Word: medics
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When a nine-man infantry squad set out one night this month to lay an ambush for the Viet Cong near the Bao Trai airstrip in the northern coastal region of South Viet Nam, Paul Widtfeldt Jr., an unarmed medical specialist, went along. Next morning, nine of the ten men were found shot through the head. Among them was redhaired, bespectacled Medic Widtfeldt, who had been killed while tending a dying buddy. For his courage, the Army revealed last week, Widtfeldt, 21, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, will be posthumously awarded a second Bronze Star; his first was presented in August...
Lone Protection. Those who object only to bearing arms are classified 1-A-O and trained as Army medics; some 3,500 are now serving, scores of them in Viet Nam, where, almost to a man, they have won praise for their bravery under fire. Says one general: "There is the question of their courage. They have to prove themselves." They are quite capable of it. Said Medic Widtfeldt a few months before his death: "I feel the same as everyone else in combat-scared. My only protection is my faith...
...buddy taught him drums and guitar, and they formed a combo. But they couldn't hack it playing honky-tonks, so Sadler tried the Army. Then came eleven rigorous months of Special Forces training that qualified him for his green beret as a combat medic. Along the way, at Fort Sam Houston, he says, "I started writing songs because I had a terrible time playing anybody else's music." His first audiences were the boys in the barracks and the girls in the bordellos below the border in Nuevo Laredo. "The Army doesn't like...
...spontaneous. At Phu Bai, marines organized scrubins for the village toddlers. Army Captain Ronald Rod, before he was killed by a Viet Cong sniper in December, collected enough money and supplies to get an orphanage started by writing to a New Orleans newspaper. On his own initiative, Navy Medic "Doc" Lucier, a burly, open-faced Negro from Birmingham, Ala., braves booby-trapped trails to give shots, distribute drugs and administer first-aid in out of the way villages. "There's just got to be something more than bullets," he says. "Until we start treating these people like human beings...
...young marine last week as he watched a noisy Huey land to pick up a wounded buddy. "Sounds more like angels singing." Whereas only 10% of the wounded were carried by copters in Korea, the ratio is up to 90% in Viet Nam, says Colonel Spurgeon Neel Jr., chief medic of the U.S. Military Assistance Command...