Wounded and Evacuated
Medical Holding Company
When I last left off, I had just been assigned to the Medical Holding Company. That is where you go while you await disposition of your medical case, also to continue treatment as an outpatient.
So Medical Holding was both a good and bad experience. Made some good friends while there, including the CO, who was a lawyer in civilian life, but choose not to come into the Army as a JAG, since it increased his required length of service.
My average day was some in about 9:00 and have coffee with teh CO and XO, then off to rehab @10, back to MHC for lunch with the guys. Then in the afternoon I was the Class A (payroll) Officer. I went to finance and picked up payments to patients, then delivered them to the patient. This was teh bad part of MHC, I still have vivid memories of some of the injured I visited, they will never go away. Made me feel very lucky to just have the wounds I had.
Since I wasn’t allowed to carry a weapon due to my new profile, they assigned me one of the gunners frm my unit who had been wounded after me as a guard. He had been shot in the jaw and had it wired together. He carried the 45 and I carried the money.
I had made friends on my ward when assigned there, and as I went around to pay, met other very interesting people that I continued to visit with after my pay duties were complete. They hug out in the wards in the common areas and swapped stories, and some good stories they were. As I go along I will share those that I remember, as they tell a story of war that few experience.
By the time I was assigned to MHC, I had been wounded, moved between hospitals during the evacuation, and treated @ Ft Sam for 3-4 months. I was to spend 3 more months in MHC before I got tired of being in limbo and requested a final determination of my condition and further assignment. I also had one more minor operation to try and restore some nerve damage.
I have always considered my time @ Ft Sam to be the worst of my career in the Army (26 yrs). The disputes with the doctor that almost cost me the possibility of a career, although at the time I had no idea about making the Army a career. The people and inuries I saw while Class A officer, and the “not knowing” what the future may hold have stayed with me for awhile. But the people I met, the friends I made, and the care I got did make up for a lot of it. Parts were down right fun.
The future turned out fine. I was able to continue to fly for 10 more years before being medically grounded. Made a career of the Army and once I dicided to do that, stopped being such a butthead and started acting a lot more professional. But I never passed up the opportunity to have a little fun at someone else’s expense 
The next installments will be the stories I heard while roaming the wards of the hospital. All are interesting, some are hard to believe, but I consider them to all be TINS.
