Cry Medic

By Dave Pfeifer

This is a docu-drama of the real life events of one medic who served in the 101st airborne division, in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970. Looking thru the eyes of a medic that traveled with an airborne unit, day after day through the jungles of NAM. Not just the bitter fighting with the enemy in firefights, but the battle day to day with malaria and snakes and diseases, and monsoons, floods ,heat, and friendly fire. It was all there in one mans tour of duty. Hearing the screams, seeing the carnage, starting IVS, calling for medivac helicopters. It was all in a days work, of the one man on team not trying to kill, but to save lives. Geronimo was our logo, and they said we had a date with destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462890484

Dave Pfeifer

David H. Pfeifer, born in Flint, Michigan, a baby boomer, after WWII. Went to all the normal middle class schools and sports, went Northern high school, one of two in the city at the time. Got a job at an early age (14) bagging groceries at the local Kroger’s store, after school. Bought first car at 16 with the money saved from that job and drove to school after that. Had a 57 convertible (Chevy) of course during senior year. Started working at fisher body a local factory night shift lasted a few years on the assembly line, paid really well. Met, married and had a daughter (Kimberly), moved us all to California in 1967. The wife didn't want stay together, took the baby and returned to Michigan as soon as the divorce was final; I was changed to 1A selective service and drafted into the army. The Vietnam War was reaching its peak by then. This story is about the time that follows that time period from the date I was drafted until I returned home a changed man. I had been trained in medicine in the army, so I now had the GI bill so I went to college at Cal Poly Pomona a state college then. It became accredited as a university later on when I was there. My major was behavior science, needless to say I loaded up on psychology, sociology, anthropology, and criminal psychology programs. So I went to work at Pomona Valley Hospital in orthopedics for four and a half years to work my way thru school. During that time I took a full load at school and worked part time 8:00am to 10:00am at the health center on campus.aia did three and a half years there. I discovered Nurse Registries paid higher and I could use more of my skills in other depts. of medicine so by now I was divorced again from Claudia and so I traveled to Burbank, Ca. where I worked for the Glendale Nurse Registry for over ten years. I later discovered the registry down at the beach and began working the hospitals at Newport and Laguna beaches. I moved to Anaheim, ca. where I reside now. Been here since 1987. Retired in 2001, I now go to Long Brach VA Hospital for treatment and check-ups as a Vietnam vet with ptsd. I decided to write this book, to let others know about that experience and what an impact it had on so many of us. Recently moved to prescott valley arizona, bought a new house , sttled in, am now chief of stall at lcal capt 16 DAV in prescott, also am in american legion, an dlocal VFW. Have joined the ST John"s christian church, and am enjoying the weather changes.air is cleaner no smog, still travel to clif. time to time ,visit fiends and VA hosp in Long Beach, CA.H ave enjoyed visitors pasing thru to saty over and old friends sopping by.Went to three book signings and did well,its a pro vet town.Have books on the shelf at country book store in chino valley, also in the prescott valley library. Have been aske dto sell my books at the local costco store and have had to oredr many more from the publisher as am all out of them now.

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Copyright © 2011 by Dave Pfeifer.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011910217

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-9047-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-9046-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-9048-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Introduction

Prologue By Random Chance

Chapter One Welcome to Vietnam (July 1969)

Chapter Two Orders: Retake Hue

Chapter Three The Valley of Death

Chapter Four Humping in the Boonies (August 1969)

Chapter Five Hello, Agent Orange

Chapter Six More Casualties

Chapter Seven Firebase Duty (November 1969)

Chapter Eight Open Season

Chapter Nine The Monsoons

Chapter Ten Another Cherry Butter Bar (December 1969)

Chapter Eleven R and R at Last (January 1970)

Chapter Twelve Back in the War

Chapter Thirteen Short Time

Chapter Fourteen Back to the World (July 19, 1970)

Chapter Fifteen Wrapping It Up

Chapter Sixteen Coming Up in the World

Epilogue The War Inside

Glossary of Terms

To all veterans and their families, regardless of which war they served in or during peacetime; and to the loved ones who stayed behind but were a part of that experience in history, and especially to all of you whom I served with in the Vietnam War. I admire and respect you and your roles in that turbulent time. We share a bond in common—that of love of country, honor, and duty, and the well-meaning intention of serving our country’s call, sincere in the beliefs in our young hearts, to do the best we could do under the hardships and conditions of that time. I salute you all and say God bless to each and every one of you.

