I was born in Sweden in 1943. After dropping out of high school I held odd jobs, mostly underground mines in Sweden. The Swedish army drafted me in the summer of 1965. I served my obligatory ten months primarily in an infantry platoon. I liked it and excelled in Swedish peace time soldiering. In early […]
The earnest looking black soldier kneeling in front is the much liked and aptly named 3rd platoon squad leader Larry Hunter. The black grunt second row on the left, right fist raised in the Black Power salute, is the much disliked militant Brother Al. Understandably pissed at being drafted to fight a white man’s war […]
First published in Solstice Literary Magazine, Winter 2025. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A day before the long drive to Northampton, where I would join friends in a book talk about war and language, I arrived at a small town emergency room, signed in, took a seat, and for the next half hour mulled over […]
From time to time in 1970 combat medics with 1/7 First Cav might have occasion to speak with battalion surgeon Theodore Plucinski III. They may have held him in high regard. My own impressions of the man were somewhat mixed. Late one rainy night on LZ Compton, as Delta Company secured the perimeter, a man […]
I got in-country a week before Christmas in 1969. After a few days in the rear I flew by slick from Quan Loi to LZ Compton in An Loc. When the bird left I found a shady place at the end of the landing strip and hung out, waiting for whatever was next. After a […]
We froze, staring into the ditch as the wounded NVA twisted in agony. His face was gone, his brain bulged from cracks in his skull, yet he lived and breathed, strange spasms inching him forward. If not for that head wound he might have been crawling. Was he really alive? It shouldn’t have mattered. He […]
Originally published on Pangyrus 12 September 2025 Not the elevator. I don’t like enclosed spaces. Instead, each morning, I climb the four flights of dark angular stairs, up and up the cinder block stairwell, until I emerge from semi-darkness into the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, my gray metal desk one of several at A.G. […]
One summer night in Cambodia Delta 1/7 Cav had perimeter guard on LZ Ranch. Around 2:30AM a dozen sappers crept past the trips, Claymore’s and barbed wire and killed Mike Dawson with a Chicom. Moving forward they hurled satchel charges into bunkers, gunned down GI’s with AKs and Chicom’s, until they themselves were annihilated. All […]
Patrol. Jungle. Ambush. Monsoon. Mortars and rockets, a base overrun. The teeming rain. The blistering heat. With the First Cavalry I’d seen my share as a grunt medic in 1970. At Tan Son Nhut airport I waited on the black tarmac with dozens of weary grunts in weathered fatigues, clean cut remfs in khakis and […]
Launched on April 5, 2025, The Hands Off protests are a series of nationwide demonstrations against the second administration of President Donald Trump. Hands Off protests occurred in over 1,400 locations across all 50 states, drawing an estimated 3-5 million participants. Just a few people stood near the platform, waiting for the commuter rail at […]
Okay, the infantry and elite were wild and crazy. But each day Vietnam attacked us with rain and mud, dust and heat. With malaria, dysentery, fungus and fevers. And then came the real wildlife. Ants, they were everywhere. Red and black, big one’s who thought everything was edible. And when the fire ants bit your […]
First published in Ragaire Literary Magazine Winter, Issue 2, Autumn/Winter 2024 Made drowsy by the stifling air inside the converted American school bus, I caught the guidebook as it slipped from my grasp, sat up, and continued reading. “Few tourists visit its lovely beach of dark volcanic sand,” claimed the well-traveled author. “From Tegucigalpa, a […]
In 2022 Medic edited Gary Rafferty’s memoir Nothing Left to Drag Home: The Siege at Lao Bao During Operation Dewey Canyon II-Lam Son 719, as Told by an Artilleryman Who Survived It. Three years later I sent Gary the above photo, found on the internet, and vaguely captioned “U.S. artillerymen relax under a crudely made […]
One morning, a week after we bulldozed the ancient graveyard, fifty or so angry peasants in ceremonial garb, carrying prayer offerings, walked the two miles from the village of Song Be and showed up at LZ Button’s main gate. They’d heard the rumors and demanded to see the graves of their loved ones. With two […]
On the morning of 16 March 1968 Army Lieutenant William Calley Jr. led his platoon into a small Vietnamese village. There had been no report of enemy fire, yet Calley ordered the men to begin shooting. Terrified old men, women and children were slaughtered by grenades, rifles, bayonets and machine guns. Some were piled in […]
By September ‘69 Echo recon had seen plenty of combat and too many men were crazy. Our lieutenant decided no more patrols, ambush, jungle, monsoon for these burnt out grunts. They would finish their tours as clean shaven, beer drinking, pot-smoking REMFs, in the rear with the gear. I was one of those lucky men. […]
Per Odman’s memoir on Medic details his extraordinary path from Sweden to Liberia, from Khe Sanh to Washington, DC, to photographing the last remaining Swedish American community in Brooklyn, NY. Here Per relates his experience of climbing Vietnam’s tallest peak in the company of an NVA veteran. In the remote and forgotten northwestern corner of […]
Boz. That’s what they called me. In May 1969, during an ambush off LZ Phyllis I threw a frag that landed on the rucksack of my platoon leader, Lt. Karl Swenson which should have killed him. It happened like this: We’d set up an ambush with multiple lines of fire along a well used trail. […]
First published on CounterPunch on 30 August 2024. The July/August 2024 issue of Disabled American Veterans Magazine featured a profile on Vietnam vet and former Chicago police superintendent Terry Hillard, who had been named Disabled American Veteran of the Year. The piece was written by Matt Saintsing. In his long police career, I wondered if […]
As noted elsewhere, in 1998 Medic met Swedish American Per Ödman through our mutual friend Mike Gillen, the three of us members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Below, Per relates how he became a noted documentary photographer. I was born in Sweden in 1943. My father was highly educated and very successful in his […]
We said it each day of our miserable lives. We said it when it rained, and when it didn’t rain. When it was hot. When it was hotter. It don’t mean nothin, we said. We said it because it sounded tough. We said it to keep from crying. We said it because it might be […]
In May 2024, after hearing from international educator and former FAC team ’68 Sergeant Ted Engelmann, Medic updated his article on the diary of North Vietnamese physician Dang Thuy Tram. The following month Ted provided the item below. Examining the Seven-Flag Chieu Hoi Pass: A Primary Document from the American War in Viet Nam Between […]
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the […]
Byron De La Beckwith Jr. (November 9, 1920 – January 21, 2001), was a Marine veteran, a white supremacist, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. In 1964, he was tried twice by all white male juries on murder charge in Mississippi. Each […]
Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has come to mean an absurd or contradictory choice. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1972. In […]
Cyril Richard “Rick” Rescorla (May 27, 1939 – September 11, 2001) was a British-American soldier, police officer, educator and private security specialist. He is best known for his gallantry in Vietnam with Bravo 2/7 First Cavalry in Vietnam in 1965, and for heroic actions during the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. His American […]
Robert Wesley “Bob” Rackstraw Sr. was a Army helicopter pilot with the First Cavalry in Vietnam, 1969-1970. For extraordinary heroism in combat he won two Distinguished Flying Crosses; for gallantry, the Silver Star. Yet his commanders found his unauthorized ground and air missions with the CIA and Green Berets, and lying about attending two universities […]
Born in St Louis, Illinois, Leon Spinks was one of eight children brought up by his mother in the city’s notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing project. Spinks would recall how his father, before abandoning his family, had beaten him as a boy and taunted him by saying: “You’ll never be nothing.” Those words would inspire Spinks to […]
The great Australian journalist, author, war correspondent, scholar and documentary filmmaker John Pilger died on 30 December 2023. From 1962, he was based mainly in Britain. He was also a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. Pilger was a fierce critic of American, Australian and British foreign policy, which he considered to be […]
First published in Collateral, Issue 8.1, Winter 2023. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Teeming, pouring, relentless rain all weekend long. The downpour rattling windows, thudding on roof tops, pouring from gutter spouts, flash flooding streets. Until at last, the storm subsided, the merciful scent of petrichor filling the languid air. “Or something like that, Steven […]
First published in Panorama, The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature Issue 10 Winter 2023 He began typing. Sloppily at first, the words advancing in broad choppy strokes across the blank page. Relax. Just let it happen. And Steven allowed his feverish mind to wander, observed how it gradually focused its purposeful lens on large […]
On the afternoon of 8 April 1956, after drinking several shots of vodka, Staff Sgt. Matthew McKeon, a WWII and Korea veteran, chose to discipline Platoon 71 with a night march into Ribbon Creek, a swampy area of Parris Island. He knew that some recruits could not swim. He was unaware of the swamps deep […]
There was no one like ’im, ’Orse or Foot, Nor any o’ the Guns I knew; An’ because it was so, why, o’course ’e went an’died, Which is just what the best men do. Rudyard Kipling Disclaimer This guide is intended solely for personal use. It is not meant to cure, diagnose or treat war […]
Though the following occurred 41 years ago, I remember it as yesterday. My plane landed in the evening. I was in Washington, D.C. to attend the annual convention of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, but the conference was not my first objective. In my room at the Mayflower Hotel, I unpacked and carefully […]
In February 2021, on his blog War Stories, Vietnam veteran Spencer Matteson detailed the December 1966 battle at LZ Bird in which PAVN soldiers from the 22nd Regiment and other local forces overran the base. The American losses were 27 killed and 67 wounded. Enemy KIA were estimated at nearly 300. In Vietnam Mattheson’s post […]
As a grunt Medic had no idea of the immense scale of Vietnamese port theft of US goods, equipment and weapons, the parallel black markets in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, the extraordinary profits made from currency exchange, the US and Vietnamese government officials, military officers, civilians and aid agencies complicit in the sprawling criminal enterprise. […]
The FTA Show, which toured Hawaii, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan, was an extremely popular 1971 anti-Vietnam War road show for GIs. Its biting satire was a direct response to comedian Bob Hope’s hand-to-helmet pro-war USO vaudeville routines. Among the performers were Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Peter Boyle. The film includes highlights from the […]
As a youngster Ernest Novak learned photography from his dad. Like most grunts he carried a camera in his pack. Fifty-three years after we served in Delta 1-7 Cav’s third platoon we spoke by phone. A few days earlier he’d sent a few of his extraordinary flicks. “Got any more flicks?” I asked. He sent […]
First published in the Summer 2023 issue of Queen’s Quarterly. Hopper bought the camp at auction with money saved from his pension. Fifty-two thousand, five hundred, forty-four dollars and seventy-three cents, back taxes which the absentee owner had refused to pay. “Going once…twice…sold!” cried the auctioneer. A bargain, thought Hopper. An all-American, first class bargain. […]
