AN ARMY MEDIC OF HONOR IN VIETNAM

The First Infantry Division was sending up flares to squeeze more light in the jungle.

As a medic I stood for part of the solution. I had come to this place to save a life, not take one.

Nobody sees war like a medic. Because nobody carried the lamp like us latter-day Nightingales.

THE EDGE OF MADNESS

In a world of trenches, theirs narrow to creases and crevices, where skilled hands often reclaim badly wounded troopers from death’s grip, or prevent others from slipping across the edge of madness.

In Vietnam, Gerald H Carter’s own lamp seemed to have had a pilot light for a wick. And Lord knows how many souls he saved during the 13 months he trolled the U.S. Army First Infantry Division’s area of operations as a medic with an armored reconnaissance unit.

Carter operated in the gut of the war, the Iron Triangle area north of Saigon. And because the other side of the war zone held a crafty and disciplined enemy in the Viet Cong, the unit’s mission was to make contact, then call in the bombers and Army gunships.

My First Casualty

We were rolling through the jungle in Phu Loi with tanks and armored personnel carriers on a mission to recover a downed pilot.