Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally - Gus Kappler MD

Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally (eBook)

A Vietnam Trauma Surgeon's Memoir

Gus Kappler MD (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020 | 1. Auflage
214 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-2668-5 (ISBN)

Gus Kappler MD served as an Army trauma surgeon at the 85th Evacuation Hospital, Phu Bai, Vietnam. The 85th routinely witnessed the devastation of war on body, mind, and soul. Every known and out-of-the-box technique was employed to salvage life and limb. At the 85th a wounded soldier had a 95% chance of survival. It was that 5% that still haunt the surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists today. "e;Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally"e; is the medical memoir of a surgeon in the most intense environment possible. It is a gripping, honest, real-life, disturbing wartime memoir.

TRAVELS

In a war zone, one is confined for safety to the compound. I grew to understand the feeling of being incarcerated. I relished my escapes to the PX by jeep to shop for inexpensive tax-free booze (one was limited by a ration card), food stuffs, 35mm film, home furnishings, snacks, and gifts for Robin.

We would travel to Hue’s ARVN hospital with the intent of aiding their wounded and sick. Early in my tour at the 85th Evac, a group of four of us hopped on a Huey for a short and scenic ride up north to Hue. Fred, who was regular army, accompanied us and carried an M16. As mentioned previously, docs were not to be officially armed. I asked him, “What is that for?” He replied with a wilting, lifer expression, “You are in a war zone.” It does take a while to change one’s orientation. I have great pictures taken from the Huey. Flying over Hue, one could see the Perfume River traversing the city bordering the zigzagging wall of the Citadel on the north. This ancient holy compound showed persistent and repaired damage from the intense fighting between the NVA and Americans during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The hospital’s exterior walls were a peeling white stucco supporting a slate roof. At both ends within the rectangle of wall above the wide doors was a thick red cross. The interiors were damp and gray with poor illumination and ventilation. The operating rooms were poorly equipped. Little blood was available. We did bring our outdated blood with us. Anesthetic agents were scarce. As a rule, there was not a trained surgeon available. Surgically salvageable patients were just observed until they succumbed to their wounds. In addition to the vegetables produced in their gardens, the Vietnamese physicians raised chickens, ducks, and pigs to generate income to buy medicines and supplies. We could do little to improve the sad situation. Some of our surgical interventions were successful.

Perfume River with the Citadel Wall on the left

ARVN hospital

On several occasions, small groups of us returned to Hue, this time armed, in a jeep traveling north along Highway 1. This road was two lanes and blacktopped with asphalt. The air was hot and sticky. Our fatigues stuck to us with sweat. Choking dust billowed as we drove through small hamlets with names similar to Phu Loc. Leaving Phu Bai and driving through the adherent hamlets, there was an almost continuous stream of active humanity, mostly women and children observing us with suspicion. The conical straw head coverings, multicolored Ao Dais, black baggy pants, yokes balancing goods on their shoulders, and bare children’s bottoms were everywhere. Soon, we entered the lush green countryside with rice paddies in the foreground and mountainous terrain in the eastern distance.

Highway 1 north to Hue

Rice paddies along Highway 1

There were men irrigating their fields by peddling a bicycle-like mechanism to raise water from a trench over a berm, with multiple cuplike containers on a chain, into the rice paddy. Thickly muscled dark gray water buffalos easily advanced the single-bladed human-guided plows through the water-covered soggy dark earth. The women were seen bent over relentlessly planting the rice seedlings. Occasionally, a putrid stench filled one’s nostrils as the ubiquitous fertilizer night soil (human feces) fermented in the paddy. A young boy sat cross-legged on a water buffalo, observing us. What was he thinking? Was he a look out? Did he hate us? Would he help if we needed such? We had better be more vigilant; this is a war zone. Again, not stopping to create a better target was imperative, and all photos taken during the ride north have blurred foregrounds.

As the highway approached Hue, we passed a beautifully appointed Catholic cathedral, a partially built giant Buddha and a Sunoco gas station. The density of motor bikes, scooters, and their exhaust increased dramatically as we entered the city. The streets were busy and initially tree lined. The Perfume River was spotted with small covered water craft called sampans. On a tributary of the Perfume River, these boats were aligned along the shore and were floating homes to many Hue families. The women and children scurried about in colorful clothes. I was scolded by one woman for photographing her three frolicking children. I did not know it was bad luck to be captured on film. “GI Number 10,” she shouted while simultaneously shaking her fist at me. We quickly departed.

