Binding Their Wounds

America's Assault on Its Veterans

Robert J. Topmiller, T. Kirby Neill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317263098
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

The victims of US military campaigns are usually nameless civilians in far away places, but there are also victims closer to home - the soldiers so often used and then discarded by the establishment. Binding Their Wounds is a book about US veterans written by a US veteran - Bob 'Doc' Topmiller. Topmiller fought in Vietnam, founded a school for orphans there, and become a professor of history before he tragically committed suicide. Close friend and scholar Kerby Neill stepped in to complete the book. The result is a history of US veterans and their treatment by the US establishment from the early republic to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Binding Their Wounds offers policy recommendations to improve post-conflict treatment and care for veterans which are long overdue.

CHAPTER ONE

“Help Me, Doc”

Navy corpsmen are called “Doc” by the Marines they fight to save…. To be called “Doc” is one of the highest accolades in the Corps.

From the eulogy for Bob Topmiller by Khe Sanh veteran Mike Archer

IN HIS JANUARY 2009 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, President Barack Obama paid tribute to American servicemen who “fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sanh.” The mention of Khe Sanh among those mythic battles in American history both honored and redeemed the U.S. troops that fought in Vietnam, a war that remains a source of controversy. Estimates of American wounded at Khe Sanh range as high as 3,000, and the number of American deaths is estimated at over 350.¹ At the northern edge of South Vietnam, the base at Khe Sanh was designed to lure the North Vietnamese into concentrating their troops, making them vulnerable to artillery and air power. It was a risky strategy. French colonial forces established a large forward base in Vietnam in the 1950s at Dien Bien Phu. Vietminh forces overwhelmed it, forcing the French to withdraw from Vietnam. At Khe Sanh, defenders could only hunker down in trenches and bunkers, occasionally snipe at the enemy, and call on artillery and air strikes to protect them. “I felt like bait in a rat trap,” said one marine.² Fear that the base might be overrun was not confined to the beleaguered troops. The fear was shared by an American public who followed daily reports of the siege, by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by President Lyndon Johnson, who agonized over a terrain map of Khe Sanh in the War Room of the White House.

During the siege, North Vietnamese troops tunneled toward the base perimeter, hoping to strike from positions too close for American forces to use artillery and air cover. The defenders were aware the North Vietnamese had overrun the nearby Army Special Forces base at Lang Vei. Sound sensors around Khe Sanh alerted the troops when North Vietnamese gathered for assaults near their perimeter. Ground attacks at Khe Sanh were sporadic, but the incoming bombardment was unrelenting. Leaving one’s bunker to traverse the base was a form of roulette; staying in one’s bunker was no guarantee against a direct hit.

Bob Topmiller was a nineteen-year-old navy medic at Khe Sanh. “Help me, Doc!” were words he heard far too often during the siege. In caring for horribly wounded comrades while under fire, Bob forged an enduring commitment to his fellow soldiers. Sustaining that commitment forty years later, Bob was writing this book when he died. It is a book by a wounded veteran that is written for wounded veterans and those who care about them. It is critical of the recognition and care we offer our veterans and particularly critical of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Bob’s story gives this book its fire and legitimacy. Therefore, we begin with his story.

Doc at Khe Sanh

At Khe Sanh, Bob responded to the call of “Help me, Doc!” in “protected” bunkers and in open fields of fire. For many men he provided life-saving aid and patched them for further care; others were beyond help. In his fifties Bob wrote Red Clay on My Boots, offering his account of the siege and the memories that still haunted him. During the preparation of this chapter, Bob’s brother Tom discovered three audio tapes that Bob sent to his father from Vietnam.³ It was startling to hear Doc at only nineteen when he was so responsible for tending desperate comrades. On a tape made four days after his arrival at Khe Sanh, Bob reassured his dad, “I’m better off here than probably anyplace else in Vietnam; it’s a real nice place, surrounded by mountains with extraordinary scenery.” Bob continued, asking for canned peanuts, instant coffee, a subscription to Sports Illustrated, and his dad’s help with his unfinished 1967 tax return. He reports treating his first marine, Rick Noyes, surprisingly an acquaintance of Doc’s from Cincinnati. Rick, the source of the earlier “rat trap” observation, suffered shrapnel wounds during a probe outside the base perimeter. On tape, Bob also spoke with pride of his impending promotion to hospitalman third class. Later, in Red Clay on My Boots, his evaluation of his skills was less sanguine: “To think that my brief training had prepared me for what followed represented an absurd proposition worthy of a sadist and not the men who would come to depend on me.”⁴

