship protected by the Navy so when they saw me they saw somebody outrank them somebody was older
Than they was somebody who had different training and a different job but what they really saw was a Blood Stained flight suit which I was pretty used to you know you can’t keep it sterile and clean and I was the thing is I was wiping the blood off my hands with
The pie of cause and their eyes got so big and what dawned on me that day was that they were seeing in me something I was not seeing in my own mirror the term I use for it is I had become the War I was at home I was not
Relaxed but comfortable meaning I knew what was going on I was very experienced I was well trained I loved to fly I was surrounded by marines that I trusted even though I didn’t know every time I went up at a different crew you just get on whatever helicopter has metacx of the
Day but the pilots and the Gunners and the crew chief all they knew is here’s doc we can go but I didn’t know them I didn’t know their names I didn’t know but the bonding the camaraderie was still there I mean Marines how do I put this the Marines
Take very good care of their duck and part of that is he’s a sailor who might not know what’s going on and part of that is in a firefight he’s the only guy who has to be up moving around and if you know what you’re doing and you don’t
Choke you’re like this to them so the the camaraderie and the bonding was always there I just didn’t know them I just knew the other docks who flew and we all had call signs we all you don’t wear your name on your uniform when you’re when when no Geneva
Conventions I mean look what happened to John McCain there’s no Geneva conventions so you don’t want your identity of who your family is back home right so everybody had a call sign like Maverick from Top Gun except we didn’t have those because of how skinny I was
How Slender I mean I had zero body fat it was very fit but just a bean pole like I say the guys are going to and the other Corman flight Corman are the ones who give you your call you don’t tell them what they’re going to be called so
There was beer who in the days before political correctness he was Latino he didn’t mind the name uh there was birdie uh uh his last name was was um well his first name was Jay so we call him jay bird and then later just birdie and there was Tex who was from
Texas and always wore a cowboy hat there was Pooky who was rounder than most of the Corman but also had more experience he was one of the lead guys he really knew what he was doing and uh he was called that because of the name of a
Teddy bear that his niece had Pooky it kind of fit him you know uh and and stretch who was Italian-American and he was over six feet tall and we played mumbly Peg in to lway the time in the back behind the dispensary and nobody could beat him because he could reach
Halfway across Vietnam so tall so he was called stretch and they were going to call me Twiggy there was a six there was a in the it was a boyish looking uh pre-developed shall we say short-haired little pixie of a model named Twiggy in in Britain and she was in all the rage
You know like the Kardashians are now okay but very very skinny and they were going to call me Twiggy and I outranked most of them and I said not a snowball’s chance so they agreed to take the feminine ending off and they called me twig that was my call sign but having
Grown up around the woods around nature that fit me just fine F little piece of the forest and that’s what I was called was twig so anyway that that’s who the guys were that were flying and um I forget where I was going with
This um but anyway I I I saw myself in the eyes of those two fledgling cormen and they saw somebody who was fighting the war and I thought of myself as a person who was along to take care of the Wounded but not as a person who was
Thought by others to be a not a warrior somebody who knew what they were doing as at peace with all of it so I wasn’t at peace with war that’s kind of really that’s that’s nonsensical but I was adjusted that’s the best way to put it I had changed enough so it was
Natural and normal and I had stopped being as afraid and it’s not that you don’t get afraid still especially in really bad hazardous missions but it kind of goes into the unconscious or it becomes less important than the mission or you kind of just get what we psychologists call stimulus
Accommodation meaning you kind of get used to it like you know you first step outside on a hot day it’s like a blast furnace and then you don’t feel it as much same kind of a thing um any other missions that I’m trying to think of no I think that pretty much covers
What it was like but I let me tell you what kind of casualties we would get we would get people uh gunshot wounds of course and they could be anywhere um most of those are pretty heavy uh caliber weapons the AK-47 got a bigger bullet than the M16
But the M16 bullets were faster and they were Sid loaded so they when they hit you they would tumble and just really tear up uh and they didn’t have much recoil because of the smaller caliber but they were designed to actually do as much or more damage as any other round