Boat people

As we approached the Citadel, we passed relics and canons from French colonial times. I recently read Embers of War by Frederic Logevall. The text begins at Versailles in 1919 where a young Ho Chi Minh pleaded for a unified Indochina. But French colonialism prevailed. An identical scenario followed after the second defeat of Germany in 1945.

President Truman was maneuvered into defending France’s colonial occupation in Indochina of Vietnam. Despite our military material and economic support of France’s subsequent war effort to thwart Ho Chi Minh’s desire of unification, they were defeated by him and his disciplined nationalistic fighters, the Viet Minh, in the early fifties. In May 1954, the final blow had come at Dien Bien Phu with the French defeat.

The Geneva Accords in 1954 ended France’s imperialism but maintained the division between North and South Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel. There now existed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to the North and the State of Vietnam to the South. The United States was then seduced in the early sixties to continue a war of choice, not necessity, that we officially lost in 1975 resulting in about 58,200 dead Americans. Ten thousand eight hundred twenty-four of those deaths were from nonhostile fire: accidents, suicides, murders, drownings.

The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) used as a command post the huge-layered edifice (see photo below), which now flew the South Vietnamese flag, during the 1968 Tet Offensive, to direct their fighting against the Americans.

Entering through one of the several portals into the Citadel grounds, we were presented with multiple buildings of various sizes with architecture reminiscent of those I saw in Japan with sweeping roof overhangs and definitively designed walls. The buildings were magnificent.

After a short drive, we arrived at the new medical school, which was structurally unfinished and abandoned. We toured the structure, and at the far end of the building in the distance, there was a huge area of rice paddies and the men and water buffalo plowing the earth.

What a contrast of modern with old world. The latter seemed to be triumphing.

The Citadel

It was getting late so we headed back to Phu Bai for we did not want to be in an enemy-infiltrated country at dark.

_______________

The American College of Surgeons administered the written portion of its certifying exam in October to all surgeons who recently completed their residency training. The army accommodated us by extracting Charlie and I from the 85th Evac and sending us to Saigon’s Third Field Hospital to take the exam. There was no such thing as a plane reservation. We went to Phu Bai Airport and hitchhiked a ride on a C-130 south to Da Nang, then another flight to Tan Son Nhat Airport. We were able to talk our way onto a vehicle for a ride into Saigon. After a restful night, we took the exam and were free to roam the streets of Saigon. As a precaution, I carried a .45 semi auto in a shoulder holster under my loose-fitting fatigue top. We joined other examinees and lunched in the Continental Palace at a table near the sidewalk. We were in fatigues. I remember to this day the penetrating look of evil-hatred directed at me by passing Vietnamese. What were we fighting for?

That evening, now in our sweaty and somewhat ripe fatigues, we dined at La Cave, a delightful French restaurant serving a roomful of playful Saigon-stationed American journalists, embassy officials, soldiers, civilian contractors, and foreign personnel who had no connection with the fighting and dying up country. I became angry. So Charlie and I went down to Tu Do Street and enjoyed the atmosphere. Around 2:00 a.m., a polite, skinny black MP approached us, saluted, and asked for our IDs and ration cards. We readily complied. He examined the documents, scratched his head, and excused himself and walked over to a jeepful of NFL linebackers with MP bands on their huge arms. I was glad we did not give the kid any lip. After a brief discussion, the young MP approached us, returned our documents, saluted and turned to leave. I called out, “Wait, why did you stop us?” He replied, “Frankly, sirs, you don’t look old enough or act like majors.” I took that as a compliment as I patted my love beads and teardrop broken peace sign.

Hitchhiking C-130 Hercules flights up and down country was time-consuming and tiring. Usually, all the airport benches were occupied, so one sat on the concrete floor. The regular army officers would have a fit when they saw a sleepy medical major sprawled out on the floor fast asleep.

We usually met others from the 85th Evac in transit. One of our duties was to guard the latrine door to avoid double occupancy when in use by one of our nurses.

On another trip to Saigon, I had a nice visit with Ed, the orthopedic surgeon friend from medical school, at his compound, the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh.

___________________

The C-130 medical evacuation flights from the 85th Evac were once or twice a week. The docs with and...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	27.8.2020
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
Themenwelt	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Notfallmedizin
ISBN-10	1-0983-2668-7 / 1098326687
ISBN-13	978-1-0983-2668-5 / 9781098326685

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