Combat Medics in Vietnam: From the Archive
Warriors In Their Own Words | First Person War Stories
Robert Kirk
4.7 • 701 Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
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| 0:30.3 | This presentation of In Their Own Words is brought to you by the Honor Project |
| 0:35.3 | and is dedicated to the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces. |
| 0:44.3 | Operating under the most brutal conditions imaginable, combat medics fought to save lives as the war raged around them. |
| 0:53.3 | In Vietnam, helicopters became virtual hospitals in the |
| 0:57.0 | air, buying the combat medic valuable time to heal the wounded. Today, Max Clayland is a U.S. |
| 1:05.0 | senator from the state of Georgia, but in 1968, he was fighting in Vietnam. His tour was cut short by an accident that left him a multiple amputee. |
| 1:15.6 | Perhaps more than anyone, he knows the valor of the men who try to save lives in the heat of combat. |
| 1:22.6 | Senator Cleland recounts the accident that changed his life forever. |
| 1:28.3 | I felt that Vietnam was the war of my generation that I could not avoid, and I didn't want to avoid it. |
| 1:34.3 | I was in uniform. I was a young lieutenant. I was on active duty as a young ROTC graduate. |
| 1:41.3 | And it was the mid-60s. And by by 1967 I volunteered for Vietnam and went with the |
| 1:49.0 | First Air Calvary Division. The first Air Calvary Division was later committed after the Tet |
| 1:54.1 | Offensive in early 1968 to relieve the siege of Kaysan. So I went with that relief unit with |
| 2:00.6 | the first cab surrounding the hills near Kaysan. So I went with that relief unit with the first cab surrounding the hills near Kaysan. |
| 2:05.0 | On one mission, I was a communications officer for an infantry battalion at the time. |
| 2:10.4 | And I went to unload my radio team on a hill so we could set up a radio relay into Kaysan |
| 2:16.5 | for the battalion moving into Kaysan, breaking the siege there that week. |
| 2:20.3 | I got off a helicopter, ducked under the helicopter blades, had my flank vest on, my steel pot, |
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