Doc Pfeifer

101st Airborne Div.

1/501st Infantry

Airmobile

July 1969-July 1970

P.S. Welcome home.

To my mother, Dorothy Reed,

whose idea it was to do this book and who’s the driving force

to see it through to completion.

Thank you to:

who helped me to make this book a reality.

Barbra Scheuer Souzer

www.101stAirborneDiv

the guys of Bravo Co. 1st/501st Airmoble

www.LZSALLY.com

[e-mail]

http://[e-mail]

the guys of VA Hospital Long Beach, CA.

Introduction

It is not this book’s intention to take a position for or against the war. It remains a confusion to most of us who served there or were affected by it. I’ve never been convinced that it was a good war or a bad war. It seemed like it had both qualities. In the past, peace and freedom often came only with guns, with fighting to break free. And we—the ordinary soldiers—had only a narrow tunnel view of the war. We were told no battle plans, no broad objectives; most of the time, we didn’t know quite where we were, occasionally even what country we were in. At any moment of any day, we only knew what kind of terrain we were going through and that we were supposed to get body count whenever we could.

Frankly, it didn’t matter what we believed. Contrary to civilian life, when you’re in the service, the military owns you—body and soul, twenty-four hours a day. A lot of the guys talked about peace, gave the peace sign, carved peace signs in trees, painted them on the pads where the choppers came in and landed, big symbols of peace, which was a totally unmilitary to do.

We were a random group of fellows from all over the country, all different environments, ripped out of our lives and sent to Vietnam. Some of the fellows get into enjoying the killing. Most of us would hear that kind of person and think they’d gone over the edge. Mostly, the guys did whatever they had to do to survive and get through it and get home in one piece—that was the goal. Put in your days and go home.

Most of us were drafted, caught in the system at the same time, like being trapped in the current of a river going downstream. We weren’t concerned with winning the war. We weren’t concerned with accomplishing a mission. We weren’t concerned with achieving a goal, except in the sense of living through another twenty-four-hour cycle. Each twenty-four-hour cycle was a lifetime in that time that brought us nearer to the day when we could get out of there and leave it for someone else to figure out what the hell was going on because it was a fucked-up mess. We put in our time and marked our days and tried to get through it, doing what we could, the best we could.

As a medic, I was entirely different than the rest of the platoon, separate. They all carried guns, and many were interchangeable as far as function. But no other person was there to give medical aid to all of those men. Yet I was the same in the sense that I walked step for step everywhere they went, went through the same agonies, fear, and grief.

I tried to stay as separate as I could, to save my sanity and so I could do my job. If I thought about the dangers too much or became petrified with fear, I wouldn’t have been able to function, to do what I had to do. Of course, I did different things than the rest, going into the rear, getting supplies, bandaging wounds, tagging the dead, so the job helped make me separate too.

Medical Service Corps medics are not very high in rank—PFC; Spec. 4, equivalent to a corporal; Spec. 5, like a buck sergeant. While medics have low rank, they have quite a lot more authority than, say, an ordinary nurse in civilian life. If a medic gave a soldier an order, he had to follow it; if a nurse orders a patient to take a pill, the patient has a right to refuse. But a soldier couldn’t do that. If a medic needed support, the sergeants and so forth would tell their people, Do what the doc says. That’s an order, and it was carried out.

