Word: medicalization
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Army propaganda is funny because it hits at a very high level and also, at the same time, a very low level. It has a double meaning. But it's not so subtle--you can see it and ignore it. The best propaganda movie I saw was in my medic course. A guy gets up there on the screen and he says "Would you like to know what Communists call you in different countries? In London they call you bubble gum chewers. In France they call you gangsters. In Korea they call you murderers!" And he makes this a very...
...black belt for judo, then becomes an Army paratrooper, and finally winds up in Special Forces school where he writes down a song that has been on his mind for years. He copyrights it and sends it to a publisher, where it languishes for months while Sadler plays medic and sings some more in Vietnam. An ABC film crew happens by the camp and records Sadler singing his "Ballad," and he is flown to Saigon to sing for the general. In the hospital (with a leg infection he got from stepping on a poison stick) Sadler "resolved that...
Most CO's reject this interpretation. A sophomore CO pointed out that the Army Field Manual describes the primary duty of the medic as no different than any other soldier--to contribute to the victory of the command. "If I were a medic," he continued, "I'd feel obliged to aid the most seriously injured first, regardless of whether they were friend or enemy. The army doesn't allow that." Another CO said, "If I patch someone up just so he can go back and kill some more, I might as well do the killing myself...
...first dilemma posed by 150 is whether to seek I-O or I-AO status. I-O status exempts the CO from all service in the armed forces. The CO classified I-AO is eligible for non-combatant duty and usually serves as a medic. It is much easier to get a I-AO than a I-O because I-AOs count toward fulfilling local boards' quotas. Draft boards often bargain with CO's seeking I-O status and try to get them to settle for I-AO. A stock question which draft boards pose is "Would Christ help civilians...
Watching the volunteer nurse clean a soldier's gaping wound, the Army medic asked her a routine operating-room question: "Are you sterile?" Grinned Comedienne Martha Raye, 50: "At my age, you better believe it." Even the wounded G.I. managed to smile at that crack. It was the sort of thing Martha kept up all through the long night at the field hospital at Soctrang in the Mekong Delta as she gave her finest performance since arriving in South Viet Nam last month for her third visit to the troops. Heavy casualties had been airlifted into Soctrang from...