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I've noticed a bunch of posts on Facebook of guys who were there in Vietnam, reliving their memories of time spent. I have a friend named George who lives here in KC. This is an excerpt from one of his Facebook posts:
After receiving my draft notice a few days after my 19th birthday, I met with an Army Recruiter who convinced me to take an extra year to become a medic. So, on October 21, 1966 I was inducted into the US Army at the building now used by the Kansas City Ballet, across the street from the main post office on Pershing Road. About 20 buses were parked on Pershing, ready to take us to Fort Leonard Wood.
After Basic training, I was sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for medical training, and then on to Fort Lee, Virginia where I worked at Kenner Army Hospital. I applied for a training program and was sent to Portsmouth Naval Hospital for 3 months where I learned about EKGs and Kidney Dialysis. Returning to Fort Lee, where there was no kidney dialysis, and after visiting the Renal Unit at Walter Reed, I applied for a transfer. Instead of going to Walter Reed, I received orders for Vietnam under the job description of “combat medic.”
While at Fort Lee in 1967-68 the hospital began receiving bus loads wounded soldiers, causing us to expand the old WWII hospital barracks to house them while they “recovered.” With orders for Vietnam I looked at these guys with the idea I could soon have a similar wound. I also attended a bullshit training program to teach me how the Vietnamese were not to be trusted and we should not feel empathy for their plight – the Army’s form of racism. I went to two sessions, and because I had the rank of Sp-5 I signed in to the classes and did not stay to hear the Army crap.
I arrived in Bien Hoa in late 1968 and was shipped to Cu Chi, home of the 25th Infantry, the area that experienced the major complex of Viet Cong tunnels, and where I went to work at the 24th Evac Hospital, a triage hospital for those wounded, the first stop before either being returned to duty or sent to 3rd Field Hospital or back to the US to facilities like the one at Ft. Lee. We worked 12-18 hour days, and sometimes around the clock.
I took the opportunity to accompany a few patients to 3rd Field Hospital, often making the transfer at the helipad, but once in a while escorting them to the triage area of the facility – holding an IV bottle or just helping a guy who was seriously wounded and fearful of every change. Once, while escorting into the facility I ran into my previous Company Commander at Ft. Lee, and had a brief discussion about our situations.
A few days later I found myself being transferred to 3rd Field Hospital to work in the newly constructed Renal Unit, where we treated the most seriously wounded patients coming to the hospital, because their wounds had caused their kidneys to shut down. In the remaining months of my tour, we treated over 400 guys in this condition. About 10 lived.
From a long lasting psychological standpoint, I’ve often thought I would have been better off staying at the Evac Hospital in Cu Chi. Regardless, I and the team in the Renal Unit did our best to ease these guys into their final days.
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