You’re not quite right, Tank_1812. While no one promised me a rose garden, my Navy recruiter lied to me, or at least didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I wanted to become a journalist, so I asked him if I could become a Navy journalist. “Of course,” he said, “no problem!”
In boot camp, they said, in effect, “Yes, problem!” The Navy had all of the journalists it needed. What it needed was more hospital corpsmen. I agreed to become a corpsman, rationalizing my decision by saying to myself, “Well, journalists need a wide range of experiences.” I wasn’t wrong — a wide range of experiences was what I got. My very first job out of corps school, in the spring of 1963, was assisting in a delivery room in the Navy hospital at Yokosuka, Japan, and taking care of newborns.
In the spring of 1965, my two year tour of duty in Japan was over. The Tonkin Gulf Incident had happened, and I remembered, too easily, the day I registered for Hospital Corps School. That was when I learned that Navy hospital corpsmen are often seconded to the Marine Corps. And sure enough, when my orders arrived for my next duty station, I learned that I was to be trained at the Marine Corps’ Field Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton. I would become something I never wanted to be, a combat corpsman with the Marines.
After I was shot, by an M14 in enemy hands, or an AK-47, I was in hospital for almost a year, being treated for a shattered femur, a gaping wound on my inner right thigh, and multiple infections. Today I am 40% disabled by PTSD and severe osteoarthritis which my doctors tell me is almost certainly a result of trauma.
Despite the “bad end” to my service days, I don’t regret a moment of it. It was all an education that you just can’t get elsewhere and I’m proud of myself for doing my best at a time when I simply “knew” that I was going to be killed. I didn’t think a single member of my company could survive, but I did my darnedest to help them survive if it was possible. I wasn’t being patriotic, which means I wasn’t fighting for flag, Mom, and apple pie. I was fighting for “my” Marines. In fact, when I was shot, I wanted one thing to happen, even if I did die: I wanted Ho Chi Minh and President Johnson to face off on Hill 50.
Semper Fi,
Doc