Word: medicals
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...minority now and then will cut off a few fingers or ears from the enemy dead as trophies. Such was the case with Specialist Fourth Class George Pawlaczyk, 22, a reporter and photographer for the 1st Infantry Division newspaper, and Specialist Fifth Class Franklin Passantino, 21, a muscular combat medic who has won both a Bronze and Silver Star and been recommended for another Bronze Star. Pawlaczyk and Passantino were with the 1st Battalion's 18th Regiment on Oct. 7, when it engaged in a fierce battle with the 271st Viet Cong Regiment nine miles northwest of the division...
With the burst of the misplaced bomb, the real ordeal of the battalion began. Eight of its 16 line officers had been killed, the other eight wounded. Only two of its three company commanders were alive. Only one medic had survived to treat the wounded, who lay bleeding and covered with grime on all sides, moaning for lack of morphine. Rescue and relief helicopters tried to reach the battalion, but were driven off by enemy rocket and machine-gun fire; twelve helicopters went down in the five days of fighting...
Though it is the first exit explored by many draft-eligible men, conscientious objection is often the last, desperate choice. For even if he succeeds in becoming a C.O., a man must perform two years of alternative service, usually as a civilian hospital orderly or Army medic. Many unarmed C.O.s have, in fact, served-and died-valiantly as medics. "There are easier ways to beat the draft," laconically notes Harold Sherk, 64, a Mennonite preacher who heads the National Service Board...
...Medals of Honor. Pfc. Milton Olive, 19, won his award posthumously by throwing himself on a grenade and saving the lives of four multicolored squadmates during a fierce fire fight near Phu Cuong in 1965. The only living Negro Medal of Honor winner in the Viet Nam war is Medic Lawrence Joel, 39, now stationed at Fort Bragg...
Where I train in Texas there's a lot of smoking of grass because it's close to the border and so easy to get. The Airborne paratroopers, especially the ones who have been to Vietnam and are coming back for their medic training, are all potheads because in Vietnam the stuff grows wild and free and you can sit around your camp fire in the Mekong Delta and they say you can just reach out and put up a handful of hemp leaves and throw them on the fire. They also tell me there's a terrific black market...