It also made me separate from the rest of the guys that if there were orders that were contrary to my medical training or my job, I didn’t have to obey them. Consequently, I could lock horns with a sergeant or a lieutenant or whatever at different times; and there was little he could do about it. I was outside of his chain of command.

I quickly found out it was a mistake to get close or to get to know the fellows. I’d find out where someone was from and how he lived and how he came to be in Nam, start thinking of someone as a friend, then he’ll be gone—shot away or wounded or whatever. Making friends was very, very hard on everyone, yet we were together constantly; we shared the dangers and the risks every day, and we had to depend on each other for our very lives. Some of us didn’t believe in the war or anything about it, but we believed in each other, in trying to help each other.

I haven’t described events, what I saw or what I felt, in much detail for two reasons. First, no words have the power to describe what I saw and what I felt. How many times can you use words such as awful, terrible, horrible, shocking, bloody before they lose their meaning? And I’ve been afraid. Thinking about it in too much detail can start the pictures in my head—of the arms missing, the legs, the pieces of brain, the guts coming out, the blood. When the pictures start coming back, I go through sleepless nights and nightmares; and it’s a scary thing, although a lot of the emotion and intensity that I had has worn off, and it’s not as bad as it was.

I don’t know if I called this book Cry Medic because that’s what the guys did when they were hit, and I had to answer that cry again and again—in Nam, and since, in my nightmares—or if I called it Cry Medic because I was a medic, and I’m still crying.

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Prologue

By Random Chance

I never agreed with war of any kind nor the Vietnam conflict. I did believe in this country, our system of government and justice, and my family and friends. I did believe in a sense of duty as most young men are taught: to take responsibility as a man, an American, a father, and a husband. I was drafted into the army; I did not volunteer. As a young man, I believed in standing up for the things I thought we all believed in—love of country, freedom, and duty and responsibility.

After receiving my Uncle Sam needs you letter, I thought about the alternatives: jail for twenty years, running away and living in exile for the rest of my life, trying to get medically discharged, or dismembering myself so I didn’t have to go. The only decision that seemed sane at the time was to go into the army and pray I wouldn’t go to Vietnam but be assigned to one of the hundreds of other places that the army sends men. And when the orders came down that I was going to Nam, well, try to do the best I could and get it over with. Try to survive, come back alive, or if it came down to it, die quickly and mercifully but for a good reason.

Shows how believing and naive we are when we’re young. That one year aged me more than any other in my life.

I was twenty-five years old when I shipped out. The average age among the guys must have been eighteen or nineteen, so they called me Colonel or Old Man at times.

I could have gone to OCS (Officer Candidate School) for officer training because my scores were high on the tests they gave. I deliberately washed out the whole mechanical section out of fear they would put me in the motor pool, but I still ended up with a 129 score. They say the national average is 100 and officer material is 114.

It wasn’t until I was actually on my way to OCS that I found out you had to give them three years’ duty as an officer instead of two years as an enlisted man. When the half-track truck we’d been loaded on slowed down for a curve on the way up the hill to the officer training school, I jumped off the back, duffel bag and all, and walked back to the enlisted men’s barracks.

I wasn’t a conscientious objector really; I felt I was just an average guy. I’d hunted for years with my father and enjoyed doing all the athletic things boys do and later more manly chores in my teens and early twenties. I enjoyed going hunting and shooting as much as other guys. So I wasn’t afraid of guns, and because of my early experiences, I was a better shot and could take apart the rifles and clean them just as well as anybody and sometimes better.

The physical conditioning part of basic training—or boot camp as it’s lovingly called—was hard for a while. Like the other guys, I thought I’d die before I could finish the training phase. As time went on, it got easier to do, and I guess I was in the best physical condition of my life by the time I graduated from basic training.

