Tag: War and Veterans
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Stamping out preventive medicine
Michael Ellman Wilmette, Illinois, United States Captain Michael and son at the medal ceremony, 1968. In 1965, I became the Chief Preventive Medicine Officer of the United States Southern Command. One of the eleven unified commands of the Department of Defense, the Southern Command was headquartered in the Panama Canal Zone and represented our…
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A history of military medical services
George Porter Newcastle, UK Capsarii depicted on Trajan’s Column. From “The Roman Army Medical Service,” Malton Museum. CC BY-SA 4.0. Hippocrates once said that “war is the only proper school of the surgeon.” War is an undeniable driver of medical innovation, and the structure, procurement and philosophy of military medical services often reflect the…
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The fall
Max Kutch Hanover, New Hampshire The author (face shown) with his team. From the author’s personal collection. Gazing through my night vision goggles (NVGs) at the green outlines of my teammates, we began to silently enter our sniper hide. My breathing labored under the heavy weight of my battle gear and the thick, humid…
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Comments on Dr. James Franklin’s article on George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War
Stuart Poticha Chicago, Illinois, United States In 1966 as a young surgeon who had just completed his residency, I was drafted into the United States Army. Following basic training at Fort Sam Houston, I was sent to Vietnam, where I became the Chief of Surgery of the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Cu Chi. The…
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Atrocities in Asia: Japan’s infamous Unit 731
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Bayonet practice, wherein Japanese soldiers used dead Chinese for targets. photographed by an Associated Press photographer near Tientsin. Date, 5 September 1937. Source, LIFE, Oct 11, 1937. page 30. Via Wikimedia In 1931 the Japanese army occupied the province of Manchuria in north-east China and continued to invade and occupy…
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Prisoners on leave: Vietnam veterans and the Golden Age Western
Edward Harvey Missoula, Montana, United States Vietnam War – Hue, 17 Feb 1968 – US Marines Approaching Movie Theater Displays – Photo by Nik Wheeler. Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS. Via Flickr. “I think we all died a little in that damn war.” – The Outlaw Josey Wales “So…what have you been up to?” When…
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African American contract doctors in the military
Edward McSweegan Kingston, Rhode Island, United States African American Soldiers in Cuba, 1898, Wikipedia In the spring of 1898, the United States rushed into a war with Spain but lacked adequate troops, training, weapons, transport, supplies, food, landing craft, and medical personnel. One deficit that could be corrected before the shooting started was the…
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Battle of Gettysburg
Reed Brockway Bontecou (1824-1907) was an American surgeon from Troy, New York, who in 1846 made a trip up the Amazon river to collect flora and fauna for the local natural history museum, and whose surgical feats include the first successful ligation of a traumatic aneurysm of the axillary artery in America (1857) and the…