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ARMY
The Army’s involvement in Vietnam began in 1955, when President Dwight S. Eisenhower sent military advisors there to assist South Vietnam’s then-President Ngo Dihn Diem. President John F. Kennedy increased the number of those advisors, as did President Lyndon B. Johnson. Following the Gulf of Tonkin Airborne Brigade, arrived in country in May 1965. The U.S. military presence continued to expand, exceeding 530,000 personnel in 1968, the majority of whom were Army.
Army units engaged in combat operations from the border with North Vietnam to the Mekong Delta south of Saigon, and from the east coast west to the border with Cambodia. There were incursions into Cambodia (1970) and into Laos (1971). All U.S. combat units had left South Vietnam during 1973. All Americans had left when the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the embassy in April 1975.
These years gave us a new vocabulary of names, places and events (Tan Son Nuht, DMZ, Huey, LZ, First Cav, Westmoreland, Body Count, Tet, Hue, My Lai, Vietnamization, Kent State).
There are more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial. I had the honor of serving with six of these soldiers.
Ted Kestner
Ted Kestner, U.S. Army Medical Corps, July 30, 1969 – July 29, 1971; 286th Medical Detachment, 48th Assault Helicopter Company, Ninh Hoa, RVN, November 2, 1969 – November 1, 1970.
Robert G. Altschuler
Robert G. Altschuler
I enlisted in the Berry Plan and was informed during my internship that I would be reporting for active duty in September 1968 and then be going to Vietnam. I started at Fort Sam Houston
I arrived in Vietnam in mid-December of 1968 after the Tet
at Dong Ha along the DMZ as a battalion surgeon. After three
months, I was transferred to the 101st Airborne Division as a
around the A Shau Valley and places like “Hamburger Hill.”
My commendations include the Bronze Star Medal. Other than non-complicated wounds, I treated a lot of STDs, skin infections, and various forms of dysentery. I even diagnosed occasional malaria. Aside from getting shot at, probably the best part of my assignment was the opportunity to travel. I went to places like the old capital city of Hue, Cam Ranh Bay, Da Nang, Saigon, Pleiku, and the central highlands to observe a Montagnard tribe. On my “R&Rs,” I went to Hawaii and Hong Kong. On my return to the Hospital in San Francisco.
Bob Altschuler
Ralph E. Burdick
During my time in the Army, I was neither a Delawarean nor a doctor. I was drafted shortly after graduation from college with a B.A. in English Literature that earned me a place in the infantry. After basic and infantry training at Fort Lewis, WA,
I was assigned as an infantryman to the 194th M.P. Company
in Vietnam. Our task was to secure and defend an isolated microwave relay site in the middle of a rice paddy outside Bac Lieu in the Mekong Delta. After 14 months, I separated from active duty as a sergeant with the usual “gewgaws” on return to Oakland.
I enrolled in Ithaca College and earned an M.S. in Audiology and got a job as a Clinical Audiologist/Lecturer in Audiology at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM). After three years in a sound booth, I enrolled as a student at PCOM, graduating as a Doctor of Osteopathy in 1979.
Ralph Burdick
Allen L. Davies
Completed a General Surgery
Residency in 1966,
and was drafted into
the Berry Plan. “Don’t need you now” ... go ahead with fellowship
in Thoracic Cardio Vascular Surgery at Mass General and in England. Activated, December 1967. London, Philadelphia, Fort Sam Houston — all in four weeks and then off
to the “land of green
Allen L. Davies
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Del Med J | November/December 2018 | Vol. 90 | No. 8
