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Tom Agnew

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Can I cut the mustard? Tom Agnew was apprehensive on the way to Vietnam and wondering if he was up to the task. He was assigned as a medic in a helicopter evacuation unit, known as Dustoff. On one of his first missions, he learned not to triage the wounded too quickly. (Caution: coarse language.) (4:51)

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You could get a lot of ground fire when you were going in to land at a hot LZ. Medic Tom Agnew remembers a lot of them, especially the one which he departed dangling from the end of a cable. While he was out there, a tracer round went by his head and made him angry, so he took out his pistol and fired back, which must have greatly amused his antagonist. (4:34)

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After a huge typhoon devastated Chu Lai, Tom Agnew was sent to a different Dustoff unit at Da Nang. The job was the same, medical evacuation. This late in the war, it was more often ARVN troops. (6:10)

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Something good can still come out of a bad war. Modern EMS was borne from lessons learned in Vietnam by combat medics such as Tom Agnew. He passed on those lessons while training emergency medical personnel in his postwar career. First he had to deal with protestors and a tendency to hit the deck when he heard a loud noise. (6:13)

Tom Blake

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He taught school for a year after college, but Tom Blake felt a calling to serve his country. He trained in the frigid cold of New Jersey, then the sweltering heat of Georgia, and made some good friends along the way. (4:54)

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Tom Blake's first assignment was at Fort Hood, where he kept an old Volkswagen in which he shuttled returning veterans around to help them solve medical and administrative problems. He got an earful from them about Vietnam, which he was about to experience for himself. Once he got there, he kept falling into the most difficult assignments and he learned that surprises waited for him everywhere. (5:56)

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His men loved the care packages that Lt. Tom Blake's parents sent to him, full of Kool-Aid and cinnamon rolls. The area they were in was flat, hot and wet and the job was interdiction of the Viet Cong, who were confiscating the rice harvest. To Blake, the constant stalking and ambushes resembled a game of cops and robbers. (5:21)

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Tom Blake was the RECON Platoon leader and he depended heavily on his point man, Tex Quinn. You could bet a six pack on your location on the map and you'd lose. They used characters from Robin Hood for radio code names, but there was no fun and games if you were caught falling asleep on watch. (3:10)

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The first fire Tom Blake received in Vietnam was 50 caliber rounds from his own side. He was mixing it up with the Viet Cong soon enough. In fact, they knew his name. The first man he lost in his platoon failed to heed a very basic rule, rules that Lieutenant Blake tried to remind them of every day. (6:49)

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Lt. Tom Blake had a Kit Carson scout in his platoon and the former Viet Cong was good at getting information from the locals, but, after the My Lai incident, cooperation was hard to come by. The tragedy occurred in the same area and Blake felt the fallout in his civilian encounters. (6:13)