Ronald Dion DeSantis is the 46th governor of Florida. He is a Republican, and a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. His political views on abortion, education, gun control, ESG, and labor unions are considered right wing. With regard to veterans, DeSantis has sharply criticized the VA for the scandal of 2014, in which veteran […]
As noted elsewhere on this site, former Copra pilot and civilian medical evac pilot Richard Magner, and former Delta 1/12 Cav grunt Bob March are collaborating with their colleagues in Vietnam to locate American dug NVA mass. In the Vietnamese culture the spirit will not rest until the body is properly buried. Here is Richard’s […]
“I was wounded during the morning sweep of the 8-March’69 LZ Grant battle—had my lower jaw blown off—and spent the next five years in and out of Fitzsimons Hospital. It was not all downtime, as I was able to finish college, get my fixed-wing licenses, and eventually returned to flying full-time.” So begins a May […]
The last time I saw John C he’d been hit by a nervous LOACH door gunner and was screaming bloody murder. “Doc, get up there,” shouts the lieutenant. I scramble up the hill, straddle John’s belly, Cobra gunship comes in, lays down rockets and 40mm grenades right over us. I mean right over us. I […]
This article, based on a filmed interview, was published in Báo Phụ Nữ, a popular women’s newspaper in Vietnam, on 30 April 2020, the 45th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. It was translated in the U.S. by Nguyen Ba Chung. Medic has corrected errors and omissions made in the original Vietnamese to English video […]
James Ramon Jones (November 6, 1921 – May 9, 1977) was an American novelist known for his explorations of World War II and its aftermath. He won the 1952 National Book Award for his first published novel, From Here to Eternity, which was adapted for the screen immediately and made into a television series a […]
Medic’s latest short story was first published in the Spring 2023 issue of The Westchester Review. Young officers can be marched and drilled to exhaustion. Taught to jump from trembling choppers. The sons of bitches can be told what to say and how to say it. But twelve weeks of make-believe do not prepare […]
In March 2023 Medic was invited by High Point University to speak about his 1970 tour in Vietnam and Cambodia. I spoke first to the 40 students of Dr. Joey Fink’s history class. That evening, I spoke to the public at High Points off campus museum. For the student talk, after Dr. Fink’s excellent intro, […]
Richard Louis Proenneke (May 4, 1916 – April 20, 2003) was an American self-educated naturalist, conservationist, writer, and wildlife photographer. He was a Navy veteran. From the age of about 51, he lived alone for nearly thirty years in the mountains of Alaska in a log cabin that he constructed by hand near the shore […]
Earl Dennison Woods (1932 –2006) was the father of Tiger Woods. Woods started his son in golf at a very early age and coached him during his first years in the sport. He later published two books about the process. Woods served two tours of duty in South Vietnam and retired with the rank of […]
On 6 December 2022, at the Salem Athenaeum, Medic was one of six local authors to read from their work in an event titled Writers in Your Neighborhood. Beneath the video is the excerpt from the text read. The story is forthcoming in Queen’s Quarterly, which also published Medic’s short story Seven of Diamonds, Six […]
Rudolph Charles von Ripper (1905 – 1960) was an Austrian-born American surrealist painter and illustrator, soldier and Office of Strategic Services agent. Von Ripper led a colorful life. Medic has obtained the partial military records of Von Ripper. Unfortunately they reveal next to nothing of his covert operations, consisting of award citations and routine orders. […]
First published on CounterPunch 11 November 2022 Each year at Boston College I’m one of several guest speakers for Professor Seth Jacobs course, “America’s War in Vietnam.” During the semester the students are assigned primary and secondary sources from across the political spectrum. Every few weeks a Vietnam vet further enlivens the popular class. That […]
Medic’s friend J.D. Scrimgeour’s review of Doug Anderson’s new book was first published in the 11 November 2022 issue of CounterPunch. The Overstuffed Storage Locker: Doug Anderson’s Undress, She Said by J.D. Scrimgeour Undress, She Said Doug Anderson Four Way Books, 2022 102 pp. Acclaimed writer Doug Anderson’s latest poetry book is titled Undress, She […]
First published in Gloucester Encounters, Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023, edited by Martin Ray. Gloucester Cultural Initiative, November 2022. Until twenty years ago I saw the Vietnam war through a shallow, selfish lens: My platoon. My war. Vietnamese culture was an alien poisoned thing. The enemy was a slippery bug to […]
Jesse LeRoy Brown (1926 –1950) was a Navy officer and the first African-American aviator to complete the Navy’s basic flight training program, and the first African-American naval officer killed in the Korean War. Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to an impoverished family, Brown was interested in aircraft from an early age. A gifted athlete, despite racial segregation […]
I bought my first camera from a flying PX, a Huey loaded with sundry goods that one day landed at LZ Compton, a remote firebase near Cambodia. I paid fifty dollars, a not immodest sum for a PFC in 1970. In place of f-stops and related focal devices, the symbols for cloud, sun and […]
First published in Queen’s Quarterly, Summer 2022. – They say wherever you go, there you are. In ’90s Nha Trang it is not too difficult to clamber up the sides of beached wooden boats, jump aboard, wander about the wood plank decks. But there are times you must ask. And here, where only men crew […]
Jessica Dawn Lynch was born in Palestine, West Virginia. Since her family could not afford to send her to college, in September 2001 they encouraged her to enlist in the army, where she became a supply clerk and later deployed to Iraq. On 23 March 2003 the Army’s 507th Maintenance Company and elements of the […]
Doug Anderson’s review of Gary Rafferty’s Nothing Left to Drag Home, which Medic edited, was first published in CounterPunch on 4 July 2022. La vida es corta, pero amplia. Life is short but wide. – Spanish Proverb In writing about my own experience in Vietnam, and reading about that of others, I have become aware […]
In 1971, Medic, Robert Bowman and Marcus Gaufman were among the active-duty soldiers who met weekly at the Common Sense Bookstore in Ayer, Massachusetts. Located less than a mile from Fort Devens, the book store, the converted first floor of a single-family house, was overseen by college grad activists Peter Hagerty, and Paul and Claire […]
Medic’s essay on AR-15s and mass shootings was first published on CounterPunch on 15 June 2022. The AR-15 is a weapon of war. It should not be sold to civilians. It kills or injures by inflicting severe ballistic wounds on the enemy. However, during my tour as grunt medic in Vietnam in 1970, where I […]
During the winter of 2022, when Medic first proposed to edit Gary Rafferty’s war memoir “Nothing Left to Drag Home: The Siege of Lao Bao, Written by an Artillery Who Survived It, the work seemed simple enough. The project would take two weeks at most. Three months later the edits were completed. During that time […]
Following Samuel Freeman’s piece about his war nightmares Medic is pleased to publish his war time account of helping Vietnamese orphans. I went through ROTC in college. I had requested assignment to the Infantry, and Airborne and Ranger schools. After completing Ranger school, I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina […]
At first light Mike walks point across the flat dry field. Behind him, the medic I once was, twenty-two barrel Pointed south, our foot steps launching small white clouds. We’re hunting ground hogs, you understand, Not like the green time, hunting each other down. But today, under a bright Michigan sun There’ll be no shouts […]
Readers of this site know that Medic and Roger Byer met briefly in Quan Loi in late ’69 or ’70 and again at Fort Devens in 1971. We reunited a second time a dozen years ago and remain in touch. Roger’s extraordinary account of his detention by American forces during the invasion of his country […]
First published in the Winter 2021/2022 issue of Calliope, the official publication of the Writers’ Special Interest Group (SIG) of American Mensa, Ltd. – “Funday,” said Dennis, breaking the silence. He meant the end of the week. The four of us sit at the big wooden table in the dim lit shed. Here is Peter, […]
In January 2022 Medic received an email from Vietnam vet Samuel Freeman. Samuel had read The Best of Medic in the Green Time, which had a profound effect on him. He laughed. He cried. He felt unburdened. Like many combat vets Samuel has war nightmares. His article below was first published in The Advance News […]
Medic met Gary Rafferty at a William Joiner Center Writer’s workshop in 2000. Recently Gary and Medic sat down to discuss his war memoir. What follows is an excerpt from “Nothing Left To Drag Home: The Siege at Lao Bao During Operation Dewey Canyon II–Lam Son 719, as Told by an Artilleryman Who Survived It,” […]
Medic first met SEAL Vietnam vet Preston Hood III at a William Joiner Center Writers Workshop at UMass Boston in 2000. With his bull neck, broad chest and and ripped biceps he stood out from the softie civilians, but Preston was warm and friendly and a very good poet. Here, he recalls an unforgettable moment […]
“Thank you for your service.” A half century after Vietnam retired firefighter Gary Rafferty manages to smile but his thoughts are elsewhere. His service? Clearly not his descent into a tropic hell. Most civilians prefer not to know about that. Why else would they trot out the worn cliche? But for a moment let Gary […]
This article by Medic appears in the November 2021 issue of The Bosphorous Review of Books. In 1949, my parents, two of the strangest people I ever knew, made the unfortunate decision to marry. One morning eight years later, when I was nine, my mother, who screamed uncontrollably while pummelling my child-self with her tight […]
Medic received this excellent story from Vietnam vet Pete Sablock. I’m pissed off. Fucking angry at a 34 cherry. Standing next to my gun shield, I lean against the back hatch smoking a C-rat butt while Jonesy and Willy load rice into sandbags. Hot, sweaty, pointless work. Earlier this morning, while breaking thru bush looking […]
Infantry Assault The way he made that corpse dance by emptying one magazine after another into it and the way the way the corpse’s face began to peel off like a mask because the skull had been shattered, brains spilled out, but he couldn’t stop killing that corpse, wanted to make damn sure, I thought […]
In 1997 Medic met Bruce Weigl at a William Joiner Center Writer’s Workshop held at U Mass Boston. Bruce is the author of several books of poetry and prose. He has returned to Vietnam many times, speaks the lingo and knows Bao Ninh. To help with a story he’s writing Bruce recently asked me what […]
First published on CounterPunch on 28 May 2021. I worked on this piece for hours; it worked on me for years. After eight months, two hundred and forty-four days of patrols, jungle, ambush, monsoon, the occasional firebase perimeter guard, I’m off to a rear job where I’ll sleep in a bed, wear clean clothes, eat […]
When first published on Medic in the Green Time the name of the Salem, Mass veterans agent was fictionalized. On 11 November 2021 the article appeared in CounterPunch, where Medic named the veteran’s agent. Subsequently, the Secretary of Veterans Services for Massachusetts and the veterans agent expressed their strong disapproval of the story. See addendum. […]
In early 2021 Medic exchanged emails with Owen Luck, who did two tours in Vietnam (’68–’69) as an OR Tech at the 90th Evac Hospital/22nd Surgical/Aid Station at LZ Baldy and Dust Off medic at Hue/ Phu Bai. An American photographer known for his photography of Native American and First Nation Canadian life and history, […]
Medic first met Doug Anderson at the William Joiner Center at U Mass Boston in the late 90s or 2000. We have stayed in touch ever since. Doug served as a Marine corpsman with a rifle company in 1967. After the war he attended the University of Arizona, where he studied acting. He started writing […]
