Prior to induction into the Army was a “medic” working for the Ventura County General Hospital and previously at St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Apparently the Army needed medics, so in 1967 I got my papers. Boot camp was Ft. Lewis, AIT was Fort Sam Houston.

During my leave, just prior to going to Viet Nam, I met my Carol, we wed following my Viet Nam tour and has now been my wife for more than 38 years.

When in Viet Nam, my initial home was Camp Holloway. Shortly following the 1968 Tet Offensive, With Kerry Pardue and Capt. Merrill Merman, moved to Ban Me Thuit. I returned home on Christmas day, second to the last plane to go back to the States.

Desiring to go to school, I graduated from Portland State University with a degree in business and followed that with a Certified Public Account certification and license from the state of Oregon. For most of my career, I was a CPA in public practice.

About nine years ago I left public accounting to return to the hospital system as an internal auditor. I have progressed in this career to where I am now the Compliance and Audit Regional Director for Washington and Montana, for the Providence Health System (this includes the St. Vincent (Hospital) Medical Center that I first began my work experience out of high school).

I guess I was destined to return to the medical field!

Roy - Please contact me at FloridaDude@bellsouth.com with your current eMail address - A. J.

Well, I was born in Carthage, MO on Oct 10, 1946.  I went to school, grades 1 - 12 in Webb City, MO and graduated from Webb City High in 1964.  I started Joplin Jr College in the fall of 1964, got married in 1965 and quit school in the Fall of 1965.

In January 1966, I reported to the Induction Center the day before I would have been drafted and became RA Bigley.  Basic in Fort Leonard Wood, MO, AIT at Fort Sam Houston - I extended 4 months for C-120 school for Clinical Specialist.  Then it was on to Womac Army Hospital at Fort Bragg, NC then to Camp Holloway Dispensary and the 94th Med Det in 1967 & 1968.  I then was sent to Fort Polk, LA where I departed the Army in April, 1969.

In June of 1969 I worked at Freeman Hospital, Joplin, MO in Respiratory Therapy with an LPN License, until 1975 then as an EEG Tech in Medical Service Dept until 1980.

I then moved to North Myrtle Beach to manage the Restaurant and Lounge at the Oak Tree Inn...which didn't last long.

I tested for the Joplin Fire Department and was hired and stayed for 20 years, but was forced out because of injuries and was topped out in salary.  In 1986, I got divorced.

In 1989, I became re-aquanted with Sondra Jo Stanford Headen (who was the big sis to one of my best friends) and she became my soul mate in july 1989.  We moved in the country in Webb City, MO in 1994 where we are today, raising cattle.  Sondra retired from teaching and built 3 in-home Pre-Schools and sold those about 3 years ago.  I retired in 2002, and I am drawing early retirement from our Uncle Sam and my City Pension.

I am looking forward to hearing from any of you guys - my eMail address is above my picture.

We had approximately 45 mortar and rocket attacks between January and March of 68. Besides dispensary duty I worked night patrols and took over the supply run from Carl Williams until Jerry Ellis took it later in the year.

Everybody enjoyed the hair raising ride from Pleiku to Qui nan every two or three weeks to pick up medical supplies at the 2/32nd Medical Supply Depot.

When I left the service I went back to being a machinist working on heavy industrial equipment and parts up to 20,000 pounds. I worked on parts for testing the space shuttle engines, jet aircraft engines, steel mill equipment and tire shredding machines.

I'm still married to the girl I was writing to while I was in the service. We have two children and three grandchildren.

I retired in 2006 and I'm having a ball as an ORF (Old Retired Fart). My spare time is spent hunting, fishing and volunteering for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Working on habitat restoration for deer, elk, fish and tons of non-game species is part of what I do. I am also involved in the local rod and gun clubs in the area including being the president of Multnomah Anglers and Hunters Association. We work with the Oregon legislature to draft laws for the propagation of fish and wildlife.

The menu at home includes deer and elk steaks, salmon, trout, steelhead, tuna, occasionally cougar and bear. Rarely do we need to go to the meat market.

My Motto:  "Too many things to do, not enough time"

After my internship in 1965-1966 I was drafted and went to Fort Sam like all the docs. I volunteered for flight surgeon's school at Fort Rucker since I was a pilot and interested in aviation but toward the end of basic training I received orders to go to Fort Devens. All those docs around me had received denials of their request for the flight surgeon training so I went to whoever was in charge and he told me I had been accepted since all the other applicants were already on orders to Nam. I had four young children and knew I had just printed my ticket for Nam but I really thought if I was going to have to serve I wanted to go where the need was greatest (not really noble I just did not want to spend two years as a GMO in some ER). My wife had the movers at her door to move to Massachusetts when I called and cancelled the move. Spent time in San Antonio with my wife and four daughters since flight school was a few weeks away. While all of my family was at the pool one day I asked a guy next to me (who was wearing aviation sun glasses) if he was a pilot and if so what he flew. He said Air Force One and invited the whole family to the air base for a tour since President Johnson was at his ranch. While in the plane with my wife and I in the cockpit looking at all the instruments my 3rd daughter picked up a phone, which happened to be red, and said "hello". On the other end was an FBI agent always "live". Quickly our guide pilot got to the phone and diffused the situation. Really had an enjoyable time at Fort Rucker where we met some great guys and their wives and best of all got to fly all the different helicopters that were used for training. Linda, my wife, remembers living in small quarters in the Daleville Inn We were then sent to Fort Hood as the 2nd Armored Division Flight Surgeon after my course at Fort Rucker.

