American Assn of Navy Hospital Corpsmen: In case there was any doubt

This is ONE of the many precepts that the Corps has, that generates my admiration:

By JIM KEITH

SPECIAL TO THE SUN HERALD

-- It was a bad day.

I was a young Marine and I was bleeding to death in a putrid rice paddy in the middle of a wretched place that had no name. Hornets were buzzing all around me it seemed. But no, the buzzing was from a rain of bullets directed at my unit.

Mortar rounds began to fall everywhere around us while we were trying to fight through the muck of the rice paddy that our small company of Marines had been trying to cross. We were in really bad shape.

A Marine called for help. "Corpsman!" he yelled.

As my consciousness began to fade, I moaned for Mama and Jesus as my life was draining away. Suddenly a face appeared over me.

It was a U.S. Navy corpsman.

He dragged me out of the rice paddy, over a protected dike and performed the miracle that only those angels of mercy can do. He saved my life.

The bad day faded into the darkness of a bad night.

There was no airlift med-evac for us, for we came to realize our company of about 100 had intruded into a regiment of North Vietnamese Army soldiers, about 1,000. We spent the night in a desperate fight. The dawn brought reinforcements, and the fight continued. Three helicopters and their brave crews were shot down by the NVA while attempting to evacuate the wounded. Finally, though, other crews managed to fly through the battle and extract us.

Some of us are alive today because of their heroism. God bless them.

That Navy corpsman, the guy who saved my life, was a black man, risking all for a white Southerner. He just kept smiling at me through it all.

The deafening sound of war drowned out all reasonable speech, but to this day, I still recall his unbelievably mellow voice telling me not to worry. "I'll take care of you," he said. "You're gonna be just fine.

Yeah right. Like I believed him. But he was a truth teller.

He was wounded himself while dragging me back to the safety of a dike where he turned me over to another corpsman. Then he turned around and went back into the fight to get another Marine, and another. Navy corpsmen do that. They are heroes to all the sailors and Marines they serve. Until I die, I will salute them. From a former Marine, believe me, there is no greater praise. During that bad night I saw him twice more. He came crawling through the ditch that was my refuge and gave me morphine. Hell was all around us and this young man was as calm as if he were making rounds in a hospital ward stateside. I never saw him again. I don't even know his name.

I was a young Marine from the Deep South and this was 1966. I had been raised in an environment where the "N" word was commonplace. I can remember as a kid sitting in front of the "white only" signs on the bus and on the trolley in New Orleans. Even worse, when we kids decided to be as nasty as only adolescents can be, we would move the signs farther back on the bus so the blacks would have to be compressed at the rear. It was what we were taught to do.

On that day in Vietnam, however, when the corpsman appeared, I didn't say to him, "No, thanks, I think I'll wait for a white corpsman." Or, "go to the back of the rice paddy."

Nor did he say to me, "Sorry, I save only black Marines."

I am alive today because of that Navy corpsman and the remarkable heroism that he displayed. His valor taught me great lessons about race that I have not forgotten. I no longer see things in black and white, and life makes more sense. It doesn't have to take a rice paddy on a bad day to get your attention. It takes only a minute or two of intelligent thought.

Jim Keith was a U.S. Marine combat correspondent in Vietnam. He lives in Long Beach.