had no savings, but we were granted the credit to purchase a Chrysler sedan and drove across the country to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, for my basic training.
We rented a small condo near the base. Ed Kayser and his wife, Mary, who had arrived a few weeks earlier made things easier. Ed was my roommate at Cornell Medical College the first year before he married Mary. After graduation, he trained as an orthopedic surgeon and was in the “same boat” as me. He deployed two weeks prior to my departure and was stationed at Cu Chi’s 12th Evacuation Hospital. One saving grace of basic was the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful city of San Antonio with its architecture, history, canal area, and great food. All this was wonderful, but the specter of a year’s separation seized our attempts at enjoyment with stark reality of the near future.
The basic training experience was a joke. Boy Scout Camp reincarnated: map reading, marching, demerits, VD and hygiene lectures, how to brush our teeth, shooting the M14, which was not being used “in country,” and a crawl under the machine gun (M60) fire. The most dangerous experience was at the shooting ranges as those unfamiliar with weapons waved loaded and chambered .45 semi auto pistols and M14 rifles freely in all directions.
There was no instruction in what types of wounds we would encounter and the brutality of military weapons.
Did you know that two cold cans of beer neatly fit into the canteen cup on the webbed belt? The night compass course was a hoot attempting to read an azimuth with a buzz on in the dark.
The “PIT” was a club on post we frequented, which was filled with nurses, dentists, veterinarians, and doctors all headed soon for Vietnam. The veterinarians were involved with food inspection in Vietnam.
We knew we were all going to Vietnam so we practiced passive-aggressive irreverence. The fiasco lasted six weeks.
Then I left!
ON MY WAY
The flight from Dallas to San Francisco was quiet and introspective for we were all going to Vietnam. I had never been to California and was stunned by the burnt, grass-covered mounds of earth that carpeted the landscape as we approached the airport for our landing. We deplaned and were bussed to our Pan Am flight to Southeast Asia. That departure was even more subdued. There were no amenities during the flight except for multiple breakfasts as we followed an almost continuous sunrise to the east. To break up the fourteen-hour trip, we did stop in the Philippines and Okinawa before landing at Saigon’s Ton Son Nhut Airport. I was billeted at Bien Hao with a major on his way home. There was automatic small arms fire during the night. As I was standing up to see what was transpiring, I noticed him hugging the cold concrete floor. Survival lesson number one.
After being outfitted in several sets of fatigues in olive drab green, i.e., OD green, dull rank and outfit patches, and jungle boots, I began my trek to an unknown hospital in an unknown posting. En route to my up-country destination, I overnighted in Da Nang at the 95th Evacuation Hospital. This lifted my spirits for I was housed in a well-constructed quonset hut with comfortable beds and air conditioning. Vietnam was not so bad.
PHU BAI’S ALL RIGHT
Map of Indochina
The next day, I flew in a crowded C-130 sitting on the deck covered with steel plates to adsorb bullets and fragments and slid into the anxious grunts in front of me as the plane suddenly dipped and dove into Phu Bai Airport to avoid enemy fire while landing. I do not know who I pissed off, but as far as hospital locations went, Phu Bai was the armpit of Vietnam. A ghastly sign announcing, “Welcome to Phu Bai”, greeted me. I was now about halfway between Da Nang and Hue, up north near the division between North and South Vietnam, on the east coast not far from the South China Sea in the army’s designated I Corps.
A short, dusty jeep drive deposited me in a barren, dry, dirty, hot, ramshackle space of plywood shanties on two-foot stilts with corrugated metal roofs held in place with sandbags. The stilts were to prevent flooding during the monsoon season. Wow. I was depressed, lonely, confused, sweaty, and suffering culture shock. I had been somewhat excited about the adventure aspect of going to Vietnam, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was awake from this nightmare. I would spend a year here at the 85th Evacuation Hospital.
After walking and struggling with my gear into the center of this purgatory, a savior-like vision appeared. Roger King, a fellow resident from MCV, one year my senior in the program, greeted me with a big smile and promised that everything would be all right.
I was directed to my new home, a dusty hooch near the ammunition dump. That night as I prepared to attempt sleep, the emotion of it all overcame my reserve, and at age thirty, I cried like a baby.
TRANSFORMATION
A few months prior to my departure for Vietnam, Robin and I had visited my sister, Helene, and her husband, Jimmy Parry, in Connecticut. The movie Mash had just been released, and we went to the theater. It was not only a great flick but also a primer on how a surgeon was to survive mentally in a war zone. I was determined to assume Donald Sutherland’s irreverent Hawkeye persona as a way to conduct myself. By the way, I did and it worked. Roger and I were considered exceptional surgeons and a dynamic team in the OR. But he was more sedate. What could the army do to me, send me to Vietnam, I was already there?
When not wearing my fatigues I could be seen at times in blue tie-dyed sleeveless T-shirts and Bermuda shorts. One’s length of stay in Vietnam could be gauged by the degree of washed-out color your fatigues reflected, sort of a badge of honor.
As for my attitude, I never wore a cover, i.e., hat, and avoided saluting, did not dwell on rank, befriended the ranking sergeants, for they were the source of whatever you needed or wanted, and I abided by the in-country philosophy, “don’t mean nothin’.”
Enlisted and docs alike were on a first name basis and respected the other’s space and contributions in the emergency department, i.e., ED and OR. I learned very quickly that a war zone strips one of the implied importance of heritage, educational accomplishments, title, access to wealth, and most state-side status. One could not take one’s self too seriously. We were all in the “same boat.” With these attitudes in mind, the cherished wounded benefitted from our discarding these inhibitory barriers.
OUR MISSION
From Highway 1, overrun in 1968 by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) during the Tet Offensive, a sharp turn entered our hospital compound. Directly to the west was an immense, densely arranged sprawl of old hooches each encased to a five-foot height by a doubly thick wall of sandbags. More deteriorating sand-filled dark-green bags reinforced the stability of the corrugated metal roof. These battered structures were home to thousands of 101st Airborne fighting men (Screaming Eagles) who were all our responsibility. The hills visible in the far west distance were “Indian country” (enemy infested).
101st Airborne on Highway 1
Sequestered within a small green plywood shack protected by walls of sandbags, a group of seriously tough-looking MPs guarded the 85th Evac’s front gate.
MPs in front the 85th Evac front gate
Our