Recently Medic received an email from noted song writer and musician Jack Murphy, a heavy combat grunt/RTO with Delta Company, 5th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. A video link accompanied the words “PLEASE SHARE IT.” I don’t particularly care for music long on sentiment, short on talent, and the title of the track […]
-First published in CounterPunch on 22 August 2007- RAMADI, Iraq: Troops swallow diet pills and slurp can after can of Red Bull, fighting to stay awake as they peer from armored Humvees into the pre-dawn darkness. Twangy country music pours from some vehicle sound systems, angry rap from others. Associated Press, December 8, 2006 Exhaustion […]
Many novels, poems and nonfiction accounts have been written about war, as well the American war in Vietnam. Below is Medic’s completely subjective reading list. Literature Paco’s Story, Larry Heinemann. Farrar Straus, Giroux, 1986. National Book Award, 1987. Reissued by Viking Press, 1989. Reissued by Penguin, 2002. The only man to survive a ferocious attack, […]
Published in CounterPunch on November 11, 2020 The War Inside the War in Vietnam by Doug Anderson On the cover of Marc Levy’s The Best of Medic in the Green Time is a photo of a Colonel in clean, starched fatigues with a bit of a paunch. He’s been choppered in for a little pep […]
The Morning Star is a left-wing British daily newspaper with a focus on social, political and trade union issues. The paper was founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain. The paper describes its editorial stance as in line with Britain’s Road to Socialism, the programe of the Communist […]
Recently Medic purchased a group of old letters from his friend David Cox, owner of Main Street Arts and Antiques, in Gloucester, MA. Among the letters was this hidden gem: Wikipedia relates the following: Henry E. Lackey was born in Norfolk, Virginia on 23 June 1876, the son of Navy engineer. Lackey rose in the […]
Medic first met Richard through our mutual friend, the late actor, poet, short story writer and editor George Dickerson. On 7 July 2021 Richard, an award winning poet, read at Caffe Lena in Saratoga, New York. He’s obviously in a good mood, and gives a master class in how to read great poetry with a […]
Among his many Hollywood films, John Huston directed The African Queen, The Misfits, and The Treasure of Sierra Madre. In WWII Huston served in the Army Signal Corps where he directed and produced three highly acclaimed films: Report from the Aleutians (1943), about soldiers readying for combat; The Battle of San Pietro (1945), the story […]
At KIDE 91.3 FM Cynthia Poten is the producer of Health Matters, a 5-minute weekly news report on health issues relevant to the Hoopa Tribe of California that has been on the air for 10 years. Other programs Cynthia has completed for KIDE include Poetry Basket, a monthly 30-minute reading of poems from around the […]
Waves like silk lick sand like concrete While the roller coaster flies, We’re on planet California getting wrecked and telling lies. For the war casts a long shadow, And it takes a lot of wine, To pretend it doesn’t matter, Back in 1969. __________________ Note on the Photograph: I attended a workshop with Ansel […]
As an FNG he walked point. Forty years after the war Medic and Mike Derrig caught up in Portland, Maine. I met his lovely wife Robyn, stayed a night or two in their welcoming house. It was a good visit. Ten years later Mike came round to telling me how he got shot in Cambodia, […]
Mike concluded his story with a final burst of email: “Before the litter basket dropped through the jungle, and I was hoisted to the medevac bird, some of the guys came by and said, “You lucky bastard. That’s a million-dollar wound and you’re going home.” Little did I know they were right. It wasn’t long […]
Every so often Medic receives email from teachers, students, from sympathetic vets. It’s always a pleasure to answer their questions. Though I did not know it, this particular email, which arrived on 10 December 2019, held special significance. My name is Clayton Walker. I am a twenty two year old studying English-Teacher Education at North […]
Through our mutual friend Mike Gillen, about twenty years ago Medic met Vietnam vet and noted writer W.D. “Bill” Ehrhart. From time to time we trade emails. Bill is an American poet, writer, scholar and Vietnam veteran. He’s been called “the dean of Vietnam war poetry.” Donald Anderson, editor of War, Literature & the Arts, […]
Above photo: Somewhere in Song Be: Shake ‘N Bake, Jim Dumb, Mike Wilson, Papasan. Vietnam, 1970 It happened in Cambodia: the first Chicom grenade blew up the machine gun, the second landed among us, Mike Wilson—last on top of the scrambling men who threw themselves upon me, getting it worst. For a time after the […]
Ronald Lee Ermey (March 24, 1944 – April 15, 2018) was an American actor. He achieved fame when he played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Ermey was also a United States Marine Corps staff sergeant and an honorary […]
First published on CounterPunch on 24 July 2019 Once, on a good day in a bad war, as we lay in wait, four young men, unsuspecting of what lay ahead, walked into the perfect ambush, and we took no casualties. After we scavenged the bodies for souvenirs, silently, we marched away. An hour later, a […]
In March of 2018 Medic was contacted by GEP Umbrella Inc, which sought to license one of my war photos for the Netflix sci fi series The Umbrella Academy. In short order a sum was agreed upon, a contract was signed. Below is the image as used in the series. Beneath it, the actual photo. […]
Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), known as Howling Wolf, was a Chicago blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica player, originally from Mississippi. With a booming voice and imposing physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. Several of his songs, including “Smokestack Lightning”, “Killing Floor” and “Spoonful”, have […]
Quite some time ago Medic actively participated in New York’s thriving poetry and performance scene. ABC No Rio, The Pink Poney, The Carmine Street Cafe, Dixon Place, Brown Bear, The Saturn Reading Series are a few of the venues that come to mind. Medic used these open mics to read in public what he’d long […]
In January 2020 Medic was interviewed by poet, playwright, movie producer, and journalist John Ronan, host of “The Writer’s Block, ” a local cable TV show originating from Gloucester, MA. The subject was war and dreams. – Dreams, Vietnam Other Dreams
During his 34 year career Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881 –1940), fought in the Philippines–American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, China, Haiti and Central America. At the time of his death, he was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, winning the Medal of Honor twice, though he refused […]
Through FOIA queries Medic has obtained numerous military and Red Cross documents pertaining to the war experiences of Ernest Hemingway. The files are embedded in the text below. Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899 – 1961) was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and noted sportsman. His understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence […]
On a cold winter morning in 2020, one by one, five men spoke of their lives before, during, and after Vietnam, and what lead them to join Veterans for Peace. All had seen their share of combat; each spoke eloquently about war and its aftermath. One mans guilt over civilian bombing casualties lead him to […]
In blue jeans or jungle fatigues, united they stand as each veteran steps to the microphone, speaks his few precious words, reaches back, hurls the fateful things onto granite steps. “My name is Bruce Stennager from New York, and I have a Vietnamese campaign ribbon, Vietnamese service ribbon, National Defense Ribbon, and Purple Heart.” “Andrew […]
In monsoon rain we trudge to the wood line A growling truck behind. Past no-man’s-land Past the comforting sight of sand bag bunkers We call out, hear the muted password See them step from the green. Now, step back, see for yourself the kindness Of soldiers I will never forget: A sweated quartet, one man […]
This article by Medic first appeared in the 25 April 2019 issue of CounterPunch. Maya Lin’s war monument succeeds by its simplicity. The long tapering wall gradually rising to a delicate peak, falls equally away. Unencumbered, row upon row, by the tens of thousands the mute granite names speak to us, and we are filled […]
First published in the 14 June 2019 Weekend Edtion of CounterPunch. We start with the basics. Your base is overrun. Or you have walked into the perfect ambush. Or mortars are raining down and there is nowhere to hide. Or you have run out of ammo and your commo is gone. In each case, each […]
James Sanford Ketchum (November 1, 1931 – May 27, 2019) was a psychiatrist and United States Army Medical Corps officer who worked for almost a decade (1960–1969) on the U.S. military’s top secret psychochemical warfare program at the Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, which pursued research on chemicals to be used to “incapacitate the minds” of adversaries. […]
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) served as the 43rd president of the United States. He was among the most popular, as well as unpopular, U.S. presidents in history. Prior to his political career Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard. Medic has obtained the former presidents available military service records: File 1, […]
Medic’s friend Peter Sablock was drafted in August 1966. He took basic at Fort Dix and AIT at Fort Knox, where he was a proud participant in the Vietnam indoctrination course, which culminated in a ground assault on a mock Vietnamese village during a driving Kentucky snowstorm. In Vietnam Pete was a Scout Observer with […]
Medic first met Dave Bianchini at a VA clinic vets group in Gloucester, MA in 2005. Seated at the large round table in the small cramped room were a couple of grunts–among them, an original member of Tiger Force–a few remfs, the middle aged female therapist. Sessions lasted ninety minutes. I’d been lured by my […]
Medic knew of Lamont Steptoe but first encountered him at a Groiler Bookstore poetry reading in Boston, MA in 2014. Who was this strange articulate fast talking unassuming dredlocked Vietnam vet? I regretted not sticking around to find out. In 2019, at the first day of the Waging Peace in Vietnam photo exhibit sponsored by […]
On 18 September 2019 the William Joiner Institute at UMass Boston hosted an intergenerational vets panel. The event was introduced by Joiner Associate Director Mitch Manning. Joiner Director Tom Kane made additional remarks. Suffolk professor and acclaimed poet Fred Marchant moderated the event. The four veterans on the panel were: Rachel McNeil, Army Engineers, Iraq […]
Thanksgiving: I’m wandering the city streets outside the sprawling Air Force base. A passing couple invite me to their home for the holiday meal. It will be the last decent food I will have for quite some time. The next morning, we new men march to an Army warehouse crammed with military gear. The stagnant […]
First published on Slow Trains in 2001. The bus ride from New York’s frenetic Port Authority to sleepy Willimantic, CT took four sleepless hours and cost twenty-nine dollars. Willimantic, once thread capitol of the world, until thread went south and the town went quiet. Tomorrow, a local college would host a forum on Vietnam, known […]
Medic’s octogenarian friend David Cox owns a thriving curio shop in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Recently Medic bought three short 118 year old letters, known in the business as “emphemera, for one dollar. Beautifully written, they have absolutely nothing to do with war and its aftermath. Read left to right. Click to enlarge. […]
Robert Swan Mueller lll (born 7 August 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013. After graduating from Princeton University he enlisted in the Marines in 1968. Upon completing OCS, jump school, and Ranger school, in July Mueller deployed […]
Yes, of course; it’s what you say these days. Like genuflecting in a Catholic church. Like saying “bless you” to a sneeze. A superstitious reflex, but, of course, sincere. Or is it just to ease the guilt of sending someone else to do the dirty work? Whatever. I just say, “You’re welcome,” let it go […]
