Vietnam Medic: What Am I Doing Here?

"Vietnam Medic"is a low key, understated yet serious story of Cliff Roberson's experience as a combat medic with the First Infantry Division in 1967. It is presented in straight diary style, making for fast reading. Touching pieces are the author's efforts to stay in touch with the folks back home, his growing attachment, through the mail, to the nice girl that became his wife and the worry that he won't "screw up" when patching up a buddy while under fire. The descriptions of Army routine on the edge of combat are poignant. It brought back memories of my own waiting for that replacement and especially of my fervent obsession with my "short timer"s calendar! Most enlightening is the author's references to non-combat casualties. Medics had to treat them too and they were a huge problem over there. VM is not helped by the quality of the 30+ year old photos but they do personalize the text. The layout / format of VM are attractive and the map of the Saigon-Di An-Lai Khe area of Vietnam is actually useful! Few military maps are. The more I think about VM, the more I like it. Once again, someone has composed a Vietnam story with yet another fresh perspective. On that basis alone, VM is highly recommended.

Vietnam Medic is a simple, personal, and poignant account of a young man's coming of age with the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Infantry in Vietnam in 1967.Using a personal diary style, infused with a naive and gentle humor, the author recounts his day to day existence in a war far from home and family. He persistently wonders why HE was there in the thick of "the defining event of a generation." The understated answer emerges as he tells of his involvement in the war--tending to the wounded, terrified by mortars, and even by his possible lack of medical competence, and confronted by death as a matter of fact in fire fights and sorties. He made a difference then, simply by being there and doing his duty with dedication and honor; and in doing so, he was profoundly changed.This narrative is personal history at its best; a simple retelling of the intimate events of war, which by its very nature is intense, exotic, and mostly incomprehensible. The author is most evocative precisely on this personal level--letting us see and understand the vicissitudes, fear, boredom, doubts, and camaraderie of the Vietnam War. In the end, the author rightly assumes he speaks for many Vietnam vets when he says, "I'm proud I served in Vietnam, but I know I could never stand idly by and let my country get mixed up in another war like Vietnam." -----Robert C. Haynes, Maj., Medical Corps (1977-1989)