TRIBUTE TO A COMBAT MEDIC
When you are a combat soldier, you are forced to depend on many things beyond your control. You accept that the artillery folks are well trained and accurate, you believe the Huey’s will arrive for extraction, you have some confidence that the jets will drop their bombs where they aim and not on you or your unit, you build a bond with your fellow soldiers that they will protect you flank and rear.
However, the one thing you trust above all others is your unit MEDIC. He carries his hospital on his back or in a pack. Sometimes he carries a weapon and sometimes he doesn’t. He slugs it out with you and the unit enduring the same danger and challenges of an infantry soldier.
He is there with an aspirin for a headache. He is there to treat minor burns, scratches and rashes. He is there when you “Medcap” a village to treat the children and adults in the local Vietnamese population.
But the one thing that he is there for is his main job. He is there to respond when the dreaded call “MEDIC!” is yelled. He will risk life and limb to be at the side of a wounded soldier. Often he will stop the bleeding and administer shots for the pain. He will assure the wounded that all is well even when it is not. He often may have the privilege (burden?) of being the last person a soldier will see before he expires. He will hear the cries to Mom or God from a soldier in mortal pain.
Many times he will never know the soldier’s name; he will often never know if the soldier survived or died after Medevacked to the hospital. Other times he will know the soldier as a brother in the same unit and have memories of the good times they had (yes you can have good times in a war). He will carry that burden with him for the rest of his life.