Marvin Gaye, born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. (1939 – 1984) was an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of hits, including “Ain’t That Peculiar”, “How Sweet It Is (To […]
The Personnel Files generally include only the military records and a short bio of the prominent vet. However, Matthew Hoh’s 26 Feb 2020 article on CounterPunch is exceptional in its fair handed analysis of Mayor Pete’s military service, and is reproduced in full below. Buttigieg’s military records are located after the first paragraph. Heaven […]
CounterPunch first published this piece by Medic on 17 September 2007 “I carry my adornments on my soul. I do not dress up like a popinjay… With deeds for decorations, twirling — thus — A bristling wit, and swinging at my side Courage, and on the stones of this old town Making the sharp […]
Medic has obtained the complete Official Military Personnel Records of Jimmy Hendrix from the National Archives in Saint Louis. They are divided into the following categories: Service Records 1; Service Records 2, Service Records 3; Disciplinary; Medical Records; Reference Correspondence 1; Reference Correspondence 2. His FBI files are here. James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix (1942 –1970) […]
Medic first met Larry Roy on LZ Compton in late 1969 or early 1970. At seventeen, bright, cheerful, confident, not more than 5′ 8″/130 pounds, in high school he played golf, and played well, he said. That same day, in a bomb crater, I helped Larry assemble the things he would carry in his new […]
Bob Shearer, who served with Bravo 1/7 First Cavalry in 1969-1970, sent this story to Medic. For many years after returning home from Vietnam Christmas was difficult for me. One particular memory involved a Michelin rubber plantation in Song Be. In December 1969 Bravo Company spent a “stand down” on LZ Compton, a remote, muddy […]
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is an American activist, whistle blower, politician, and former United States Army soldier. She was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents, […]
Anthony Dominick Benedetto (born August 3, 1926), known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, and the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York. Born and raised in Astoria to an Italian-American […]
Wilfred Burchett (16 September 1911–27 September 1983) was a controversial Australian journalist known for being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and for his reporting literally from “the other side” during the wars in Korea and Vietnam. During the Korean war Burchett investigated and confirmed claims […]
I cannot imagine being at war my entire life like Bao Ninh. I fought for three quarters of a year a river rat it seemed… L-O-N-G-E-N-O-U-G-H where in my body do I feel this emotion? Is there a center? a periphery? in my belfry sleepless dark bats can’t gnaw shame out-of-me but a cardinal… peck…peck… […]
On 15 November 2018 Peter Sablock, Medic, and Dave Connolly were guest speakers at a poly sci class at Salem State University. We have done this annually several times. Peter, a retired geology teacher, spoke about his combat experiences as a scout with APCs. He did not mince words or hide his fear, his anger, […]
Howard William Cosell (1918 –1995) was an American sports journalist widely known for his blustery, cocksure personality. Cosell said of himself, “Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. There’s no question that I’m all of those things.” His New York Times obituary stated, “He entered sports broadcasting in the mid-1950s, when the predominant style […]
Claude H. Thomas (born 1947) is a Vietnam vet, Buddhist monk and best selling author, who currently uses the name Claude Anshin Thomas (Anshin is a Japanese term meaning “settled faith.”) Initially Medic felt Thomas’s military service was suspect. The Wikipedia entry for Thomas’s military service states: “From September 1966 to November 1967, Thomas served […]
From the comforts of home, on the subject of war, in various online comments, see how the activists fret and fizz: “The question that always comes to mind for me is, what is our intention for the future of our children/grandchildren will live into? Because we are all connected, no future can be considered unique […]
Medic is included in noted photographer Jeff Wolin’s 2007 book Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam Veterans. The book is composed of 50 interviews and corresponding photo portraits of Vietnam vets. In the spring of 2006 Jeff photographed me at Washington Square Park in New York City. Afterwards, the NYU historian Marilyn Young gave us an office on […]
For the website, and a possible anthology, Medic is seeking responses from all vets to the phrase “Thank you for your service.” How does it make you feel? What are your thoughts when it’s said to you? What do you want to say? What do you say? 3-5 pages. Include name, branch of service, unit, […]
In the fall of 2018, Rohit Inani, a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, contacted Medic after reading my 1998 interview with Bao Ninh. Rohit, who admires Ninh’s work, asked to be put in touch with Ninh. Several weeks later, with help from the Joiner Institute, and the Vietnamese Writer’s Association, Rohit interviewed Ninh in […]
In the breeze The sudden quiver and sway The shadow of bamboo leaves Twirling onto the hot dry earth, The squad standing quiet Over the stiffening Man, made headless By the machine gun team. Weapons and water Scattered about, The twice shot girl Reaching for my canteen. What to do? What? I patch her […]
Albert Peter Dewey (October 8, 1916 – September 26, 1945), was an American Office of Strategic Services operative shot dead in a case of mistaken identity by Viet Minh troops on September 26, 1945. Dewey is alleged to be the first American fatality in French Indochina, killed during the 1945 Vietnamese uprising. Through the OSS […]
At dusk, what hand dropped the metal bulb Down the narrow tube, lifting it skyward? I was dreaming the moment the plummeting Brightness struck, a dim noise, I was lifted Floating above myself, below The soft fiery puffs of mortar shells The firefly tracer paths The glow of skittering shrapnel Then all at once […]
This article, by Medic, was first published in the June 2006 hard copy edition of CounterPunch, and subsequently in CP online. ____________________ VA Shrink: Were you in Vietnam? Vietnam Vet: Yes. VA Shrink: When were you there? Vietnam vet: Last night. I’m kneeling. Tears streak my face, drip down, fall to earth. It’s only my […]
On 1 March 2018, Medic and Michael Casey were the featured readers at Salem State University. Medic read from his book How Stevie Nearly Lost the War and Other Postwar Stories. Mike, an MP in Vietnam in ’68, won the 1972 Yale Younger Poets Award for his poetry collection Obscenities. He read from his newest […]
Medic has obtained Bogart’s complete Official Military Personnel Records from the National Archives in Saint Louis. The records are divided into the following categories: Service Documents; Awards,Decorations, Commendations; Medical Records; Reference Documents. Born on Christmas Day, 1899, in New York City, Bogart’s father was a surgeon, his mother a commercial illustrator. The well to do […]
Robert Upshur Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is an American investigative journalist. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter and is now an associate editor there. Bob Woodward enrolled in Yale with a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corp scholarship, received his B.A. degree in 1965, then spent five years in […]
THE DRAFT Were you drafted? After dropping out of college I was living at home. There wasn’t much on offer in the way of work and my parents were not emotionally well people,making life increasingly difficult. I needed an escape and the Army promised a career and the chance to find myself. And it was […]
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913 –1994) was the 37th President of the United States,serving from 1969 to 1974,when he became the only president to resign the office. Medic has obtained the Official Military Personnel Records of Richard Nixon from the National Archives in Saint Louis. The record categories are: Service Documents 1; Service Documents 2; Service […]
John William Coltrane(1926 –1967)was an American jazz saxophonist and composer who helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and was later at the forefront of free jazz. He organized numerous recording sessions,and often appeared as a sideman,notably on albums with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Medic has obtained the Official Military Personnel Records of […]
Rocky Marciano (born Rocco Francis Marchegiano,1923-1969) was an American boxer and the World Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1956. He was drafted into the Army in 1943. Stationed in Wales, he helped ferry supplies across the English Channel to Normandy. He completed his service in 1946. Medic has obtained the service records for Rocky Marciano. […]
Jack Kerouac (born Jean-Louis Kérouac (though he called himself Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac); 1922 – 1969) was an American novelist and poet of French-Canadian descent. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose, and […]
Kurt Vonnegut,Jr.(1922 –2007) was an American writer. His books include Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five,and Breakfast of Champions,which blend satire,gallows humor,and science fiction. He was a lifelong supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union,and honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Medic has obtained the Official Military Personnel Records of Kurt Vonnegut from the National Archives. Unfortunately […]
Edward Jean Steichen (1879–1973) was an American photographer,painter,and art gallery and museum curator. From 1923 to 1938,Steichen was regarded as the best known and highest paid fashion and advertising photographer in the world. Medic has obtained the military records of Edward Steichen. The categories are: Service Records 1; Service Records 2; Service Records 3; Service […]
Joseph Louis Barrow (1914-1981),better known as Joe Louis,and nicknamed the Brown Bomber,was an American professional boxer and the World Heavyweight Champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Medic has obtained the complete military records of Joe Louis from the National Archives. The categories are: […]
Raymond “Ray” Daniel Manzarek Jr. (1939 – 2013) was an American musician, singer, producer, film director, and author, best known as a member of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, which he co-founded with singer and lyricist Jim Morrison. Manzarek was notable for performing on a keyboard bass during many live shows and some recordings, taking […]
Leonard Alfred Schneider (1925 –1966), better known by his stage name Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and screenwriter. He was renowned for his open, free-style and critical form of comedy which integrated satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous […]
Johnny Cash (J. R. Cash; 1932 – 2003) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, and author. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide. Although primarily remembered as a country music icon, his genre-spanning songs and sound embraced rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, […]
Jerome John “Jerry” Garcia (1942 – 1995) was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead, which came to prominence during the counterculture era in the 1960s. Though he disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or “spokesman” of the […]
William Joseph (“Wild Bill”) Donovan (1883 –1959) was an American soldier,lawyer,intelligence officer and diplomat. Donovan is best remembered as the head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency,during World War II. He is also known as the “Father of American Intelligence” and the “Father of Central Intelligence.” Medic has […]
The green metal bird shimmies North along the muddy banks Sweeps south, flying high, low A risky business feeling them out The tall slender reeds bowing Beneath us. We bank hard right, dip again Blowing the green curtain down The boy equally stunned His mud-laden AK no match In the forever time His astonished […]