I managed to be in the top ten in our graduating class at Fort Knox, Kentucky, so I was offered NCO (noncommissioned officer) training and was put on accelerated promotion. I turned that down too once I found out it guaranteed one year in Vietnam as a tank commander (sergeant). By turning it down, I thought it left my duty station to random chance, and I could still be assigned anywhere—except Vietnam. Well, that was wrong.

I was given orders to report to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, for Advanced Individual Training (AIT). I was to be trained as a medic. They told me that high scores on the GT tests mean that you can make independent decisions in the field and that would be needed as a medic. I had no idea what any of that meant, but I had to catch a plane that night so I had no time to think about it.

The training was a piece of cake after what I’d been through, and it was interesting. They taught us all kinds of medical procedures, how to save lives, stop bleeding, treat for shock, how to carry people out of all kinds of terrain. Oh, I had lots of other training courses to go with that, like CBR training for gas attacks, and escape, evasion, and survival courses—guerrilla tactics. In that, you learn night firing, rapid firing at night, grenade throwing, and a dozen ways to carry wounded men out of the jungle. You learn how to cross rivers on a rope or go out of helicopters on a rope, things like that.

Then there was the Geneva Convention Code of Conduct—the rules for war—and that I was special as a medic. I was given a card with Geneva Convention stamped on it; I was a noncombatant, and according to the rules, if I went to war and was captured, I was to be allowed to help other American prisoners of war.

After AIT, I had a job classification or MOS as a medical specialist. I’d actually be part of the Medical Service Corps, the MSC, rather than a fighting unit like infantry or airborne, but I’d be assigned to a fighting unit. I finished third in a graduating class of 1,500 medics.

Then the orders came to go to Vietnam.

Chapter One

Welcome to Vietnam

 (July 1969)

I left Oakland with all the guys who were going to Nam. They boarded us on Pan American. We flew to Hawaii and refueled, flew to Guam and refueled again. One of the guys on the planes said it was twenty-three-and-a-half hours of flying time to get to Vietnam, halfway around the world.

It sure seemed like it. Some of the guys played cards. Everybody told stories and gossiped about what they thought might be ahead. Nobody knew for sure. I tried to sleep. There wasn’t any chance of that.

I was anxious, worried. I didn’t really know what lay ahead, none of us did. But I’d seen enough on television, read enough in the papers, heard enough talk to worry. The big Communist push, the Tet Offensive, had happened the year before. The Allies were gung ho to push back, and we were supposed to be part of it.

My father said good-bye just before I shipped out. He’d been in World War II, so he probably knew better than most what was ahead for me. He said he’ll be with me in spirit if not in body and hoped that I come home safe and alive. And he cried.

Finally, we filed off the plane. I never was quite sure whether we landed in Bien Hoa or Long Binh. Whichever one it was, they transported us by jeep to the other one, so we ended up going through both places.

As I got off the plane, a waft of heat and sewer smell hit me in the face. It was so goddamned hot I broke into a sweat. Just standing there without moving, I sweat right through my fatigue uniform. And the smell. It smelled like a backed-up sewer. It didn’t change the entire year I was there. That country, everywhere we traveled, smelled like sewer.

There we were in our fatigues, carrying our duffel bags across the tarmac on an air base in the middle of a war, but we didn’t have any guns. We were all confused, bewildered, scared, but curious and awed by it all too. We marched to the barracks where they loaded us into jeeps and moved us to the next point. It was sort of a herding area where they billeted us in temporary housing while we waited for orders.

They put us up there for a few days while they shuffled around figuring out where we were going to be assigned and what our units would be. We found out we were cherries, brand-new in country; and while we waited for orders, they put us on every grubby detail that they could think of. Like police detail.

They called for anyone who had any police experience to step forward. A few guys did, only to find out that police detail meant picking papers and cigarette butts off the ground all day and standing guard duty at night. During the daytime, sprinkling rain, I found myself sanding a jeep for some colonel who was getting ready for an IG inspection. I thought how ironic it was to be in a war zone with no