Got orders to Nam with an aviation unit forming up at Fort Hood and initially went to Tuy Hoa as an Army Flight Surgeon where I managed to get my dispensary painted in air force blue paint (traded for some plexiglass from a crashed Huey); a urinal and a non functioning water heater which stored water on the dispensary roof and gave the dispensary running water as well as a working urinal (traded for penicillin injections used to treat the Pacific A&R Koreans with gonorrhea). By reading the ARs I found the Tuy Hoa dispensary because of the patient volume was entitled to two nice chairs which also had an FSN as a General Officer's chair (one of which my Commanding Officer requisitioned) and a library of medical books. A group of senior officers surveyed my dispensary and had many questions about our goodies. I told them the Air Force dispensary at Tuy Hoa Air Force base saw fewer patients, had air conditioning and more docs as well as female nurses. I want here to give my commanding officers at Tuy Hoa a heartfelt thank you for sending me to Tokyo, Japan just before Christmas of 1966 to a medical meeting (not R&R) and to buy Christmas presents for my wife and children. It happened while eating chow at noon one day when they started out talking among themselves about my lack of medical skills and need for more training; they then told me they were going to get me some more knowledge via a medical meeting in Japan. They really had this wet behind the ears young doc on the ropes for a time.

After Christmas of 1967 I received a promotion (?) to the 52nd Aviation Battalion at Camp Holloway as a Senior Battalion Flight Surgeon, leaving the beautiful sandy beach and ocean at Tuy Hoa and the great French food in nearby Nha Trang. Camp Holloway had red dirt, red dust and mud but it was a lot cooler and a whole lot busier. I was there for the Tet Offensive of 1968, remembering: the pot smoking dispensary Papa San; mortar attacks while sleeping on a cot in the dispensary with my helmet and flak vest on and fighting whoever was with me to get under a desk; sappers killing guards on the perimeter and blowing up helicopters and the next night when some guards were found asleep; two outpost guard posts shooting at each other until the control tower told them to stop; my great first Sargents who got me in and out of trouble; killed sappers who were placed along the civilian entrance to the post (which I had removed as a sanitation issue-although my real motive was that I disagreed with not respecting the dead); MPs accidentally killing a young Vietnamese male picking stuff up out of the dump when they were trying to scare him off by shooting over his head (we took the body into Pleiku where I finally found out you placed all the civilian dead in a shack where relatives came to ID their dead in the evening if they didn't come home); being severely reprimanded by the Commanding Officer for going out on a night patrol with an infantry unit trying to find and suppress mortars-I told him my medics were not infantry trained and I wouldn't ask them to do anything I wouldn't do-but it didn't do any good for my sore sorry ass; the beautiful country from a helicopter while carrying mercenaries into Laos and Cambodia-whoops can I say we did that?; the hooch mates who washed our clothes; the Vietnamese women swabbing the floor in the john around my raised feet while sitting on the pot; the night of the Tet offensive when we had a red alert and a cook, probably drunk, shooting at a Vietnamese worker running to shelter and machine gunning my bed and pillow and the chaplain's desk-thank God we were in bunkers. There are a million other stories and as I am writing they come to mind-some, however, like all of you I still can't talk about even now 43 years later.

I went to a Family Practice residency in San Bernardino, California and came back to Atchison, Kansas (north of KC and Leavenworth on the Missouri River) to practice family medicine and anesthesiology with my father. He died in the late 1970s and I finally have slowed down in March of 2010 no longer practicing family practice and anesthesia. I still practice addiction medicine and continue to do Class 1, 2 and 3 flight physicals for the FAA.

I want to finish by thanking all the folks I worked with both in Tuy Hoa and Camp Holloway. I received a plaque when I left from you guys at Camp Holloway dispensary with whom I worked and it has been a treasured reminder of the great people who made me and should have made the Country proud; unfortunately when we came home it was not to be; we were blamed for killing children and were spit on when we arrived (thank God that has changed). Nonetheless it was a great but very difficult gig made tolerable by the magnificent people we all worked and lived with during tough times.

I have been married for 53 years and I have 4 grown daughters, 9 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.

God bless all of us especially those who did not make it back and those who have departed this earth since they came back. As I age (now 74 years old -  2010) I treasure more and more the memories of that short few months in Nam and finally am able to talk/write about it, at least with fellow veterans. I really love and miss all of you guys; I hope the years have been good to you; and a special thanks to AJ for all the work he has done to keep us together. If I can be of any help to any of you let me know-I am semi-retired so I don't have any money to give but I am current in my medical license and I am more than willing to give advice within limits and certainly if a drug problem exists I can help.

Wayne O. Wallace, Jr., M.D.
1604 N. Second Street
Atchison, Kansas 66002
Wayne-Wallace@sbcglobal.net