18 Year Old Medic in Vietnam: Lawrence Araujo

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Private First Class Robert Earl Sechrist. Sechrist served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and pathfinder during World War II. As a Pathfinder, Secrist was one of the first men to parachute into France before the invasion of Normandy, tasked with guiding other Paratroopers to their landing zone.

Lawrence Araujo:

I was drafted, so it wasn't necessarily a choice. Draftees don't really get a lot of choices.

You gotta keep in mind, I was 18 years old when I was going through the training, and I guess the 18-year-olds don't absorb very well or at least remember very well. And so the retention of what was taught to me during the training, then going to Vietnam and everything being so new and was strange, there's a lot of things that they probably did teach me that I just didn't remember and I felt inadequate at times. Very inadequate. For example, the ABCs, airway, bleeding, and controlling shock, those things were re-emphasized only because you were faced with taking care of a casualty.

I guess every one of them you feel you over your head, it's just that sometimes some casualties were the extreme. You had some guys that were wounded, but their wounds were very minor, was shot or shrapnel through the arm, those type of things. But then I had my worst incident as far as taking care of a casualty was a fellow medic, and what made it even more emotional for me was that he had just taken my place in the recon platoon and he got killed by a short round of artillery. Artillery hit the tree and him and another captain got the brunt of the shrapnel. So myself and two other medics were working on him, and the wounds were just too devastating and there was just nothing we could do for him. We did everything we could, but he subsequently died.

There was previous incidents, but there's some that stick out more in your mind than others. You know the guy and there for the grace of God go I, because it was not more than a day or two that after he had taken my place. A day or two before, that could have easily been me. And not being selfish, but the fact that I knew him and he did take my place, and here I was kneeling in front of him and trying to do my best, myself and another guy trying to do our best to keep him alive, and there wasn't anything we could do.

It's just everything is going on in your head all at once. You're asking yourself questions, why, and you're trying to work on them and trying to remember to do the things that you need to do and they die. And watching them take their last breath and trying to keep them going, it's a lost feeling, obviously. You just can't. It just makes it hard. It's even hard to talk about now, and it happened over 30 years ago. My first KIA was a guy who was 19 years old, that guy was. He was from Chicago, and somebody that you slept right next to him and to watch him fall at your feet and then watch him go, it is in my mind forever. It's something you just don't forget. You don't forget.

Well, you don't deal with casualties every day, obviously, We were not in contact every day. There was a period in May of '68 that we were in contact almost every day, but this particular incident happened towards the late summer of '68 and we were moving in some pretty thick stuff, triple canopy jungle, and we were just moving from location to location, just basically doing a search and destroy.

And the point element had came across some enemy and got into contact and we were in a pocket, then we were having artillery dropped all around us, in the front and the back in the sides, and these guys were shooting from behind us and the round just came short and hit the tree, killed two people and wounded two more other guys. But I was in front of this element. These guys were actually in the rear part of the column and I was in the front, and all we heard was, "Medic. We need some medics back here," so myself and another guy crawled back or basically ran back. We were laying down, and we ran back and then we found the two guys, and so immediately started working on them. But there was not an open clearing, there's not sand dunes or any of that business. It was just walk your way through trees and where the guys are found, you work on them. They were theoretically in a safer environment than the guys up front, so we were able to work with them without getting shot at by the enemy, anyway. The walking, we obviously walked every place we went except for when we were being moved en masse from location to location.

There were times when we just didn't do a whole lot but sit and wait. The hardest part for medic, when the tension gets really high was when your particular platoon was a point element. You are usually with the platoon sergeant, platoon leader, and we walk the three-man point in a V-shape. And so what was hard for me as a medic and I know for the rest of those guys was making sure you knew where everybody were at, and try to remember and try to pay attention to where the guys are at. They're moving slow but they're still spread out, and then when the firing or the explosions start, you get down and then you start hoping you don't hear anything, hoping you don't hear for somebody yelling for medic. And when it does happen, you first try to locate where the individual's yelling is coming from and you make your way as best you can to the location. Sometimes it's calling, sometimes it's running and you try to move. If it's in a firing situation, you just try to move from cover to cover and get to them as quickly as you can. And obviously where they were at is not necessarily a safe location, so you try to immediately bring them back to where you can safely work on the soldiers. Those are usually the events that take place. A lot of times you would get help. I always carried two aid bags, my own weapon and everything else.

Now moving the injured soldier back, I only weighed 119 pounds when I was in Vietnam and usually the average guy weighed about maybe about 140, 150 pounds. And trying to move him and these guys are still equipping on and trying to move him back was always the hard part, especially when we were in triple canopy jungle. And the other part for me as a medic personally was the night times were always hard because we didn't have the night vision systems that we have now. We did have some then, but they were very primitive and they usually were used for other things, in work that you had to do close up. So was night times are always rough and never appreciated, and always looked forward to the dawn.

Well, first of all, usually the infantry guys don't get a choice on who they get, neither in replacements nor in medics. And usually it's on a one for one exchange. The guy I replaced had been wounded and was subsequently Medevacced out, but the thing is they needed a replacement, I was sent in and that was it. I went to Charlie company and the platoon didn't have a choice. I was sent. I lived with them and then stayed with them. There was only me. There was only one medic per platoon. The average platoon size was maybe 20, 25 people, obviously under-strength, but that's what we had. And there was only one. These guys counted on you for everything. I would carry candy, I would carry cigarettes, and I don't smoke. I never have smoked, and I would carry extra water because maybe I sound like a mule train but the thing is, when those guys needed it, I wanted them to have it. So the idea that I was it. I would be the guy that would nag them to take the malaria pills. I was their mama, basically, when it'd come right down to it. Nag them to take their boots off and dry their feet so the jungle rot didn't get to their feet, and try to make them take care of themselves as best they could. They didn't always appreciate it because they never saw the consequences because we just tried to prevent it. But there was nobody else that they would turn to when it came to medical care, both preventative and to react to their concerns.