Two hours into the barrage that began the siege of Khe Sanh in earnest, Bob was working in the regimental aid station when a North Vietnamese rocket scored a direct hit on a nearby ammunition dump. Massive explosions tore into exposed troops and collapsed the roof of the aid station. Bob and his fellow medical staff frantically pulled wounded men, many with IVs running, across open ground to an alternate bunker. He then turned to the newly wounded. Mike Archer, a fellow Khe Sanh vet, chronicled the scene in A Patch of Ground: “The exploding ammo dump had sent a white phosphorous round into a group of marine artillerymen. One marine struck by the searing phosphorous was in excruciating pain. Doc [Topmiller] went to his aid, despite the extreme danger, and saved his life.”⁵ Bob relived that first day the rest of his life, though there would be other chilling images to invade his dreams and make even the promised relief of sleep fraught with risks. The siege, the stream of dying and wounded, lasted seventy-seven days. Although Bob suffered minor wounds himself, his deepest wounds were seared into his psyche.

Some vets demean those traumatized in combat as vulnerable soldiers. Certainly some men are more vulnerable than others, but many battle-decorated veterans make it clear that everyone is vulnerable and “heroism” waxes and wanes.⁶ In Red Clay on My Boots, Bob wrote, “Sometimes at Khe Sanh, I performed my duties and took risks that today seem extraordinary. Yet, on other days, I experienced a paralyzing trepidation that rendered me unable to move. I cannot really explain the difference but I believe that every human has a limit and many understand when they begin to approach it. This came home to me with dramatic clarity over the next few weeks as the constant shelling exacted a horrible psychological toll on many Marines.”⁷

It was beyond the middle of the siege when Bob made a second tape for his dad. His voice is subdued and sometimes masked by background noise. Still reassuring, he reports that he is in one of the safest bunkers on the base and rarely leaves it. He does report North Vietnamese success in shooting down some aircraft. He also relates an instance when North Vietnamese troops gathered for a ground assault, but the fog cleared, “and we caught ‘em with their pants down.” He tells his dad about treating Rick Noyes for a “second Purple Heart” when Rick’s bunker took a direct hit. “Rick was lucky,” Bob reports, “he just got a burn on his hand.” Bob knew the U.S. press was covering the siege closely. He told his dad that he himself had seen the dramatic photos of Khe Sanh in Life magazine. “I don’t recognize the place,” he comforted his dad, “doesn’t pay to go walking around…. Nothing to worry about.”

In contrast to Bob’s sanitized report, four men died when Noyes’s bunker was hit. The concussion ruptured Rick’s eardrum and peppered him with shrapnel. A large man in the bunker whom Rick knew from training, a former golden gloves boxer, “lost it.” Three men had to hold him down so he could be sedated and evacuated. Although Bob patched Rick up and sent him back to duty, his wounds became so infected that he continually returned to the aid station. “Everything was filthy,” Rick later related, “even the aid station was dug into the dirt.” Finally, Rick spiked a high fever. He was in a delirium when Bob helped carry him to a helicopter for evacuation.⁸

Khe Sanh could be grim without enemy assaults. Rats were everywhere and undaunted by the siege. Rick Noyes remembered some fed-up marines pouring kerosene into their trench and setting it afire to fry the rats holed up at the bottom. A man slipped into the flaming trench and, before his comrades could jerk him out, he was red all over. Rick walked the man to the aid station. Probably in shock, the man told Rick he felt no pain. Rick left him with Doc and said he would be back to check on him. Bob took one look and told Rick the man wouldn’t make it. Rick felt that medics and the chaplain had the worst jobs on the base. “We would take the wounded and dying to the aid station, then it was all up to the staff.”⁹ Khe Sanh rats scrambled starkly through Bob’s nightmares.

Khe Sanh had an airstrip to receive supplies and evacuate wounded. As the siege progressed several large C-130 aircraft fell to enemy fire and the base became dependent on parachute drops and more maneuverable helicopters. The loss of the larger planes cast a pall of vulnerability over the base. The stress of the siege rarely wavered. Near the end of the siege, Doc rushed to a cluster of men blasted by incoming artillery. “The first man I encountered had both of his legs blown off…. Unfortunately, I looked about me and saw wounded men sprawled around and realized that I had to abandon the seriously wounded man to go to guys who had a better chance of surviving. The look on his face when he realized I intended to leave him has haunted me ever since.”¹⁰

