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spiked a fever after he’d been discharged, if a cold became pneumonia, if a wound became infected—it would be he who was held responsible. Faced with the possibility of disaster, of being made responsible in fields he really knew nothing about, the Commander backed down and finally left everyone, except his own adjutant, alone.
    As a military physician, how you feel about the situation depends on how you look at the war—and, of course, the casualties. Lenhardt, for instance, sees nothing wrong with the war; he says it’s better to fight the communists in Vietnam than in Utah. If you see the patients, broken and shattered at eighteen and nineteen as something necessary in the greater scheme of things, then there are no complaints. But if you see these kids as victims, their suffering faces, burned and scarred, their truncated stumps as personal affronts and lifelong handicaps, then you may take a chance on doing what you think is right.
    Peterson and Grieg were two of our general surgeons. Hubart and Lenhardt were the other two. They took call every fourth night, and the nights they were on they took all the admissions that day. If they got really bombed, the others just stepped in with them. During Tet and the time the 101st went back into the Ashau, they all came in.
    Peterson was on night call in the hospital when the AOD received an emergency call from the Kanto-based air command at Yokota. Because of an accident on the runway, an air evac from Nam scheduled early that morning would have to be diverted to the Naval air station at Atugi, about two miles from Zama. Atugi’s runway is shorter than Yokota’s, but the pilot had radioed that one of their VSI on board was going sour, and there was some concern whether he would get in country alive. The Air Force and the pilot were willing to take the chance on Atugi, and Atugi agreed. For those flying in Nam, the war doesn’t end with the coasts.
    The plane landed a little after midnight. It came in under the eerie light of the airstrip with power on, flaps down, its wings almost forty-five degrees to the winds. Touching down on the very edge of the runway, the pilot dumped the flaps, and with the aircraft settling heavily on the concrete, slammed on his brakes, screeching the plane down the runway. Halfway down the strip the brakes began to smolder. With the plane streaming smoke he pulled it into a tight half-turn, and by applying power, skidded it along the edge of the runway until it came to a stop fifty meters from the end of the strip.
    The patient was carried to a waiting Navy chopper, which ten minutes later was coming in over the administration building. The usual approach was out over the open fields to the rear of the hospital and then back in again to the landing pad. This pilot took it right in, barely clearing the roof of the building, rattling the windows the whole way in.
    Peterson was waiting with the medic near the edge of the pad. The chopper had barely touched down when the crew chief jerked open the door. The inside of the chopper was covered with blood. In the dim half-light of the landing pad it looked like drying enamel.
    Peterson and the medic started running onto the pad at the same time. Hunching over to clear the swirling blades, the crew chief helped them into the chopper. The wounded man, his head hanging limply over the edge of the stretcher, was still lashed to the sides of the chopper. Blood welled up from under his half-body cast. Grabbing the top of the plaster cast, Peterson tore it off. A great gush of blood shot up, hit the roof, and then dying, fell away. He put his hand quickly over the wound and pressed down to stop the bleeding; he could feel the flesh slipping away from under his hand. Taking a clamp out of his pocket, he took his hand off the wound and, with the blood swelling up again, stuck the clamp blindly into the jagged hole, worked it up into the groin, and snapped it shut. The bleeding stopped. The chopper, still