a result of the caduceus on my collar point. He asked me my date of rank, and I responded, “August 3, 1970.” He then asked me the date I entered the army, and I repeated, “August 3, 1970.”“No, no, that can’t be,” he repeated over and over as he slammed the opening shut and parted with “come back tomorrow, I can’t take this shit.” So I returned the next day when a more understanding sergeant humorously greeted me with a knowing smile.
The next day, it was down to business. Multiple casualties arrived from the jungle, and the entire hospital base went to work. Any and all personnel who were free of responsibility descended on the ED area to help. My desperately injured patient was a grunt who while patrolling through a small, recently used enemy clearing, spotted a piece of Styrofoam on the jungle floor.
What does a typical eighteen-year-old do but bend over and pick it up? The enemy knew well the psychology of our young soldiers, and predictably, the Styrofoam had been booby-trapped.
His was a major injury in the lower extremities, their arteries, the perineum, genitalia, urinary bladder, and abdominal organs and vessels. I was asked if I could handle it, and Roger told the inquiring surgeon not to worry. My extensive trauma experience at MCV kicked into gear. Since it was my first case, a surgeon who had been in Vietnam a year assisted me, a responsible move. However when, in the OR, it came to prioritizing my patient’s injuries for a timeline of action and the most efficient action to salvage the patient, allowing for perhaps less perfect cosmetic result, my judgments prevailed. Thank you, Dr. David Hume!
This young man’s prolonged surgery required 106 units of blood. He survived the surgery and regained consciousness, but due to the massive tissue damage, prolonged surgery (even with time-saving surgically acceptable shortcuts) and massive transfusion volume, he developed renal, i.e., kidney failure. I accompanied him on a flight to Saigon’s Third Field Hospital for dialysis and was abruptly dismissed by their staff.
“Tree (Dave,) Gus and Roger
I had poured my heart and soul into this boy. I was totally invested in and committed to his survival. I was consumed by him. Then suddenly, I had to turn off the physician and compassion switch and return to the 85th Evac. But that’s medicine. To mentally survive, one has to be efficient in drawing boundaries and move on to the next patient with an unfettered mind. He was my true first patient after residency training. There, one’s actions were monitored, dissected, and altered by a physician more senior in the academic hierarchy. I was now on my own.
A week later, I was notified that he had died.
ACCEPTANCE
After a few more trauma surgeries, the nurses in the Recovery Room/ICU presented me with a love-bead necklace they had made for me to inform the 85th Evac that I was accepted as a competent surgeon. The necklace now resides in the Southeast Asia Collection in Kroch Library at Cornell University, along with my tear-drop broken peace sign. I wore both throughout my entire tour to the consternation of the regular army-lifer types.
Gus (with “love beads”), Duane, Mike, and Bob (corpsman in the background) at Dave’s send-off
NURSES
The army nurses were female and male. Both were exceptionally qualified and dedicated. There were fewer men; true army professionals and usually ordered to serve in Vietnam.
The women, referred to as round eyes, were mostly first lieutenants who all had volunteered to be there. They mostly were just out of nursing school and in their very early twenties as were the wounded and ill for which they cared. They also were true professionals who essentially acted as “house staff”, i.e., surgical residents in training. When they called with their evaluations of a patient’s status, we listened carefully and followed their suggestions. One such patient had been shot through and through the right chest by an AK-47. Stateside, draining the blood and air with a chest tube was usually sufficient treatment for the typical low velocity gun shot wound, i.e., GSW. That experience dictated my initial approach. In the ICU, the blood and air continued to drain, and I was notified. Without hesitation, accepting the nurse’s judgment, I asked to have the OR set up for surgery and quickly reviewed the anatomy of a lung’s major blood vessels as I mentally prepared myself to accept the responsibility of removing the damaged upper lobe of the right lung of this eighteen-year-old kid.
AK-47 round through the right lung (white area); normal lungs are black on x-ray. The young patient with open wound
All went well, and from that time on, all high-velocity wounds of the chest went straight to the operating room.
Of note, eight women nurses did not return home from Vietnam and are on the “Wall”, officially called the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. A riveting bronze statue near the “Wall” and the grunt’s statue also honors all in-country nurses. Fifty-nine non-military women died in Vietnam. They were volunteers, Red Cross, and aid workers.
There are also twenty-one docs on the “Wall.”
Some of the nurses were married to army chopper pilots, and they lived as couples in the nurse’s hooch area. The aviators would leave in the morning, engage in combat and return home, in the evening. There were some wild tales in the Officer’s Club after-hours.
Patti at work and at her wedding
Patti, one of the OR supervising nurses met, dated, and married John, a scout pilot. A day before their wedding, his commanding officer, who was to walk Patti down the aisle, died in our OR from his combat wounds. The wedding was not postponed.
When Patti was dating John, she spent her free time at Camp Eagle where he was stationed. In February 1971, while waiting for his return from a mission, she joined in a running Kool-Aid squirt gun fight among the pilots and crewmen. In January 2014, Lt. John Smith contacted our 85th Evac group pursuing information about his brother who was killed with others returning from a rescue mission when his chopper went down near the 85th Evac. His brother had surely taken part in the Kool-Aid episode. As Patti said in her email to Lieutenant Smith, “I remember how much fun we had that day and the beautiful smiles and laughter. It was hard to think that they were all gone now.”
Read To Have and to Holdby John-Michael Hendrix, Patti’s husband.
MEDIVAC
Our call sign was Plasma Hotel. As the medivac Huey approached, they would hide the M60 machine gun and send a transmission reflecting the number and seriousness of their precious cargo. The enemy used the Red Cross for target practice. No chopper was safe when within range of the enemy. The official interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was that the medivac Hueys could not be armed. Nonsense! They carried an M60 machine gun swung from bungee cords for protection, but once over friendly terrain, the weapon was detached.
The initial transmission was the number of KIA, i.e., killed in action. The dead were taken straight to and stacked, one on top of the other, in the KIA open-sided shack. One of Marilyn’s first priorities as the new ED supervisor was to enclose the KIA shack. We, however, always checked for signs of life since a few were not actually dead and perhaps could be saved. A gauge of the seriousness of the