Except a 50 caliber of course and that basically Cuts you in half um but we had bullet wounds shrapnel from explosions mortars or uh incoming artillery there wasn’t a lot of that but but mortars lot of booby trap stuff leg amputations especially the worst was
U the worst the worst uh there were two kinds that were really worst booby traps I mean cuz it could be a trip wire you you know you stum and it was all fishing line you can hardly see it and trip that thing and the thing explodes goes off um there were
Um bouncing betties they called them they they were smaller but they had what small charge underneath and when you triggered it uh it would bounce the the the big explosive up about waist height and then it would go off which is where you got a lot of amputations of legs you
Know a lot of really Grizzly abdomen wounds um and the worst of all was or you could just turn something or someone over and there’ll be a hand grenade attached and you know so it was it was you know pretty my best description of the war
And it’s not original with me but a Gunnery Sergeant once told me uh this long after we got home when somebody asked him what the war was like he said it was a street fight in the jungle with automatic weapons and I thought that’s about right you so but the worst was
What we call a a 105 round a 105 drive round is is a is a cannon artillery shell and we had them and they had them and you know but but they would bury a 105 round an actual Cannon shell in the ground nose up with a pressure switch on
It and when you stepped on it it would go off but it wouldn’t throw out shrapnel and wound you and all that stuff the guy who stepped on it and I’m not exaggerating this would essentially be disintegrated into little pieces and one of my met avacs a guy had done that
Up up somewhere up north of D and and uh his his comrades and there were three other wounded Marines I mean the shell went off and it hit other hit other Marines so we had three wounded Marines and one Kia killed an action guy and they had
Done the best they could to gather up what pieces and I’m not exaggerating this what pieces mostly small pieces of him they could find along with the grass and mud and leaves of the forest floor and they had gathered him up and put him in his Poncho and brought the Poncho onto the
Helicopter well and I know they carried body bags but they were busy and they didn’t get this guy into a body bag and the pilots were getting out of there cuz it’s much safer at altitude than sitting on the ground in a helicopter out in the
Boonies so we didn’t get a chance to get his remain oh the only thing recognizable was a boot with two leg bones sticking out of it that’s the only piece that look like anything that was human I mean there was no head no torso no arms I mean was was just you know
Shredded that’s but that’s a really powerful big explosive it’s a cannon shell so he’s in the back of the helicopter back by the ramp he came on last I got three wounded Marines up front and we take off before we get the the guy the K into a body bag and zipped
It up so I’m up there working on the three Marines who were wounded both the Gunners and the crew chiefs sitting up front near some of the front windows they put their visors down got their heads over by the window so as we were going the wind blew by them and
Whatever was in the helicopter went out the back I was the only one who had to be moving around and back and forth and I put my visor down too but the back of the helicopter you ever seen one of those like phone booth things in a game show
Where you go inside and there’s a wind blowing and there’s dollars floating around and you have to gather up as much as you can okay the inside of the helicopter was like that except it was pieces of that poor Marine blowing around around little pieces mud and
Leaves and grass and viscera and I’m the only one who had to be fairly near it so I could get to the third guy and by the time we got them dropped off and the Kia I had stuff all over my face and my chest and my legs and my hand you know
And there’s nothing I could do about it CU I had to be where I where that was on that Fringe of that most of and and I that’s the only time a marine has ever hugged me we got out we got down we D we got off the helicopter the crew chief uh
Took a power walk was washing off the inside of the hel just washing all the mud and the whatever was in it down off of there and I stepped off the back of the helicopter and he turned down the pressure a little and which just like
This on me and uh we had radio to head and the guys over where the the medical dispensary were we did all our other work was across the base in the flight line they jumped in the Jeep and then they got one of my flight flight my
Other flight suits and drove it over to me and you know I just stripped down right on the flight line and put on a clean flight suit and get and got back on the helicopter and we took off with this Marine again it was a staff sergeant a different guy and they these
