The Heart and Soul of A Combat Medic

The Heart and Soul of A Combat Medic by Hilger, Dave. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781735251981.

After having lived a long life as a husband, father, and grandfather with many blessings, I’m still trying to adjust to this safe, self-centered world, a world where our fellow Americans are more interested in their own comfortable lives than to have any concern for our “world of hurt.” It’s beyond any of us to explain what happened to us after being a survivor of a world that the protected will never know! To quote a brother from his book, My Story, Gary Lyles tells of his time in Alpha Company, Third Battalion, 21st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade in 1968, “not in a billion years would my family or friends ever imagine what I saw, what I did, what I had to live through!” I have never been so honored, so humbled, no more certain of my job than when I was assigned to the 196th Light Infantry Brigade as a combat medic in 1967 in I Corp, four months before the Tet Offensive of 1968. The absolute crowning moment was when I stepped off the resupply chopper on Hill 348 (LZ Center) and became a “Doc” for Charlie Company, First Platoon, Third Battalion, 21st Infantry, the “Charlie Tigers.” In all the many years since I came home from Vietnam in September of 1968, I have been driven to tell my story in a way that would represent all my brother combat medics and Navy corpsmen who will never be able to tell their story: those who died so valiantly and unselfishly for their fellow soldiers, and for those who will not or cannot ever speak of those terrible days. I sincerely hope that you, the reader, can feel and understand how we not only had great respect for these men, but a grave responsibility to always be there for them. They had become our family! This left us open to carry a lifetime of hurt, regret, and soul-searching pain from when it wasn’t humanly possible to save their precious young lives, which in turn connected us forever to their “gold star” families. I have always felt greatly honored to have been able to be there for them and to offer my life to save them. Having been tied so closely to their lives, I know I’ll be there for these combat “grunts” until my very last breath.