So even if nowadays where they have what they call a combat lifesaver program where the combat arms individual is trained in skills more than just first aid, they do that then now and it does help the survival rate, but it still doesn't replace what the medic does. The medic, he's a social worker. He's the individual that they will tell things that they'll not tell anybody else at times, and so the criticality is there. Morale speaking, at night when I was in the recon platoon, we would split. We had two squads and every other night one of the squads would be on ambush. Now, there was only one medic, so the medic was out every night. So it got to the point where even though we were authorized to in the recon platoon, we only had me. There was a small element where they went, I had to go, if for no other reason because I know they needed me and they wanted me there.

We had just gotten into an area, the battalion was setting up in place and it was a hot LZ. We had walked into a situation and there was contact immediately and we were there. We had gone in there to tie in with an armored cab unit and we were waiting on them to come in.

Meanwhile, we got hit. One of the guys that was hit, we actually had the physician working on him. The doctor was there and two other guys was working on him, the rest of us was just taking care of business. And the last thing this guy told the doc and the other medic was, "Tell my mom and dad I love them," and obviously that gets around. So that last message type of thing is always difficult to listen to, but it does happen. And I've had guys give me letters, "If something happens to me, mail this." Fortunately enough, it only happened one time, and it was pretty easy to do because you just stick it in the mail drop bag and that was it, and nothing that you had to write or anything else like that.

Now it's the decompression thing after the event. Instead of emotionally trying to deal with situations that you remember, now at least when soldiers and medics are involved in an event, they can get the mental hygiene individuals in there and work with them now. It never happened over there. Absolutely never happened, and there were down times. We had significant down times where we brought back through the rear or put in an area where they were less likely to have contact, but there was absolutely no decompression. There was none of that, and I think if that did was available back then, I think we would've a lot less post-traumatic stress disorders than we have. There's just no way around it. And I think that's maybe one of the significant lessons learned out of Vietnam, was that reacting to stressful situations will prevent problems from occurring or minimizing, at least.

I guess in May of '68 for me personally. The recon platoon was attached to the 11th ACR, the 11th Armored Cadre Regiment, and we were doing most of their dismounts there, night patrols, ambushes and everything else. But the platoon I was with, the recon platoon, we had about 22 people. In less than a 30-day period, it went from 22 people, including myself, down to 10 people. We had lost one killed and the rest were wounded. That to me was in a period where, "Hey, somebody help us work through this thing." Most of the guys were not killed, but the fact that we went from an under-strength platoon to a significantly under-strength platoon and there was nobody else. The hardest part for me was when they came to pick us up, I had to go back and make three trips just to load personal gear onto the airport and to the helicopter to get it out of there. And I was the only one sitting on the helicopter because they sent in five helicopters to pick up 11 guys, 10 guys. What sense did that make? Because they didn't know. They didn't know. Nobody tracked it. And then when we did get back with the battalion, they realized how under-strength and how battered we were and nobody dealt with it. Absolutely none.

What they've done is they've established mental health cells to go into the battalions and go in and deal with the situation then. They usually are not organic to the unit. The medics now maybe are more aware of post-traumatic stress disorders and maybe are told on how to recognize somebody that may be demonstrating adaptable problems or whatever. And it's not so much how the medic deals it now, it's the support mechanism that is now in place that wasn't there. It's just different.

I spent a year and a half in Vietnam and I went from working in an emergency room of a hospital to being discharged within two weeks. It was that quick. There no transition period. There was no, "We're going to help you get out of this situation," you were just let go. You were just dumped on society, and then they wonder why we had problems. But I guess that the transition from out of uniform, back into uniform could have probably done a hell of a lot better and I think would've prevented a lot of problems. It was like going to Vietnam, nobody told you what to expect, or they told you, but what they told you just it didn't sink in. So taking the uniform off after two years and a year and a half of that in the combat zone, I think the Army could have done a whole lot better than what they did.

I went to Vietnam about two weeks after Tet, 1968. And at the end of the 1968, knowing when I would rotate back out, I would only have about six months left on active duty because I was initially drafted. 1969, '68, there was a lot of anti-war activity going on. It was not necessarily the best time to be in uniform. In fact, there were people that were told not to wear the uniforms. So for a lot of us, in fact, it made sense just to stay where we're at. The Army gave us a unit of choice. We could extend our tour in Vietnam and choose where we wanted to go, so basically, that's what I did. I extended my tour and I chose the 93rd Evac Hospital in Long Bhin and worked there in the emergency room, what they call pre-op at that time, and that's where I worked. So I was able to see what happened when we loaded the guys in the medevac helicopters in the field and unloaded the helicopters when they came into the hospital.

It made me feel good because I learned a lot about the casualty care and I also saw some docs and nurses do some amazing things, and it reinforced in my mind, I guess, that once I knew they were on the helicopter and got to the hospital, that the resources was there to take care of them. And I think our survival rate kind of pretty much speaks for itself, but it just brought it home. It made sense to me. Now I understand. And so guys, just take care of them as best you can and get them on the helicopter and get them out. So it was a good learning experience for me.

The soldiers in the field, the infantry guys or combat arm guys don't have anybody else and if you don't do your best for them, they'll let you know. They'll isolate you. But a medic that does his job and does well for them, those guys will go out of their way for them. They'll do whatever they can for. I guess that's emotionally rewarding. These guys call you Doc because that's all you got, that's all they got. It's one of those things that I'm not sorry for being there, I wouldn't wish it on anybody else, and God bless them that they keep doing it.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Lawrence Araujo.

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