{"id":201,"date":"2018-02-06T09:56:26","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T14:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/?p=201"},"modified":"2018-02-07T10:16:50","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:16:50","slug":"they-call-me-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/2018\/02\/06\/they-call-me-doc\/","title":{"rendered":"They Call Me Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Every Marine loves his company corpsman — the guy with the bandages, malaria pills, battle dressings and medications.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But the corpsman also often carries a weapon, and many are killed in action.<\/p>\n

Bruce Gant joined the Navy in 1965 and trained in medicine for the better part of three years before shipping out to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

He was assigned to the 2nd battalion, 5th Marines.<\/p>\n

Now retired from the insurance business, he returned for the 50th anniversary of the beginning of his 16 months in country.<\/p>\n

“I got off a chopper at Phu Bai and never saw anything like what I saw in an operating room,” he said.<\/p>\n

He had arrived two weeks into the Battle of Hue and the Phu Bai airbase — a 30 minute drive south of Hue –was crowded with badly wounded soldiers and with body bags.<\/p>\n

“That was a baptismal of fire,” he said. “Then I was going to Hue to help medevac casualties, and on the third day there I became a casualty.”<\/p>\n

Mr. Gant, who lives in Titusville, Fla., said he was just 20, making life and death decisions during triage.<\/p>\n

He tears up remembering his decisions, usually reactions, without time to think, and the losses he had to accept.<\/p>\n

“It’s later when you have time to think that it hits,” he said. “In Hue City there were 147 Marines killed and 17 and 18 were corpsmen.”<\/p>\n

On the bus during this tour, Mr. Gant — who wore a ballcap that read “Corpsman, they call me doc,” passed out St. Christopher’s necklaces to everyone and circulated a bottle of motion sickness pills as we snaked around looping mountain roads and switchbacks.<\/p>\n

During one stop, George Haught, of Monaca, put his arm around Mr. Gant and said, “This is the most important guy in your unit, your corpsman.”<\/p>\n

After his service, Mr. Gant said he considered going to medical school, “but I don’t know…”<\/p>\n

Too many reminders of war?<\/p>\n

He nodded. “Yeah, maybe I just didn’t want to go there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every Marine loves his company corpsman — the guy with the bandages, malaria pills, battle dressings and medications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2018\/02\/vietnam_25-1024x768.jpg","fifu_image_alt":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9BZRz-3f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/dispatches-from-vietnam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}