Desmond Doss
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 6:38 am
This reminds me. I served with a medic in Vietnam who was a Seventh Day Adventist, and likewise would not carry a weapon. The first night I ever directed artillery on my own he was with the ambush as the senior company medic accompanying the command group and part of a platoon. A guy was setting out a claymore after we had moved into our after dark location and one man of a three man point from some VC who were moving near us saw him first and opened fire on him. The regular platoon medic just started shooting and didn't go to the fallen man's aid as he should have. The senior medic seeing the lack of response went out through what was then open firing from both sides and got to the man and kept him from bleeding to death and got him back to our firing line and eventually dusted off. That medic and the guy that was wounded that night met again for the first time since the war at the Branson reunion.
This story was uncovered at the reunion as I and the medic were discussing remembering a chopper that was covering extraction that went down in the overgrown paddy area and how the fuel caused our lower legs to burn. This only happened once in my tour and it was the morning after the contact I mention. I knew the guy he patched up and he was at the reunion too....so I linked them up.
The medic is on the right the guy he tended to on the left. Branson Missouri in June of 2015.