Word: medics
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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...
...technique of being a soldier in Vietnam, one of the movies that's probably the neatest is the one on counter-insurgency. I saw it three times, twice, in basic and once in medic. This Communist dude with his little flying cap, he's the Communist guerrilla and he's in the jungle with his executive officer who looks an awful lot like Fidel Castro. They have this salute where they close their fist and shoot out their arm. It reminds you a little of Nazi Germany, just enough so you know the tie-in is there...
...many technical lectures during training, most on the sixth grade level. Although during medic training most were conducted on the eighth grade level. I learned that helicopters are really an amazing innovation: it's a brand new kind of war over there. They keep pounding it into your head that in Vietnam there is no front. You can just as likely be killed by a sniper when you step off the plane as you can out in the woods outside the city or in the Delta region. One of the friends I graduated with from high school was a medic...
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...