On 17 December 2017, Medic joined Vietnam vets, and family members of WWII vets, who read from their work in The Inner Voice and the Outer World, Writings by Veterans And Their Families, edited by Dorothy Nelson. The two hour book launch, filmed at Gloucester House, a restaurant in Gloucester, MA, is viewable at the […]
Medic’s friend Tom Laaser, an Army vet, served with the 10th Mountain Division as a field artilleryman in Afghanistan. He was severely wounded and turned to writing to aid in his recovery. A senior at Salem State University, in Salem, MA, he majors in English and education, and will soon complete an internship with Congressman […]
Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and enact social justice and voting rights. He was murdered by white supremacist and Klansman Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council, a […]
Daniel Ellsberg served in the Marine Corps for three years, from 1954-’57, as a rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander. He extended his service for six months to serve in the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean during the 1956 Suez Crisis in Egypt. While employed by the RAND Corporation, Ellsburg precipitated […]
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) was drafted into the Army in 1942 and saw combat with the 12th Infantry Regiment,4th Infantry Division at Utah Beach on D-Day, in the Battle of the Bulge, and the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Medic has obtained the Official Military Personnel Records of Salinger. Unfortunately ,as was the case for thousands of […]
Jeff Sharlet (1942–1969), a Vietnam veteran, was a leader of the GI resistance movement during the Vietnam War and the founding editor of Vietnam GI, considered the most influential early anti-war paper, distributed to tens of thousands of GIs, many in Vietnam. In 1961, Sharlot enlisted in the Army and requested training at the Army […]
Gustave Hasford (1947 –1993), was an American novelist, journalist poet, and Marine combat veteran. His semi-autobiographical novel The Short-Timers (1979) was the basis of the Oscar nominated Stanely Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket (1987). Via a Freedom of Information Act request, Medic has obtained a summary of Hasford’s military service. Given that Hasford is a […]
Jon Graham Burge (1947 – 2018) was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department who was accused of torturing more than 200 criminal suspects, mostly African American, between 1972 and 1991 in order to force confessions. Through an FOIA request Medic has obtained excerpts from Jon Graham Burge’s military file. An […]
Joseph Raymond “Joe” McCarthy (1908 – 1957) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. He served in the Marines from 1942 to 1945. Medic requested the military files of Senator Joe McCarthy from the National Archives. Under the Freedom of […]
Edward Donald Slovik (February 18, 1920 – January 31, 1945) was the only US soldier in WW II to be court-martialled and executed for desertion since the Civil War. On its Person’s of Exceptional Prominence page, the National Archives has released the military records of numerous well known American veterans. There are more than one […]
Master Sergeant Donald Walter “Don” Duncan (1930-2009) was a Special Forces soldier during the Vietnam War, where he helped to establish Project DELTA. Following his return to the United States, Duncan became outspoken in his opposition to the war and was a leading anti-war spokesman. Duncan is best remembered as the military editor of the […]
Tommy Wayne Cannon (1946 – 1978) was an important Native American artist of the 20th century. An enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe with Caddo and French descent, he was popularly known as T.C. Cannon. Cannon grew up in Zodaltone and Gracemont, Oklahoma. His parents were Walter Cannon (Kiowa) and Minnie Ahdunko Cannon (Caddo). His […]
Paul Leonard Newman ( 1925-2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, six Golden Globe Awards […]
After many delays, Medic obtained the Official Military Personnel Records of Army veteran Rod Serling from the National Archives. Unfortunately, as NARA wrote to Serling’s widow, his records were among those destroyed in a fire in 1973. His remaining and reconstituted records are here. Rodman Edward “Rod” Serling (1924-1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television […]
Medic has obtained the military records of Mel Brooks, who enlisted in the Army soon after high school. Without explanation, only five pages were sent by the National Archives. Curiously, Brooks’ primary MOS is Entertainer, about which little has been written, whereas he trained and served as a combat engineer. Mel Brooks (real name Melvin […]
Medic has obtained the Official Military Personnel Records of Superman from the National Archives and Records Administration. Unfortunately most of the original documents were destroyed in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in Saint Louis. The remaining records sent by NARA are here. George Reeves (1914 – 1959) was an American actor […]
Medic has obtained the service records of war correspondent Ernie Pyle from the National Archives. They are categorized as follows: Service Documents; Record Book; Medical Records; Correspondence; Reference Correspondence. Ernest Taylor “Ernie” Pyle (1900–1945) was a popular American journalist and legendary WWII war correspondent,when he reported from Europe and the Pacific,until his death in combat […]
Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908 –1973) was the 36th President of the United States. His Great Society legislation included laws that upheld civil rights,Medicare,Medicaid,environmental protection,aid to education,aid to the arts,urban and rural development and his War on Poverty. His civil rights bills banned racial discrimination in public facilities,interstate commerce,the workplace,and housing,and a powerful voting rights act […]
Under the Freedom of Information Act, Medic has obtained a recently declassified DOD memo issued by the Army’s elite NCO and Officer Warfare School. Heavily redacted, the brief but strongly worded statement addresses the need to improve appropriate conduct between male and female soldiers. It obliquely refers to a specific scene in a little known […]
John Herbert Dillinger (1903–1934) was an American bank robber. During the Depression,Dillinger and his gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations. In 1933–34 Dillinger stood out even among such violent criminals as Baby Face Nelson,Pretty Boy Floyd,and Bonnie and Clyde. When the Roosevelt administration demanded federal action,J.Edgar Hoover used Dillinger and his gang […]
Not long after sending a FOIA request to the National Archives and Records Administration, Medic received a phone call from an archive technician. The conversation was brief and informative: “Sir, do you happen to know his social security number?” “No.” “Is he currently alive?” “Yes.” “Do you have his current address?” “He’s incarcerated. Wait a […]
In the fall of 1977, Medic and his brother drove from Newark, New Jersey to Muhammad Ali’s training camp, in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania to see the champ prepare for his fight with Ernie Shaver’s. We arrived early, about 7 AM. It was cold. The parking lot was empty. Was this the right place? We made […]
“Don’t send me out. I have a bad feeling about this one,” Medic heard Sgt Gary Johnston say to our commanding officer. A few minutes later the patrol was ambushed and Gary was dead. Several years back a Cav friend put Medic in touch with Nubbin Johnston, Gary’s younger brother. From the jungle, Delta 1/7 […]
In early 2017 I mailed a hard copy query to a man in upstate New York: “Recently I published How Stevie Nearly Lost the War and Other Postwar Stories. The connecting theme is war and its aftermath. I think we both know a little about PTSD. Would you consider writing a blurb? I look forward […]
On 11 November 2017 Medic was among several vets invited by Congressman Seth Moulton to speak at a Town Hall meeting in Marblehead, MA. The event was reported in various newspapers, including The Salem News. “The idea of a veterans town hall was conceived by author Sebastian Junger, based on the tradition of warrior storytelling. […]
On April 14, 2018, Tom Laaser, who served in Afghanistan, and Lawrence Kirby, a heavy combat WW II veteran who fought in some of the fiercest Pacific battles, and Medic addressed an audience of one hundred people at the Community House in Hamilton, MA. Headlined as “Telling Our Stories,” the event was part of the Wenham […]
Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. Daniel Berrigan, SJ __________________ From time to time Medic talks at colleges and high schools. The […]
In December 2017 Medic was interviewed by Walt Kosmowski on his show North Shore Journal, which is broadcast by BevCam, a community access TV station in Beverly, MA. A veterans panel, consisting of members of the Salem Writer’s Group, run by Tom Laaser, is planned.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 –1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States. A Democrat, he was elected four times and served from March 1933 to his death in April 1945. He was a central figure in world events during the mid-20th […]
Gloria Emerson was a distinguished American author,journalist and New York Times war correspondent. She was a friend to Vietnam veterans. She committed suicide in 2004. Her obituary appeared in numerous papers,including The Guardian.
Clinton Dugald MacDougall was born 14 Sept 1839 in Kintrye, Scotland. He enlisted on 16 September 1861 at Auburn, NY as a Captain. In 1861 he joined A Co. NY 75th Infantry. The following year,upon joining the Field & Staff NY 111th Infantry he was promoted to Lt Colonel and promoted to full colonel […]
I met Seth in Luang Prabang, Laos. With three Swiss backpackers we planned a trip up the Mekong, but Seth came down with food poisoning, so nervous Peter, plump Renata, charismatic Pascal and I made our way upriver on hired fantail boats. Sailing six to eight hours a day, we marveled at the sight of […]
A Red Cross doctor cured Seth with antibiotics. In Hanoi, we decided to visit Sapa, a highland town bordering China. French soldiers had once garrisoned there for respite. Aboard the second class section of the packed train we found a place to sit; the wood slat seats grew steadily hard on the back. The Vietnamese […]
The H’mong in Sapa wear blue. They weave the cloth and dye it themselves, as evidenced by their indigo stained finger tips. I could not take my eyes off this beautiful woman (above), though it was sad to see frenzied gringos encircle her and other H’mong men and women, lusting after souvenirs. In ’94 the […]
We spotted this man and his children (above) on a hill overlooking Sapa’s famed terraced paddies. Scampering up a muddy slope we joined them. I knew immediately this would make a fine photograph. Seth had a good camera and took the shot. The father smiled as he continued to play his sad lovely tunes, which […]
Beyond the center of Sapa, beautiful winding trails skirted valleys sculpted by broad terraced paddies. A few klicks beyond the paddies–there is much hard work in that beauty–the sky turned dark–lightening snapped across the horizon. Seth and I ran to a distant wood shack and huddled beneath its fragile porch, joining a young H’mong man […]
Outside the Hanoi Air Force Museum, a converted airplane hangar—admission 50 cents—thick vines creep up the skeletal remains of deactivated SAM missiles pointing skyward, frozen in the act of imminent launch. Seth and I are the only persons present. A short and stooped very old man, wearing faded military fatigues and toting an ancient rifle, […]
Pinned by pebbles, row upon row of five thousand dollars in blue engraved traveler’s checks sit like butterflies fanning their wings on the hot dry sand. If curious children draw near I will shoo them away. Here is how it happened: After a week in Ha Long Bay sharing a small wood boat with a […]
