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These stories are true, but the names may be The Central Highlands were a hotbed of combat activity during the '69-'70 period. As the only Evac hospital serving that area, the 71st was, at times, a very busy place. Serving the inland portions of II Corps, we saw wounded from Ben Het, Kontum, Dak To, Plei Me, Plei Djerang, Ban Me Thuot, LZ's Albany, X-Ray, English, and many, many more, in addition to casualties from fire bases, and SF camps. On one occasion, we had more than eighty seriously wounded dropped on us by two Chinook helicopters. That made us the busiest surgical hospital in Vietnam for the three days it took to complete caring for those wounded. We worked 'round the clock, stopping only to occasionally eat and sleep, until the job was done. I've always been proud to have been a part of that great team. One night we received a wounded NVA soldier. He'd been badly shot-up in a firefight along the Cambodian border with some SF troops about a week before. He evaded capture after that battle, but had been captured the day before we got him. He'd been shot in the head, twice. One round had hit him high on the side of the head, leaving a small entrance wound and about a 2" exit wound, exposing the brain surface in the exit wound. The other round had entered his left cheek, hitting a couple of molars on his lower jaw, shattering them and spraying the mouth with bone and tooth fragments. It hit the jawbone, breaking it and knocking out some more teeth, then exiting the right cheek. His face was badly swollen and he had burns on the face and head, with scabs covering much of the left side of his head. There was some pus oozing from some of the wounds. He had some other wounds on his extremities and trunk, but I don't remember the details of those. As Con Roberts (nurse anesthetist extraordinaire and all-around nice guy from Texas) was working around the head, getting ready to intubate him, he had the neck hyperextended and was using the speculum to retract the tongue, preparatory to putting in the breathing tube. He stopped, and stared into the mouth. Since the patient had already had the muscle blocker and couldn't breathe on his own, he had to go forward with the intubation. Once the tube was set in place and the gases flowing into the patient, Con said, "You've gotta see this!" and shined the operating light into the patients' mouth. As we all strained to see what he was talking about, we could see some movement in some areas of the shattered tissue. Then it became clear what we were looking at....MAGGOTS...dozens of them, squirming away in his mouth. After the initial shock faded, someone got busy plucking them out and dropping them into a kidney basin (kidney-shaped basin about 10" long). Once they were all cleaned out, the oral surgeon went to work. He had to extract some teeth and wire the jaw so it would heal properly. I don't think he wired it shut, but drilled holes through the jawbone and wired the break, but don't remember for certain. Once the facial surgery was completed, we started on the brain stuff. Once again, we found maggots in this guys' brain. They were busily squirming in his head. It was a pretty gross sight, but the tissue was actually in good shape, considering it was about a week post-injury. Maggots are actually good for something...they only eat dead tissue, so they'd been busy cleaning up this guys' wounds. He was in the 71st for quite awhile and we did a skin graft to his skull to close the hole left in his head. I think he actually recovered quite well, though he probably had a hard time eating. During most of my tour of duty at the 71st, our OR supervisor didn't allow us to take pictures of our cases. However, Major Joyce King, OR Supervisor during my final 3-4 months allowed it. It's only for that reason that we have any photographic evidence of some of these cases. Major King was a very nice person and I appreciated her greatly. She especially appreciated the enlisted personnel and was our champion on more than one occasion against the occasionally mindless bureaucracy. I have several slides of this particular case and will get them up on the site as soon as I can get them scanned. While the pictures are gruesome to look at, they also illustrate the resilience of the human body and its' ability to recover from awful wounds with proper medical care. Story by Steven Streeper - Copyright, 2007 Comments: E-mail me Thanks for visiting ...SP5 Steven Streeper
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