Let me tell you about Tom

I was fortunate enough to spend tonight with a good group of people, and I met a guy named Tom.

Tom was drafted in the 60’s. When they gave him a list of jobs, he said “But I want to go to medical school after this. I don’t want these jobs.” So they said “Well, if you want a medic job, you have to enlist instead of being drafted.” So that’s what he did.

He made it through medic school, and then he was selected to be part of an “advisory” group that was assisting the South Vietnamese government.

Tom has a scar on his hand, right through the palm. That’s where he grabbed the knife of the VC who was trying to kill him. Tom remembers the struggle while that knife was digging into his hand. He remembers the look in the VC’s eyes as Tom positioned that knife above the VC’s chest, and then dropped his entire body weight into the knife. Tom remembers seeing the tears.

At one point months later, Tom was in the thick of battle, running from patient to patient, and he said that he got knocked sideways by something. He got back up, treated two or three more casualties, and someone started yelling at him about his leg. He looked down, and saw a stream of red. So he dropped his pants, stitched himself back together, and continued treating his Soldiers. He was the medic. Nobody else was going to help him, so he helped himself.

Tom and I had a good long chat tonight. He is not one of the people that we’ll remember tomorrow, but he’s someone who I am better for having met. He went on to become a dentist in California, and eventually moved up to Idaho to escape the crazy.

There are so many storied untold, that it makes me weep. I’ll carry Tom in my memory until the day I die.