One morning, riding a rented Chinese bicycle through town I noticed a middle-aged American who seemed bewildered. Was he searching for landmarks or reliving the past? In ‘68 a terrible month long battle reduced Hue to rubble. Friend, were you a Marine caught in the dread house to house combat? Were your buddies killed or […]
At the Capital Hotel, an immense cinder block building located in the heart of Phnom Penh, the manager, a friendly middle-aged man, beckoned me to stifling cinder-block room with narrow bed and dripping sink. “Three dollah, one nigh,” he said. I immediately paid him, pocketed the key he provided, set my heavy pack on the […]
On the speed boat from Malaysia to Siem Reap,the small city on the outskirts of Angkor Wat,I met Carl,an American who lived and worked in Japan. Because of the noisy passengers in the fifty seat cabin we sat on deck.Carl joined the Marines to serve in Vietnam. “But,” he said, “my brother was there so […]
It was surprisingly cool inside the ruins of Ta’Prom, one of the few sites where the jungle had not been cleared away. Periodically a Cambodian army patrol armed with Chinese weapons,outfitted in American camo,web gear and spit shined boots,dutifully marched past. They hoped to calm traveler’s fearful of Khymer Rouge or armed bandits. Early one […]
Mea, a happy and handsome boy in T shirt, gray slacks and flip flops sells souvenirs to tourists. “Sir, for you only two dollars,” he says in impeccable English. Meeting him each day at Ta’Prom, one of many temple ruins at Angkor Wat, we become friends. He lives nearby in a sturdy raised bamboo house […]
Medic’s friend Erin,at the time living in France,sent the letter above and accompanying small piece of history,which she found in a bunker built during WWII. From 1940,when Germany conquered France,to the Allied liberation in 1944,under Marshal Philippe Petain France was known as Vichy France. […]
The letter below is one in a series from a father to his daughter. He seems a wealthy man,and caring and logical and intelligent. In clear simple prose he describes the work done in remodeling his home; the goings on of neighbors and friends. But when this good man refers to veterans the letter takes […]
We gave it names Like contact, Movement or Bringing scunnion. We psyched ourselves up Scowling, “Time to kick ass And take names.” But never talked about The human beings. This is how it worked: They walked into our patrol Or we walked into theirs Or we ambushed them Or they’d ambush us Or we walked […]
A large Army base fifty-seven miles north of Saigon and twelve miles from Cambodia, Quan Loi was built near a rubber tree plantation populated with deserted French buildings. Quan Loi supplied grunts with ammo, food, water, heavy artillery and air support, and medical care. Due to frequent rocket attacks, it was nicknamed Rocket City. GIs […]
He sent the letter to the guy’s wife The same day, Leaving out the following: “About 2 in the morning the automatic went off And nobody moved, we just waited for the morning Light and the order to recon. There were two of them. One was dead. The other hung on all night, Waiting […]
Through the use of propaganda leaflets dropped by helicopters flying over the jungle, the Chieu Hoi program (loosely translated as Open Arms) sought to encourage the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army to surrender to the Americans or South Vietnamese forces. Soldiers of the 209th Regiment,7th Division, North Vietnam – Attention! TO THE COMMUNIST […]
I was a medic with Delta 1/7 First Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia, ’69-’70. My decorations include the Combat Medic Badge, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with V, Air Medal, Arcom. My writing has appeared in New Millennium Writings, Cutthroat, War, Literature and the Arts, Chiron Review, Mudfish, New Madrid, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Gargoyle, […]
Medic bought the item below from his friend and heavy non combat vet David Cox,proprietor of Main Arts and Antiques,located at 124 Main Street in downtown Gloucester,MA. A steal at ten bucks,it is the oldest letter Medic has ever seen. While its monetary value is negligible,its beauty is unique. […]
You take a bowl,you fill it with diesel oil. You take a frag, a baseball grenade,they call it, You pull the pin,you hold the frag tight. Now wrap a half dozen elastic bands round The grenade,round that green curved metal strip. The spoon,they call it. Now sit the frag in the bowl.Submerge the fucker. Now […]
Here in the secret chambers Of my darkest heart are things I will never tell: Here is oily blood and brittle bone Here are clotted lips, frothy lungs Decomposed and muted tongues Here twisted cloth lays strangely stiff In a powdery triptych pit Where a dumbstruck man and wife Lock quick lime arms round their […]
Ridenhour was a GI and investigative journalist who played a central role in spurring the investigation of the My Lai massacre. He heard of the massacre from friends while serving in Vietnam and took it upon himself to conduct a number of interviews. On his return to the United States Ridenhour sent letters to numerous […]
Adrenalin floods linger long after combat. The rush blends fear with thrill – Grooving on the excitement, the challenge. In the bush, recreation is nil. Hookers and Philippine rock bands thrive near base camps. I stumble onto the cure in Tam Ky – a frontier boom town in 1968. The main drag is a […]
Medic’s essay below won the 2016 Syracuse University Institute for Veterans and Military Families Writing Prize, judged by Brian Turner and published in Stone Canoe. Imagine this: after a blistering hot day marching up and down mud slicked hills, or tramping wide open fields, or steamy jungle, imagine setting out booby traps on enemy trails, […]
The telegram was delivered in person by a Western Union messenger around 10:00 pm on Friday, April 24, 1970. My mother answered the door and accepted it. She could see the words,DONT PHONE,DONT PHONE,through the window portion of the envelope. She was terror stricken. Unable to open it she took it to my Dad […]
Medic’s poet friend John Ronan, of Gloucester, MA, hosts the Cape Ann TV show “The Writer’s Block.” This show aired on 2 November 2017.
In November 2017 Medic was privileged to be interviewed by Peter Solomon. Peter is a retired network broadcaster, who volunteers his skills at WCAT in Winthrop, MA.
The war, I’m told, with its white-tailed rockets and hard crack ricochets; the war, with its thumping whirl of trembling choppers; the war, with its shirtless gun crews manning steel- wheeled cannons; the war, with its fine plumed shells cutting silver arcs through infinite sky; the war, with its lumbering tanks and sun bleached bunkers; […]
After three weeks on patrol Delta pulls perimeter guard on LZ Compton. The remote base is surrounded by an earthen berm ringed by bunkers, concertina wire, Claymore mines, trip flares, steel barrels filled with diesel oil rigged to explode. Foo gas, we call it. Inside the perimeter, bare-chested gun crews man steel-wheeled cannons or stout […]
The taxi from Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham took four hours and cost two dollars; the road back was mined. I found a guide, Japro,who spoke good English. Proud owner of a beat-up Honda cub Japro had thick black hair, large white teeth, was thin, talkative, nervous. A survivor of Pol Pot’s killing fields, he […]
Every third day Delta is resupplied by Hueys which spot our popped smoke, swoop in, frantically unload crates of C-rations, ammo, mail, black rubber kegs of water, then they are gone. The mail is stuffed in a red nylon sack tied shut with thick cotton rope. The lieutenant unties the bag, reaches in, dutifully hands […]
Mike and I keep in touch. We talk about Vietnam. About nightmares and startle reflex, battles with anxiety, depression, flashbacks. “Doc, good thing you called,” he said. “I’m having a rough night. The way you talk–you being a medic, settles me down. “Any time, Michael,” I said. We agreed I’d visit in August. Six months […]
We’re in Song Be. How long has it been? Two weeks? Three? I hand my camera to gunner Jim Lamb, or rifleman Alfonso Gamble, or point man Larry Roy, or rifleman Glenn Williams (shot by Bill Williams after an enemy bullet clipped the back of his head). Or RTO Mike Wilson who followed Six over […]
We’ve left our gear back at the night perimeter. By noon we are parched and weary. “Pour this on me,” I say to Gary, after putting the camera down. The cool water sluices over my oily hair, my sweat soaked fatigues, flows into my aid bag, the bandages already wet. Clipped to my pistol belt, […]
Third platoon sits by the edge of a grassy field waiting for choppers to fly us away. We’ve been lucky so far. No contact in more than three weeks. Lulled into laziness, we haven’t there’s set up a perimeter, no trip flares or Claymores have been staked in the ground. No sees the well used […]
The perimeter is on fire. From the pick up zone a hundred grunts watch smoke and flames fill the sky. The Captain yells,”Choppers in zero two.” Sobbing,I walk past him to our head medic,hunched on his helmet,engrossed in a book. “What’s wrong?” he asks,looking up. Between sobs I tell him I can’t think straight,can’t take […]
It’s early morning in dry season and third squad sits cross-legged on a leafy carpet of bamboo. The men burn chunks of C-4 plastique explosive which boils water in less than a minute; stir in powdered coffee, sip the bitter brew from metal canteen cups. After a time we pass C-ration cigarettes to our Kit […]
Jay R, 5th Special Forces Group‘67 says,“I was modified,” referring to a limp numerous surgeries have failed to correct. He continues speaking as we walk down beige corridors, our VA records, tied shut with red string, held flat to our chests. Soon we are lost before JR spies ROOM 57 EKG. Unlike the spartan furnishings […]
After eight months in the bush I say good-bye to my men. “Doc, don’t leave us,” they say, “Don’t leave the platoon.” We’ve been through so much. Weeks on end of jungle patrols, ambush or rocket and mortar attacks. A base over run. Or waiting and waiting, the tension rising, and nothing at all. In […]
We recline on the bed in our little cubicle room, Karla and me, volunteer workers on a seaside kibbutz. We’ve worked long and hard;it’s time to rest. Sometimes she speaks in her sleep. This afternoon, when she wakes we abandon ourselves to love making while Gerard the Frenchman pounds the flimsy screen door. “Open!” he […]
The last time I had seen Jim he was humping the gun in our platoon. After so many years it wouldn’t be easy, seeing him; I imagined he felt the same. Even so, I didn’t know what to expect. At the first knock I rushed to the door. Without love beads, or his grimy boonie […]
The lieutenant has red hair. “Carrot Top,” we secretly call him. Carrot Top says the Captain says build a bunker. What for? On patrol in Song Be we are grunts,not engineers. Armed with sandbags and machetes we obey the order. Our Kit Karson’s,Jim Dumb and Papa san,make multiple quick cuts to the base of bamboo […]
As the choppers descend over the arid field, an immense black deer bolts from the wood line, galloping hard to out run the Huey’s landing third platoon. Whittled to half strength, our ranks are filled with FNGs. The door gunners request permission to fire. Seconds later their machine guns nip at dashing hooves, snap at […]
“Take five,” says the lieutenant. I clear a spot, sit on my pack, slug a half canteen of water. “Hey, Doc,” says Larry Roy, “I don’t feel too good.” He dips his head, with his forearm, wipes his brow. In another world, Larry Roy played golf. Here, at seventeen, he walks point. Everyone likes him. […]
Published in VVA’s The Veteran, Fall Winter 1999, CounterPunch, 22 May 2020, and The Morning Star (UK), 8 June 2020. Three years after the Americans abandoned Vietnam, in the depths of the Forest of Screaming Souls, NVA veterans search for the remains of men and women killed in combat. So begins The Sorrow of War, […]
At various times in its history, the US military has recruited people who measured below specific mental and medical standards. During the Vietnam war, “McNamara’s Moron’s” as they were called, were barely literate, or could not read or write, or did not speak English. They were underweight, or obese, were too short, or semi-blind, or […]
In June 2018 the website KGB Bar Lit Mag published this short story by Medic. – Patrol, jungle, ambush, monsoon. Done, thought Stevie, who now ate only cooked meals, showered daily, wore fresh fatigues, polished boots. Except for the tropic heat and menial work, life on the base was considered pleasant. “So, you the one […]
