"Having served in combat forever distances you from men who had not"
                                                     Oliver Wendell Homes - Civil War

Hills 25 and 65

Excerpt from book Corpsman Up of  the truck on route 4 that hit a box mine in Dec. 1969



Suddenly an explosion thundered through the air.  The shock wave hit them seconds later like the crash of giant surf.  Momentarily frozen the squad took off running toward the billowy, black cloud of smoke that soared above the trees.  Busting through a small treeline, Mike saw what was once a "six-bi" truck, now a mass of twisted rubble.  A large, gaping hole sizzled in the bed just behind the demolished cab, its jagged edges looked like fingers pointing upward.   Bodies were everywhere, some as far as thirty feet from the truck.  Hesitating only briefly to assess the situation he sprinted toward the smoldering truck.
"Get me a medevac, ASAP."

L/Cpls Bruce Lockett and Ron McWhite our hootch Hill 25
Dec. 1969

Two charred bodies sat like statues in the cab.  The stench of burned flesh made him gag as he stepped up on the running board.  He realized they were beyond his help, so he jumped down and rushed to the nearest living victim.  The man's right leg had been blown off just above the knee and the remaining stump looked like a mass of raw hamburger.   Got to work fast.  He pulled the bottle of yellowish plasma from the canteen cover, and then tied a piece of rubber surgical tubing around the Marine's biceps.  Mike uncapped the needle from the IV set-up, and pushed it through the skin where the vein had puffed up.  The vein collapsed and he had to do it again.  After failing a second time, he quickly undid the tubing and repeated the procedure on the other arm.  The needle entered the vein smoothly and the fluid dripped from the bottle into the wounded man's body.  Following an injection of morphine, Mike stuck the needle through the man's collar and bent it as he’d been trained.  This technique allowed the doctors and nurses in the ER to know exactly how much morphine each man already had been given
Two of the next three he checked were dead.  The one live Marine had a huge, irregularly shaped chunk of metal protruding from the left thigh.  The bone, broken by the blast, was exposed.  Mike yanked off the Marine's belt and strapped the two legs together, immobilizing the broken one against the good one.  He tied a battle dressing around the wound and squeezed a syrette of morphine into the opposite thigh.
"Doc, over here Quick!"
He rushed to the spot behind a clump of bushes, and found five more critical cases lying in the tall grass.  Moans and groans were all around him.  God, who do I treat first?  Who has the best chance to survive?  Have to decide fast.  The voice in his head screamed at him as he stared at each of the wounded.
The entire left side of one face and head was missing.  Two other victims had dark red blood seeping from a number of wounds over their bodies.  Mike looked down in horror at a ghostly white figure with a piece of shrapnel penetrating his skull and stumps where an arm and leg used to be. 
Mike moved first to a young Marine busy trying to stuff his sausage-like intestines back inside the gaping hole in his belly.  Soaking a large dressing with water from his canteen, Mike tried to push the foul smelling, convoluted intestines in as best he could before applying the bandage.  He wet the bandage again with water and shot the Marine with morphine.
Racing from wound to wound he used the last of his morphine before returning to the double amputee.  There wasn't much he could do for the young Marine medically, so Mike sat and helplessly held his hand.  He pulled the chain around the Marine’s neck and read the dog tag, Roman Catholic.  Bending over so his mouth was close to the young man’s ear, he began, “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee...”  The groans suddenly stopped and the boy’s hand went limp.  Dejected and with tears in his eyes, Mike reached down and closed the Marine’s eyes before covering him with a poncho liner.