A Soldier’s Tale
“You ever work with vets?” asks the young man sitting across from me in the hospital waiting room.
He’s been sitting there all morning. So have I. Since 5:30 am, my father-in-law, age eighty-eight, has been undergoing surgery to remove a tumor in his lung. The surgeons just sent word that they’ve finished, and my wife and her mother have gone to the post-op room to see him.
Waiting for them to return, my wife’s sister and I have been talking about her son, who’s thinking of joining the Air Force.
“Warn him about the recruiters and their shiny promises,” I say. “Tell him they’re all a bunch of liars.”
“That’s for damn sure,” the man says.
Basic Training
George Kamajian as told by Bob Fedor ~
I’m an old family doctor. Seen much and forgot more. Life has taught me that we touch our patient’s lives for a moment, a season or a reason–and sometimes with unforeseen consequences.
I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1968, when I was nineteen, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam caught the American military off-guard, and the Pentagon began frantically drafting new troops.
My lottery number was low. I knew my civilian days were numbered, but I didn’t want to go to Vietnam to be a trained killer. It wasn’t in my nature, then or now.
My War Story
Marc Tumerman
My practice is in a small rural Wisconsin town just down the road from a large military base. I see soldiers pretty regularly these days; they stay here for several weeks of pre-deployment training before shipping off to Iraq. They come from all over the country–men and women of various ages, some single, some married and with families. Their health-care needs aren’t too different from those of my civilian patients: maternity care, chronic illness management and the usual scrapes and bruises. I like having them on my schedule; their Boston accents and Georgia drawls make a pleasant change from my neighbors’ familiar, made-for-radio Midwestern monotone.
I don’t dwell much on what these soldiers do for a living. I do my best to take