I was asked to be one of eight presenters at a so-called Tiny Talk at the Assembly Meeting Hall in Austin on February 18th. Each presentation was about seven minutes long accompanied by a synched PowerPoint. The theme of my talk was “I lived a paradox. I served as a non-combatant combat medic in Vietnam.” It was a real challenge to condense the story down to seven minutes and to pace my presentation to stay in sync with the slides. The show sold out with three hundred attendees. The format is similar to Ted Talks but with important differences. For more on this follow this link: https://www.lonestarlive.com/life/2025/02/a-look-behind-tiny-talks-austin-the-quirky-community-event-taking-the-capital-city-by-storm.html
My Talk:
Living a Paradox: I was a noncombatant combat medic in Vietnam
(Slide 1) I was a Medevac medic in Vietnam. On January 29, 1971, an urgent call came down over the intercom: “Patrol ambushed, GI down with a sucking chest wound. We need to go in and get him ASAP!” Although I only had six days left in country on my tour of duty, I grabbed my medic’s bag and ran for the chopper, already revving up on the tarmac. (Slide 2) We were soon in the air and over the firefight still in progress. Stove-piping down through the triple canopy jungle to the fight below we came to a hover at about fifty feet off the ground and I began to lower a cable to hoist the wounded man below into the helicopter. Then all hell broke loose. We were sitting ducks and came under intense machine gun fire from a hidden bunker. I stopped three rounds and thus my career as a draftee medic in Vietnam ended abruptly. (Slide 3)
For this action I was personally awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Purple heart by Maj General Putnam, commanding general of the 1st Air Cavalry. After several months recuperating in various hospitals, I returned to civilian life and attempted to pick up where I had left off. It has not been easy. The war never really ends for veterans. But here is my story: I had lived a paradox, a contradiction. I had been a 1-A-O conscientious objector. I had served in the war as a non-combatant, combat medic. (Slide 4)
To understands this paradox, we need to roll back the clock to Austin and the University of Texas in 1968. It was an exciting time to be a student. A fresh wind was blowing, Hippies, flower power, free love & nickel beer. It was when Austin became weird, and the (Slide 5) lowly armadillo became the symbol for the cultural ferment that transformed Austin in the 1960s.
But UT Austin had also become ground zero for anti-war and anti-draft sentiment in Texas (Slide 6) and you need to understand what an important role the military draft played in our lives back then, especially if you were a student. You see you had a deferment from your local draft board as long as you were an undergraduate making satisfactory progress toward your degree. But the moment you graduated you would be reclassified 1-A, eligible for the draft and ordered to join the military and fight in a war we had come to detest. (Slide 7) A week or so after my graduation a letter arrived in the mail, “Greetings, you are hereby ordered to report for induction…” You can imagine, the letter came as a shock. It had all seemed so distant and unreal up to that point. It meant being torn from a comfortable student existence and forced to participate in a war I had come to detest. What to do? Everyone in my shoes had to confront his own beliefs head-on and decide for himself, a defining characteristic of this war. For my part, I was torn between my duty to serve and my duty to conscience. (Slide 8) I had grown up on a historic ranch in a rural Texas county where patriotic sentiment ran strong but yet I was deeply opposed to the war. That was my dilemma. My solution was to apply for 1-A-O conscientious objector status from my local draft board. (Slide 9) The 1-A-O was a special status allowed by the law for those willing to serve, but without weapons training and without weapons. Acceptance was by no means guaranteed. In fact, most applicants were routinely turned down. But the irony, indeed the paradox was that acceptance almost guaranteed combat duty in Vietnam. Perhaps that is why my local draft board approved my application — I wasn’t trying to get out of anything — and I became the only one in Colorado County ever granted such status. Thus, begun my journey and the paradox I lived and shared with hundred s of fellow 1-A-O conscientious objectors in Vietnam.
(Slide 10) All 1-A-O conscientious objectors trained to be medics at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, in a special unit called Echo 4, the most unorthodox outfit in the US Army according to a nationally syndicated article at the time. (Slide 11) After six weeks of Basic Training and ten weeks of medical training my whole class of twenty-two received orders for Vietnam.
(Slide 12) Our training barely prepared us for what we were about to face and what we would be called upon to do. The front line medic’s job is very perilous because when the cry of “Medic, medic” is heard over the din of battle, it is the medics job to heed the call and in so doing expose himself to enemy fire. But fear of the enemy’s bullet is not the only strain faced by medics. There is also the real fear of screwing up, of losing the confidence of your fellow soldiers. Many medics broke under the strain but those who survived long enough to hone their skills and gain confidence in their abilities became seasoned medics, capable of performing many different life-saving techniques with self-assurance under fire.
I had three different assignments during my tour of duty in Vietnam which was unusual: (Slide 13) My first assignment was with an artillery battery along Thunder Road between Saigon and the Cambodian border where we were subject to constant mortar and rocket attacks. (Slide 14) Thereafter, I was attached to an infantry unit and convoy duty during the Cambodian invasion – an extremely scary and miserable experience that lasted for two months — and finally I ended my career served as a flight medic with medevac in the 1st Air cavalry Division. (Slide 15) The medevac units only accepted seasoned medics who had already proven themselves It was a very dangerous job, but at least we had a roof over our head, a real bed to sleep in, and three square meals a day—important considerations in Vietnam
In conclusion, the American public cannot let the Vietnam War go. It was like a powerful rapid in the flow of American history, which nearly everybody in my generation passed through one way or the other. There were many routes through the rapid and taken together they would tell the full story of the war-– at least from the American side of the story. But the route I and my fellow 1-A-Os conscientious objectors chose has been almost forgotten and sadly at times, it would seem, intentionally disremembered.
There comes a time in every veteran’s life when he feels an overpowering need to come to terms with his experience of war which for most will have been the most intense experience of their lives. One attends reunions. (Slide 16) One makes a pilgrimage to the Wall in Vietnam where the names of the 65,000 Americans who died are listed. And so it was with me. A few years ago, I visited Ft Sam Houston where I and all 1-A-Os had trained. (Slide 17) There is now a large museum of Army Medicine on the grounds of the fort that traces the progress of military medicine through all the wars from the Revolutionary war to the present. But as I wandered through the many rooms of the impressive facility, I was saddened to find that there was not one mention of the 10,000 or so 1-A-O conscientious objectors who had trained at Ft Sam Houston and who had then served as medics in Vietnam, who had shared in all the hardships and dangers as they went about their job of saving lives rather than taking them. Out of my class of twenty-two alone , four were killed and several were wounded, including myself. Why was our story not included? Perhaps because we represented a conscienceless opposed to war embedded in war, a paradox that the Army would rather forget than try to explain. But we existed and our story will not be forgotten. (Slide 18)
Thank you
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