Guys never say say much you know that you can tell when you’re okay with them and when you’re not the guy came up and just like your grandfather would do just gave me a big bear hug and he pulled me back and he looked right at me he says I know that was
Hard and he and it was and part of my memories I don’t know which is worse the kids or that one but that one you know is you can’t you can’t write that stuff you know but that was one of my worst days that that took more focus and more
Courage and more don’t choke than when we were under Fire because you just had to deal with the grizzly and you couldn’t keep it off of you you know so that’s pretty grotesque but that’s are some of the things that I remember see World War II
They went over on a ship and they came back on a ship right and they had time to talk and play cards and and you know BS about it all and talk it out and get it and be with their guys and reminisce and do a lot of
Processing which the brain needs to do in order to let it go we didn’t have any of that I came home I literally land at a at a at a base in California got picked up by a relative who lived in California my family didn’t live there
They took me to an airport where I caught a flight to Phoenix and I mean I had no debriefing whatsoever before I got out of the military and I had been in one of the most dangerous most intensive most psychologically traumatizing jobs you could have I did
Well and I came home intact but I I had ups and downs but I had 40 Years of post-traumatic stress disorder they use a as an example at the VA treatment hospital here and the and the Clinical Psychology treatment here for the VA is just superb they finally have
Ways of treating postraumatic stress disorder that we now know in my field psychology because of research in neuros pychology about what happens to the brain and if you can counter that with a treatment technique and there are two different ones I use and we don’t need
To go into what they are but I went through that about about oh eight years ago or so now I’m 75 I was in my 60s when I finally got treatment for PTSD that’s over 40 years of feeling the symptoms lost my first marriage due directly to the psychological impacts on
My life and you know it does not train you to be a a good I wasn’t violent or or any of that but I was distant and you know nightmares and and kind of obsessed with the war um I went through that treatment and then uh it’s made all the world of
Difference I there’s no way on God’s green earth I could have sat and talked to you about this stuff prior to going through that treatment with a psychologist at the at the hospital great folks great folks and he did a good it was four months long very
Intense and you had to remember the worst stuff and talk about it and they would tape record it and then you’d have to listen to it every day until the next session next week and then you go back and tell the same stories only the what
I did not expect is the more you talk about it the more the details emerge and the feelings are attached and so you have to go back in and deal with the feelings that you didn’t have time with to deal with on the spot and it helps
Your brain not to it’s not healed in that it’s no longer affected by the war it’s healed but in the same way that a broken bone will heal it’ll be stronger but it won’t ever be what it was you know um and and again I I don’t think I will
Ever approximate who I was before I went had I not been in the military or had I not been in combat uh I would probably just been a brainy skinny University Professor intellectual all my life who like to go backpacking in the mountains alone you
Know cuz I’m I’m a mountain kid uh as it is though what I came back from I never stopped being a I never stopped being a soldier I I still don’t think of myself as a sailor and never really have once I got in the I think of myself as a now I
Don’t think of myself as a marine because I didn’t earn that I didn’t go through their basic training but I think of myself as a fleet Marine Corman and uh that’s close enough you know uh I went I’ve I’ve seen the wall in DC five times first time was worst as you can
Imagine uh but the last time I went I kind of got it and that was maybe the last time I went was about 10 years ago was at a reunion my helicopter group uh uh is was called pop of smoke it’s the United States Marine Corps helicopter Association everybody’s flown air crew
Pilots Gunners everybody Corman they in this you know associ almost like you have a fraternity that everybody you know and we have reunions every other year and we had one in DC and that’s when I went to the to the to the wall the fifth time and standing
There that time I realized and I’d made enough progress at coming home and healing that I realized there’s a whole you know there’s guys on the wall who uh were killed and and I brought their bodies out we brought their bodies out and I have no idea who they are but
They’re up here somewhere and I can get the dates of when I was there say well there’s somewhere between this wall and this panel and that panel and it dawned on me there’s a bunch of Nam names there there’s a bunch of names not on the wall because we were there
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