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Thanksgiving Day, 1968

John N. Baldwin, MD, FACS
24th Evacuation Hospital
Long Binh, May 1968 - 1969

The rain fell in Viet Nam as the Southern monsoon made its presence felt all over the countryside, from the rock and rubble-strewn hillsides of Dak To, to the muddy rice paddies of the Mekong Delta. The wetness pervaded everything; your jungle fatigues, your boots, your sleeping bag, your equipment and your very spirit. You could not escape it.

During the noon hours, the sun appeared in a yellow brilliance to transform it all into a steamy morass of tangled trucks, helicopters, wooden buildings and humanity; and later on, before the next rain, the winds swept in from the west to blow dust and red dirt over everything, as if in an attempt to cover it over.

It was the afternoon before Thanksgiving in November 1968, and I was a major in the United States Army. More specifically, I was a thirty four-year old, fully-trained cardiovascular surgeon, with a wife and three children back in San Francisco, for whom the draft notice had come directly to Operating Room #6 at the University Hospital. The circulating nurse had taken a yellow telegram from the orderly and had announced, “It's a telegram for you, Dr. Baldwin.” I remember looking up from the non-beating heart into which I was suturing a new mitral valve, the only sound in the room the steady throb of the heart-lung machine. I knew full-well what that envelope contained, and let her read the classic opening line from President Johnson, which began, “Greetings.”

I had been at the 24th Evacuation Hospital near Bien Hoa, since May, and was chief of chest and vascular surgery, and after the first two weeks of disbelief and homesickness, had settled into the routine of over one thousand casualties a month, and an average of twelve major operations a day, nightly mortar attacks and constant outgoing artillery. I had seen it all: rocket wounds, Claymore mine injuries, gunshot wounds to everywhere, punji stick gangrene and napalm burns. We thought we were pretty good, and we were. Our place prided itself in saying, “If you get to the 24th, we will get you home.”

The radio crackled in the surgical quonset. A chopper was bringing in four American wounded. Halfway through my year, just six months more to go, I thought, as I got up, finished my morning coffee and headed over to the emergency tent. In the distance, the “thwap-thwap-thwap” of an evac Huey could be heard coming closer, then landing, blowing dust through the open flaps and shortly thereafter the litters were brought in by our corpsmen and placed on individual tables and triage begun. None of the wounded, all GI's, made a sound. Four teams of nurses, doctors and corpsmen went to work, cutting off clothes, drawing blood, starting IV's and assessing priorities.

I was summoned almost immediately to attend to the most urgent of those casualties, a young man, aged 21, named Bruce Clark, an E-4, who had been in-country for just a week, and while training with live hand-grenades from a pit trench with several of his company, a soldier, two down from him, had dropped a grenade in the pit, and everyone froze. They were too green to know they had four seconds to pick it up and throw it, and to frightened to move. The resulting explosion killed four, and severely wounded Clark. My initial rapid assessment was difficult, because he was covered with mud, torn uniform and blood, but it was obvious he needed a quick trip to the OR if he was to live.

Four hours later, with the combined talents of the “A Team” anesthesiologist, ophthalmologist, orthopedist, neurosurgeon, and myself, Bruce Clark entered the recovery room. Swathed in bandages from head to his knees, this once-handsome high school athlete from Cumberland, Rhode Island had been “saved”, but reduced to one arm, no legs, no eyes, and a profusion of tubes and wires going in and out, and painful incisions in his abdomen and left chest. Our angels of mercy, the army nurse corps, surrounded him with love and care. As the afternoon turned into evening, and the evening into night, casualties kept on coming in from action near Chu Lai, and we operated until they slacked off about noon on Thanksgiving Day.

In the mess hall, turkey with all the trimmings was laid out in grand style, but I was too tired to eat. I went back and made rounds on the dozen or so kids that I had operated upon over those last twenty-four hours, and made a special stop to see Bruce Clark. I was the one who had to tell him that he would never see again, and that walking would be very, very difficult. He never asked me, “Then why did you let me live?” In the weeks that followed, Bruce Clark required several more operations, and incredible amounts of daily care to survive. He endured pain most men could never understand, all in the inky blackness of his sightlessness. We became quite close; indeed, he became bonded to me and dependent upon me. I became his big brother and his dad. I was there when the general pinned the Purple Heart on his pillow, and when it was finally safe for him to make the 6,000 mile journey to the 249th Field Hospital in Tokyo, my commander allowed me to accompany him. I was his contact with reality on the big C-141 Starlifter as it winged its way across the South China Sea, carrying Bruce and one hundred other American wounded farther and farther from the killing fields. The night sky was incredible and the full moon over Mt. Fujiama made the war seem like a dream in a land long ago.

I bade him a tearful farewell on January 5, 1969 in a clean, sunny well-appointed ward with the finest American nurses and doctors that ever were. He, the soldier, just a kid; I, now thirty-five, the surgeon, his companion on the road to recovery. “I can't cry, Major Baldwin,” he said. “My tear makers must have been taken out with my eyes.” “I know,” I said, unashamedly weeping as I hugged him goodbye, knowing that we would never meet again in this world.

I returned to Viet Nam, finished my tour, and came home to a strange country that did not understand where I had been or what we had done; much less why we were still doing it. My family and I visited the Viet Nam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., in 1976. I was shocked to find his name, on panel 34W, line 47. “Ground casualty, died, accidental self-destruction, January 21, 1969” said the inscription in the book-like directory. This impersonal epitaph referred to the dropped grenade but could not penetrate the subsequent suffering and unexpected death in the final safety of the 249th General. I ran my fingers across his name engraved in the cold black marble….BRUCE A CLARK. What could have happened? An infection I had missed? A blood clot to the lungs? Some hidden fragment that became a catastrophe? Again the tears came, this time enough for both of us. I turned to hold my wife and said, “Maybe that was the best ending there could have been for him. I just don't know.”

Bruce was only one of many. A young man who never got to own a car, go to college, propose marriage, have children, take kids to a Sunday doubleheader at Fenway Park or any of the thousands of things we all take for granted. Devastated by the loss of their son, the Clarks moved from Cumberland shortly thereafter and I have never been able to find them to tell them of the bravery of their son and how I loved him.

And then there is now. Bruce and the nearly two thousand American soldiers that I had the privilege to operate upon remain indelibly written on my heart. Somewhere between that emotional day of farewell on the ward in Tokyo and several years later, it became apparent to me that my life must stand for something more than the ordinary, if the sacrifice of the Bruce Clarks was to have real meaning. It was their example of courage, bravery and unquestioning devotion, which inspired me to become the person that I am now. In honor of their memory, I have tried to elevate my standards of absolute integrity to meet their expectations. I renewed my faith in Jesus Christ. I treasure life, children, honesty, valor, duty, country and family; all things that Bruce and the 57,000 other names on the Wall never got to practice or experience. I cannot dishonor their sacrifice by living my own life in a manner unworthy of their suffering. I would ask all of you to consider their incredible gift to you as you go about your daily lives.

This poem by W.H. Auden, which is inscribed by the grave of the Gallant Warrior (Great Britain's Unknown) in Westminster Abbey, says it best:

“To save your world, you asked this man to die,
Would this man, could he see you now, ask, “Why?”


The preceding story is part of this planned publication:

What Do You Stand For?
A story in which you were inspired by another.
One hundred selected Americans offer their personal experiences:
to be published by Random House in 2002.
Compiled and edited by James Lichtman


Updated: July 7, 2003