In April of 1968, army, marine, and South Vietnamese units with heavy air support began the relief of Khe Sanh. Had the “trap” for the North Vietnamese worked? North Vietnamese losses have been estimated as high as fifty times U.S. losses, yet a 1981 U.S. Army postmortem provides a tempered assessment: “while generally on the tactical defensive, the North Vietnamese assumed the tactical offensive when it suited their purpose. The most striking examples were the siege at Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive. Both the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong suffered heavy losses in these offensives, but, while they may have been tactical failures, they were strategic successes since, by eroding our will, they were able to capture the political initiative.”¹¹ This assessment, especially of the Tet Offensive (for which some think Khe Sanh provided a critical diversion), goes on to suggest, “With their disastrous tactical defeat North Vietnam struck what was to prove a fatal blow against our center of gravity—the alliance between the United States and South Vietnam.”¹²

Doc Prior to Khe Sanh

Who was this youth dropped into the horrors of Khe Sanh? Born in Cincinnati in 1948, Bob was the third son of Norbert and Rita Meyer Topmiller. Richard was the oldest and Tom was two years older than Bob. Their parents divorced when Bob was six. Norbert moved fifteen miles away, but visited most Sundays, taking his sons on outings or joining camping trips planned by Bob’s mother. The boys were close to their mother, Tom remembers. “She did a good job of letting us be boys.” Maybe the divorce hit Richard hardest. He was in trouble as a teen and more serious trouble as an adult. Bob attended Catholic grade school. He must have enjoyed it. Tom recalls that Bob regularly beat him out the door in the morning, even when it exposed Bob to the bully next door. A reluctance to back down was a prominent trait in Bob as an adult. Tom finally “whaled on the neighbor boy” and put an end to the bullying.

When Bob was eleven, his mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She called the boys’ father and told him she was dying. Norbert Topmiller came home, moved the family into a new house, remarried his wife, and cared for her until she died three years later. During these years Bob and Tom hurried home after school to relieve the woman hired to care for their mother during the week. The boys shared the duty until their dad came home. Although their father’s commitment to their mother earned tremendous respect from Tom and Bob, Bob still experienced his father as emotionally distant. In response to Richard’s delinquency as a teen, Norbert Topmiller became a stern disciplinarian and the younger boys chafed under the repercussions from their oldest brother’s behavior. Bob was never permitted to get a driver’s license and obtained one only after leaving the service.

Bob was intensely competitive. He attended Archbishop Moeller High School, an athletic powerhouse in the state of Ohio. There he set the school record for the hundred-yard dash and was proud that the record lasted several decades. Though Tom was bigger, Bob held his own with him on the basketball court. Basketball remained a passion of Bob’s throughout his life. Even friends who knew Bob in his fifties cite basketball in describing him. Two friends used the same phrase—“He took no prisoners!” The week Doc arrived at Khe Sanh, he noticed a basketball hoop nailed to a post and organized a pick-up game among the corps-men. The game provoked the ire of the base commander, who quickly set the men to filling sandbags to reinforce the base’s defenses.¹³

Bob carried a strong sense of responsibility. He had ample experiences to bolster it—twelve years of Catholic schools, his father’s example and strict discipline, and his own experience of caring for his mother. Shaped in his youth by the values of duty and the threat of communism, Bob was ready to enlist in the marines on graduation from high school. Still seventeen, he needed his father’s permission to enlist. The specter of Vietnam and the horrified reactions of Bob’s aunts gave his father pause. He finally agreed to support Bob’s second choice—the navy. Bob felt the experience of helping his mother guided his decision to become a medic on joining the navy. Neither Bob nor his family knew that the navy supplied medics for the Marine Corps. By the time he completed boot camp, Hospital Corps School, and field medical training, Bob’s attitude toward the war had soured; yet curiosity and a wish to “prove” himself drew him on.¹⁴ After toughening up at the hands of marines in Okinawa, Bob flew to Vietnam, arriving in Da Nang on January 12, 1968. He flew on to Khe Sanh the same day, nine days before the beginning of the siege.

Doc in Vietnam After Khe Sanh

The youth that arrived at Khe Sanh may have been vulnerable from rough times in his early years, though it is more likely he was toughened by them. He was certainly tough and savvy after Khe Sanh. His friend Mike Archer relates a story from Bob’s stay at Phu Bai, Vietnam, while they awaited return to the States. Also awaiting return was Corporal Evans, a respected young marine from Seattle. Evans was placed in charge of the Communications Company wire platoon after his predecessor was evacuated from Khe Sanh. Instead of promoting Evans to sergeant, the marines flew a man named George (described by Archer as a “pompous ass”) into Phu Bai to take the job. Archer felt that Sergeant George tried to compensate for his lack of combat experience by persistently aggravating Evans. After a night of drinking and poker, when George lost heavily but refused to pay up, Evans had enough. He went to his hut, grabbed his rifle and marched to George’s hut yelling, “I’m coming to kill you George. Get ready to meet your maker!”

Evans started shooting through the screen door; George dropped to the floor and roll...