On patrol ever third day the company will find a suitable spot for the birds to set down. We will set up a perimeter, post men on guard, then settle in and wait. Soon enough, we hear the whirling beat of rotor blades, look to the horizon, see the resupply choppers as they come into […]
The Cavalair was the First Cavalry Division’s weekly newspaper in Vietnam. Its stories and photographs of front line and rear units were produced by an intrepid staff of roving Army reporters. A morale builder, the paper effectively sugar coated the war, pumping out a steady stream of upbeat combat and human interest stories. The Cavalair […]
Chris Marker (29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. Among his best known films is A Grin Without a Cat, released in 1977. The film’s title refers to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. The metaphor compares the promise of the […]
Medic and Nam vets Henry Roll, George Knoll, Rick Claggett, Rick Owen, and Randy Brack were recently contacted and interviewed by high school student Frank Nygegger, who attends Kantonsschule Wohlen in Switzerland. With Frank’s permission Medic is delighted to publish his exceptionally well written research report, US Soldiers in Vietnam. The paper is divided into […]
Medic first published this article in the June 2, 2007 of CounterPunch ________________________________________________ Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie. Epitaph on the Cenotaph of Thermopylae, Simonides of Ceos Cambodia 1970 The first dead American I ever saw was black. Third platoon had perimeter guard. Second platoon […]
A good friend of Medic has reviewed a book on the actress Jane Fonda. During the war Fonda was among three hundred anti-war activists who traveled to Hanoi. A popular story that she turned smuggled messages from U.S. POWs over to their captors and caused them to be tortured is untrue; the identified POWs have […]
T Max (aka Timothy Maxwell) describes himself as a singer/songwriter/storyteller. For many years he published The Noise, New England’s longest running music magazine. T Max founded Boston Rock Opera, wrote two folk-rock operas, released 10 solo albums, produced Boston Rock ‘n’ Roll Trading Cards, was the music director for Project Eno (a tribute to […]
Near the center of my hometown, opposite the block wide brick post office, abutting a municipal parking lot, adjacent to four lanes of non stop traffic, sits the distinctly out of place spit of land known as Riley Plaza. Named for a past century Medal of Honor winner, it is a forbidding circle of stone […]
During Operation Ranch hand, the herbicide Agent Orange was sprayed relentlessly over Vietnam. The purpose was to deprive the VC and NVA of food and shelter. But Agent Orange, one of many herbicides used during the war, contained a deadly contaminant — dioxin. Using striking archival and war footage, interviews with veterans, scientists, attorneys, the […]
After posting Captain Joel Rosenbaum’s essay in the Five Simple Words project, Medic asked him to further write about his job forecasting weather in Vietnam. The climate of Vietnam is monsoonal: a rainy season with frequent and heavy downpours; a dry season of unbearable heat. In 1968, while serving with Air Force Detachment 18, 30th […]
In 2008 Medic met the distinguished photographer Jeff Wolin, then working on his book Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam Veterans. Jeff has kindly lent permission to excerpt several of those stories and their accompanying photographs. Benito Garcia 173rd Air Borne, PFC May 1965-1966; 1966-1967; 1968 “The first time I saw a dead American, there were three […]
Among his many roles, Marlon Brando played Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppolla’s Vietnam war film Apocolypse Now. An actor, director and political activist, Brando (1924 –2004) was hailed for his extraordinary film and stage acting, and is frequently cited as the greatest and most influential film actor of all time. His most well known […]
In 1987, while living in Astoria, New York, Medic joined CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity to the People of El Salvador, a grass roots organization opposed to US foreign policy in El Salvador. We meet weekly in Manhattan to discuss political developments, fund raising, and civil disobedience. CISPES also joined other grass roots efforts in […]
After completing his book Inconvenient Stories: Vietnam Veterans, Medic’s friend photographer Jeff Wolin traveled to Vietnam twice to photograph Vietnamese war veterans. From All Sides: Portraits of American and Vietnamese War Veterans was exhibited in the US and abroad, and featured at the Photo Biennale in Lyon, France in 2010. With Jeff’s permission here are […]
Recently Medic discovered this 1970 direct cinema style documentary on the effects of the Vietnam War on street children in Saigon. The 58-minute film was written, directed and narrated by Michael Rubbo for the National Film Board of Canada. Rubbo had originally gone to Vietnam to make a film about the work of Foster Parents […]
Delta 1/7 Cav grunt Jeff Motyka spent many months in hospital after being severely wounded on LZ Francis. Here, he describes his days and nights in Vietnam. First published in 2600, The Hacker Quarterly,Vol 32, Number 4, 2016. Radio Telephone Operator. Sounds like a cushy job. Air conditioned office. 8 AM to 5 PM. Monday […]
This story appeared in the 2 January 2018 edition of The Salem News SALEM — Vietnam veteran Marc Levy of Salem stood up before dozens gathered on Veterans Day in Abbot Hall in Marblehead, and read his essay called The Quiet Time, which describes the drinking of morning coffee on the battlefield in an act […]
From mid May to the final days of July Bravo 1/7 was among the First Cavalry units who fought in the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. On or about 20 May Bravo’s 2nd and 4th platoons guarded the packs and gear of 1st and 3rd platoons, who, while on patrol, walked into a bunker complex. Bob […]
The following poem was written by an anonymous Marine in Vietnam in 1967. It is best appreciated when recited to family and friends as they sit comfortably around the table, awaiting a hearty Yuletide meal. _____________ When the Third Platoon Gunned Down Santa Claus There’s strange things done ‘neath the Vietnamese sun But […]
Medic has located an original version of The Anderson Platoon, one of the great documentaries of the Vietnam war, which won an Oscar and Emmy for best foreign documentary in 1967. For six weeks Pierre Schoendoerffer, a journalist, film maker and veteran of Dien Bien Phu, followed a platoon of Bravo 1/12 First Cavalry through […]
More than thirty vets have responded to Medic’s open query: what do you feel, think and say when someone says to you “Thank you for your service.” Bill Ehrhart 1/1 Marines Infantry (corporal) Vietnam 1967 Over the past decade or so, it’s become quite the fashion, when people learn that I once served in the […]
In November 2019 Medic emailed Mike Paestella, Bravo 1/7 First Cav ’69-’70, about flicks of LZ Compton, and especially LZ Ranch, the 1/7 fire base in Cambodia that was overrun. Mike replied with half a dozen flicks. We traded emails. A few weeks later we talked by phone. Mike said he arrived in country in […]
first published in Chamber Four, Winter 2011 In 1992 I bought a one way ticket to Guatemala. The goal: to learn Spanish, then return to New York to work with immigrants affected by brutal civil war and its aftermath. I spent my first month in the sleepy highland village of Todos Santos, and then I […]
A year after leaving the Army, I enrolled at Seton Hall University, a Catholic school which had recently gone co-ed. I was a hippy. My new uniform consisted of blues jeans, a white shirt under a black vest, a pearl in my right ear, and my grimy boonie hat, adorned with love beads, CMB, Cav […]
Medic first heard of the Australian journalist and film maker John Pilger through an English doctor met in Mexico in 1992, who in 1993 sent him the non fiction book “Heroes.” In 1994, while working in New Zealand, Medic wrote to Pilger, asking if he’d be interested in interviewing Medic’s acquaintance, the noted anti-war activist […]
Christmas 1970: a hot meal in a muddy fox hole, a Red Cross gift of WD 40. Excellent for cleaning my M16. Thank you, Jesus. Twelve months later, three on a remote fire base burning human shit, it was time to head home. At Bien Hoi Airport I met other GIs leaving Vietnam, some with […]
Not for the first time but likely for the last, in 1997 a dozen or so senior level Viet Minh and American OSS officers held a public reunion at the Asia Society in New York City. Among the OSS agents present: Charles Fenn,who contacted Ho Chi Minh to rescue downed Allied pilots and send intelligence […]
At twenty-one, James Aalund was not a lucky man. As he looked out a bunker port during a mortar attack, a round exploded and blew his head off. Medic did not know James but still recalls the wounded men screaming into the radio,“ Dead man! We have a dead man!” Some months later,after a similar […]
Medic asked his grunt and Arty friends if they smoked weed in Vietnam. Officers and NCOs were asked how they handled men who did pot. Here are the replies: Arlan Ervasti Bravo 1/7 Cav ’69 I was in Vietnam from April till late Oct 1970. I can’t recall anyone smoking dope or getting high in […]
“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it. For it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” Ludwig Wittgenstein Readers of this site know distinguished Grenadian and Charlie 1/5 Cav medic Roger Byer from his CounterPunch essay on the US invasion of Grenada, and will […]
On 11 May 1970 troops from Delta 1-7 First Cav combat assaulted into an abandoned NVA base camp in Cambodia. In a very short time, the vast area, shown above as the choppers touch down, would be transformed into the ill fated LZ Ranch. Ranch was the first of a trio of US bases in […]
Near midnight, the helicopter landed at 3rd Field Hospital. I was the sole passenger. Stretcher bearers carried me to a large med/surge ward that was dark and quiet. In a warm soothing voice a nurse asked me, “How are you? How was your flight?” “Fine,” I said, a bit taken aback. She had been told […]
The plane finally landed at Camp Drake in late afternoon. In the distance loomed the rising snow capped peak of Mt. Fuji. Those who could walk exited the aircraft first. Stretchers bearers carefully hoisted the remaining men off the plane. No one spoke. A rumbling caravan of green army buses brought us to the sprawling […]
As the plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base the nurses on the plane said goodbye to the patients on board. Then the huge loading ramp opened, letting in fresh air and sunlight. After twenty-two hours of darkness and noise I was happy to be stateside but wary of the future. A crew of soldiers […]
Medic received this extended account of LZ Ranch being overrun from retired Command Sergeant Major, then Chief of Section, B Btry 1st/21st Field Artillery, Mike Dunn. Prior to the Cambodia invasion B Btry 1/21st FA was staged at an airfield outside of a Special Forces Camp which I believe was Bu Dop. I choppered into […]
by Richard Boes I was trained as an MP and had been assigned to the First Cavalry in ’69-’70. We were stationed on a small base camp on the outskirts of a Vietnamese village near Bien Hoa. Our POW compound was surrounded by twenty-foot high barbed wire. The prisoners, who never had names, were kept […]
When Medic returned from Vietnam in 1970, one year remained on his military enlistment contract. After 30 days leave, he reported to the 595th Medical Battalion, at Fort Devens, MA. In 2005, New Millennium Writings published Medic’s short story How Stevie Nearly Won the War, which includes this fictionalized account of his time at Devens: […]
“In 1969 South Vietnamese forces arrested a man who turned out to be the most senior North Vietnamese officer ever captured during the Vietnam War. Nguyen Tai headed intelligence and terrorist operations in Saigon for more than five years, operations that had killed or wounded hundreds of South Vietnamese and Americans. US and South Vietnamese […]
