Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 3 (V2) Read Online Free Page A

chicken with a yellow background indicating cowardice.  Third, wing aircraft had to wear the ZZ tail code designating them as the lowest wing in the U.S. Air Force.
    “We’re going to fix it.  One way or the other we are going to redeem the 18th.”  West told me.
    Major West, for better or worse, was making it his personal mission to break the chicken patch curse.  I knew they was a danger in trying to prove anything to yourself or others.  Officers, in my experience, find their defeats in their personal crusades.  It looked like West had found his.  Unfortunately he was dragging me along with him.
     

Airman First Class Holly Kennedy
    March AFB, California
    POW Reception Area
     
    Military Medical buildup began shortly after American troops began moving west across the Pacific.  Deployment orders went out to the hospital ships Comfort and Mercy.  By late September they were on station and ready in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Once the POWs were released they would be sent there first and depending on their medical and mental condition moved on to the March Air Force Base stateside facilities.
    As one of more than 2,600 active-duty Air Force and Navy men and women who were deployed stateside to provide medical care to returning POWs in Jungle Storm I was integrated into a system that started on the ground at the point friendly forces found living POWs.  It required an additional 11,000 naval medical reservists that were recalled to active duty, most of which were used to fill large staffing gaps at joint military medical facilities whose staffs were cut to the bone to support Jungle Storm.
    A step by step treatment process based on a simple ladder system had been devised for returning POWs once they had been found.  They would be immediately treated by corpsman in the field, the sick and injured personnel would be identified and then quickly moved up the medical treatment ladder as required.  It was assumed all the POWs would require medical treatment of some kind.  Then battalion aid stations would provide POW patients with a physician's skills and clinical judgement in a safer environment in order to accomplish a more complete examination. The next step up the ladder was a casualty receiving and treatment ship where POW patients would be treated by teams of physicians and nurses supported by a staff of medical technicians with more complete medical facilities including a basic laboratory, a pharmacy and greater surgical capabilities if needed.  At this step of the ladder the POWs would begin to receive psychological testing as well as support.  It was also assumed that they would be in bad shape mentally after so many years of captivity. 
    The POWs would then be transported to a hospital ship.  The scope of treatment available at these facilities matched a fully-staffed stateside military hospital in the United States. 
    From there, once stabilized, the POWs would be moved to March AFB.  This was considered the most important part of their treatment.  It was at March where the POWs would be treated in depth for the psychological wounds they had to endure.  They would be evaluated weekly until they were deemed fit to reenter society.
    We were ready for casualties as well.  Both among the POWs and our own warfighters.
    Fleet Hospital 6 and 7 were the first mobile medical facilities deployed to the Gulf of Tonkin.  They were built in just over two weeks by Navy Construction Battalion Units. 
    The entire facility arrived in 400 containers to Thailand aboard the afloat prepositioning ships.  In two weeks, the Seabees with the assistance of Navy medical and support personnel, transformed the shipping containers into a 500-bed, forward-deployed medical facility, complete with operating rooms, intensive care units and radiological facilities.
    They saw their first patient, a pregnant female Marine officer, five days after construction finished.
    The purpose of the fleet hospitals were to service members of all