Transcript
The picture was taken 1968 during the 77 days siege of Khe Sanh, Vietnam. So in this picture, there is a Marine on a stretcher. I’m on the right side. And we were running down the runway and we were taking sniper fire from the hills. Anyway, the Marine that’s down, his head is resting on my medical bag. At the time, they had basically invented Krazy Glue to suture up wounds and things.
I sutured him up with an upholstery needle and stitched the skin back together with with Krazy Glue and bandaged him with a probably about eight inches worth of Band-Aids. And I was thinking, ‘Boy, poor nurse that's going to be working on him.’ In the picture you can see in my helmet there is the surgical scissors I had. And next to that is a half-used tube of Krazy Glue.
It was a tough day. We had flown into Khe Sanh several times before. This one was the toughest one we had. You know, in my situation, I got married before I went to Vietnam, so I had a little boy that was born when I was in Vietnam. You know, I was probably thinking, ‘okay, I'm going to die today, you know, and I hope my…my allotments paid up’ and all that stuff.
And when you are married, you you have a different, you know, a different mindset. It's not just about you. It's about what you leave behind.