Medic was not present when staff sergeant Mark Hambleton hit the trip wire of an Automatic Ambush, which detonated the Claymores, which exploded and killed him. In 2003 Kirk Anderson sent this harrowing eye witness account. Other recollections follow. For reasons that will become clear Medic has waited until now to publish them. “Hambleton was […]
Readers of this site and of CounterPunch know that Medic’s decorated Grenadian friend Roger Byer, upon completing his tour with Charlie 1/5 First Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia, returned home, only to be arrested by the Cav when the US invaded Grenada. By odd coincidence, Roger was a platoon mate of Sgt. James Bonard Fowler, […]
In 1998 Medic met Per Ödman through our mutual friend Mike Gillen, the three of us members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Per’s story relates his extraordinary resilience during and after his time at war. This article first appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of The Veteran, newspaper of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. […]
From time to time Medic scours the internet for images or accounts of certain fire bases used during the Cambodian invasion of 1970. Among them was the short lived Fire Support Base Bronco, a remote muddy hole manned by the line companies of 1/7 Cavalry and bolstered by 1/21st Field Artillery. In forty-five years I […]
As a medic, the very first guy I patch up is a case of friendly fire. We had called in a Hunter/Killer team. Hunter’s a Loach, a light observation chopper–he scouts out the area,them he calls in Killer, the Cobra gun ship who’s got rockets and mini-guns. Loach comes in and we wave. We’ve got […]
From 1955 to 1975 Dr. James Ketchum and other Army researchers at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland explored the use of psychedelic drugs in US Army soldiers. The experiments were similar to MK Ultra, a secret CIA program that focused on mind-control and psychedelics. Both studies were cancelled after media reports and congressional hearings; the project’s […]
Medic’s friend John Neely, a Civil War buff and Vietnam vet, relates the tale of his ancestor, Jacob Grundtish. While with a group touring Gettysburg, I mentioned that a relative had been wounded during the battle. When asked questions about him,I realized that I knew next to nothing: his surname,his country of birth the year […]
Naphtali “Tuli” Kupferberg (1923 – 2010) was an American counterculture poet, author, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher and co-founder of The FUGS, a satirical and self-satirizing rock band with a political slant, which performed at various war protests against the Vietnam War, and since the 1980s at events around other US involved wars. The bands often […]
I have always deeply disliked seeing anyone shown up or found out or caught in a lie or caught red-handed doing anything, and now, with time to think things over, I began to feel ashamed… Joseph Mitchell, Joe Gould’s Secret In 2011, while marching in a spirited parade to protest the Iraq war, I met […]
“You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you’re trying to decide what to […]
Medic and Roger Byer met briefly in Quan Loi in 1969. A year later we recognized each other at Fort Devens. We have been trading emails since 2013, when Roger found this website. Here is an excerpt from his memoir, Tattooed Memories. At 0500 hours on the morning of October 25, 1983 the United States’ […]
Medic’s friend Jeff Wolin hoped to follow up his Vietnam Veterans: Inconvenient Stories, a remarkable collection of 50 portraits/profiles of American vets, with a similar book featuring Vietnamese war veterans from North and South Vietnam. Since the book did not find a publisher Jeff posted much of it online. Ho Phuc Ngon, Vietnam People’s Army […]
Medic’s friend Jeff Wolin hoped to follow up his Vietnam Veterans: Inconvenient Stories, a remarkable collection of 50 portraits/profiles of American vets, with a similar book featuring Vietnamese war veterans from North and South Vietnam. Since the book did not find a publisher Jeff posted much of it on his website. Nguyen Vin Luc, combat […]
CounterPunch published this piece by Medic in 2006. After an ambush, bodies were scavenged for souvenirs–money, pistols, photos, etc. Anything important was sent to military intelligence. “Don’t burn this one. It has fire in it already,” said Fred Whithurst’s interpreter in 1970. Ignoring orders to burn all items without military value, the young Captain Whitehurst […]
In July 2024 Medic received an email from international educator, photographer, and ’68 Air Force FAC team sergeant Ted Engelmann, who has taught or lectured in middle schools thru college level in Korea, Viet Nam, Australia, Canada and the US. Based on his direct involvement in returning the diary to Dang’s family Ted updated my […]
In 1995 I backpacked six months across Southeast Asia and Indonesia. While in Hanoi, I regretted not locating Bao Ninh, the former NVA solider and acclaimed author of The Sorrow of War. In 1996 we corresponded by post, and in 1998, by a remarkable chance, we met at the William Joiner Center Writers’ Conference in […]
After Long Restorative Poses in a Morning Yoga Class, I Go Back, Again, to Vietnam, with Sung Tung P’o’s “At Gold Hill Monastery” I don’t ever want to return To what I could call home In the Song Chang River valley. From there I directed cannon Fire on wandering NVA or VC A few […]
The Captain lives in Montana. The Captain says call collect. Captain recalls LZ Ranch overrun, killing dinks in the wire, Wilson shotgunning one close range, blowing her face away. He recalls Skinny Bob and Ken, the runaway dink when Derrig got hit, Lt. Noble dead in Phuc Vinh, rockets on Quan Loi, Arc Light […]
The Monkees were a 60’s rock group appealing to American teenagers. Their wildly popular TV show showcased their music via madcap adventures which poked fun at mainstream culture. But their 1968 psychedelic art movie Head, a stream-of-consciousness black comedy that mocked the Vietnam war, America (stunned by the recent Tet Offensive), Hollywood, television, the music […]
After the shooting stops, after the wounded girl is hoisted away, after we step past the bodies and the man with no head, after the RTO steps in brains, the lieutenant says,“You gonna put me in for the Purple Heart, Doc?” and I say, “No.” Here is how it happened: In one great sudden BAANG […]
I met Paul in a therapy group for Nam vets. Months passed before he told us the secret he carried for thirty years. After an ambush, enraged,he slit the throats of three local villagers. “We had ARVN with us,” said Paul. “When the VC opened up,the ARVN ran.” Twenty-six American’s died that day, including Paul’s […]
During the Cambodian invasion, grunts found tons of NVA weapons, ammo and supplies, hidden or buried in well concealed caches. Men were allowed to keep as souvenirs a prized SKS, an officer’s 9mm pistol, or work horse AK47. The remaining 30 caliber machine guns, hand grenades, anti-personnel mines, rockets, mortars, ammunition, radio equipment, rice, etc, […]
Private First Class Jack P Smith saw horrific combat while serving with the Army’s 7th Cavalry in November 1965 during one of the first battles pitting US troops against NVA forces. He described those experiences in a 1967 Saturday Evening Post article. The 1st Battalion had been fighting continuously for three or four days, […]
Medic found this extraordinary essay on cryptome. The author chose to remain anonymous. Hey,dirty old man what was the best you ever had? They were sitting in the firehouse screwing around cleaning equipment and lying about women and screwing and fluffing their feathers,waiting for the horn to send them flying down to the […]
Television coverage of the war in Vietnam was direct and graphic. However even this newscast lacks the quality of Jack Smith’s unsparing narrative.
As told to Medic by RTO Jeff Motyka, Delta 1-7 Cav ’70 It was just another day on Compton. A hot blinding sun and no wind. I had KP, serving chow to grunts and gun crews. We’d been on patrol two weeks–this was our reward. The lieutenant was gone. A resupply bird brought food, ammo […]
The company has set up a night perimeter. In the command platoon, a large brown dog, half Lab, half Shepard, turns round twice, heaves a sigh, settles next to its master. Both are exhausted from today’s march. Animal and handler have spent months together learning the art of finding the enemy. The dog is trusting, […]
The Gloucester Writers Center is housed in the former home of one of Gloucester’s most beloved poets, Vincent Ferrini. The Center is dedicated to honoring the works both Ferrini and his friend and fellow poet Charles Olson. Affectionately called “Gloucester’s conscience,” Ferrini’s works included dozens of critically acclaimed poems, several plays, and a 1988 autobiography […]
In 2017 Medic’s poem “Forty-Five Days”, first published in The Chiron Review in 2017, was included in The Inner Voice and the Outer World, a compilation of writings by veterans and their families from the Gloucester Writer’s Center “Cape Ann Veterans Writing Workshop” which was taught by the book’s editor, Dorothy Nelson. – photo: Delta […]
An Automatic Ambush consisted of one or more Claymore mines spread several meters apart on the side of an enemy trail. Each mine contained two pounds of plastique explosive embedded with 700 lead pellets. A trip wire,connected to a firing device,was strung across the trails width. At the slightest touch the mines exploded. Instantly legs […]
Colonel: What is that you’ve got written on your helmet? Pvt. Joker: Born to Kill, sir. Colonel: You write “Born to Kill” on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?! Pvt. Joker: No, sir. Gustav Hasford, Michael Herr, Stanley Kubrick: Full Metal Jacket […]
THE NEW YORK TIMES / August 24, 2009 An Apology for My Lai, Four Decades Later By Robert Mackey Last week, William Calley, the only American soldier to be held legally responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai in 1968 by a platoon under his […]
Medic recently came across the items below. They provide a glimpse into the life of WWII veteran Paul E Bath from Dorchester, Massachusetts.
A distinguished war correspondent, prize winning journalist and novelist, Gloria Emerson, beloved by many veterans, died by her own hand in 2007. In 1969 the BBC aired an interview between Gloria, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. – see Gloria’s letter to Medic see Willimantic 10.11.2000
I hated you Legless Billy, and the way your prairie family and fiancée looked at me, that flat stillness of the plains reaching to the horizon from every window and across the dining room table, when I described how you saved my life. We all hated you, Billy, sitting there in your gleaming wheelchair and […]
We’ve choppered into Bu Gia Map, a flat deserted area of scrub and jungle where no hearts and minds will be won today. After years of aerial bombings the village is abandoned, the people scattered like chaf to the wind. A banana shaped chopper, Shithooks we called them, lowers a bulldozer to the ground. An […]
In 1995, having backpacked through Singapore, Thailand, and Laos, I flew from Vientiane to Hanoi and traveled down the coast with Seth. We had many adventures but parted ways in Pleiku. In Saigon I hitched a ride to the Long Distance Bus Station. The trip to An Loc cost sixty cents and took ninety minutes. […]
The War Prayer, a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, is a scathing indictment of war, especially blind patriotic and religious fervor as reasons for war. The piece was left unpublished at his death, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that it would be considered sacrilegious. Twain’s publisher and other […]
Field hospital backed up, shoulder-to-shoulder stretchers, near sandbagged surgery, choppers stutter chaos close. LZ a literal throw of dust. Outnumbered doctors, medics, nurses in scrubs, some in fatigues or civies, a patina of restless fatigue clouding their fish-eyed stares, up and down the rows, fast but slower than blood flows, triaging for the superficial shrapnel […]
Ruth’s Class
Periodically I give talks to high school and college students about my time in Vietnam. My format is simple. A very brief intro, followed by an eight minute clip from The Real Deal, a professionally edited short film I wrote twenty-five years ago. The students, many of whom have read The Things They Carried, by […]