The Importance of Medics: CPT Max Cleland

Ken Harbaugh:

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CPT Max Cleland, later Senator Cleland, lost both his legs and an arm from a grenade explosion while serving in Vietnam. In this interview, Cleland describes the explosion and the crucial role that medics played in saving his life.

CPT Max Cleland:

Well, I felt that Vietnam was the war of my generation that I could not avoid, and I didn't want to avoid it. I was in uniform, I was a young lieutenant, I was on active duty as a young ROTC graduate, and it was the mid-sixties. And by 1967, I volunteered for Vietnam and went with the First Air Cavalry Division. The First Air Cavalry Division was later committed after the Tet Offensive in early 1968 to relieve the Siege of Khe Sanh. So I went with that relief unit with the First Cav, surrounding the hills near Khe Sanh.

On one mission, I was a communications officer for an infantry battalion at the time, and I went to unload my radio team on a hill so we could set up a radio relay into Khe Sanh for the battalion moving into Khe Sanh, breaking the siege there that week. I got off a helicopter, ducked under the helicopter blades, had my flak vest on, my steel pot, some grenades on my web gear, had my M-16 in my left hand. Turned around, looked at the helicopter, it took off. Looked down, there was a grenade. Now, I didn't anticipate that it was a enemy grenade that was live, because grenades had fallen off my web gear a lot. You're moving around, you're jumping around, you're in and out of bunker and dodging rockets and whatever. So life was pretty confusing. And so I thought it was mine. I thought it dropped off my web gear. And I still think probably it did. But I had my M-16 on my left hand. I reached down with my right hand to get it. I must've been about five or six inches from it when it went off. Technically, I should be dead, because the killing radius of a grenade is about five yards or five meters. You're within that, you're dead.

Well, my flak vest helped save me. My steel pot was blown off, and my left hand was saved because it was behind me holding my M-16. But my right arm was blown off instantly. My right leg was blown off instantly. And my left leg was so badly mangled, it was amputated within the hour. So there I am laying on the ground, my windpipe shattered, can't speak, can't talk, and I'm laying on the ground bleeding and dying. I was totally stunned by the grenade explosion. It was deafening, it threw me back, and then I just absolutely felt like I was burning all over. Later, I found out it was the flash burn from the grenade that seared some of the wounds as the reason I didn't die on the spot right there in a few minutes. But I laid there bleeding and dying and calling out for help. And it was a powerful sense of helplessness

Well, unbeknownst to me, a team of four Navy medical corpsman attached to the Marine Corps were right there on that hill. I mean, providence, good Lord was looking after me. There's four medics, not just one, but four, right there on that hill. They rushed to me. And I can remember when they started cutting off my uniform. In the military, uniform is sacrosanct. And I thought, here I am missing almost two legs and my right arm, and I'm bleeding and dying and I'm thinking, "God, don't cut off my uniform." But the men knew what they were doing.

So they started cutting off my uniform, making an immediate tourniquet to stop the bleeding. And they called in an immediate dust off or helicopter, a Huey, that was in effect, the lifeline. But while I was laying there, they took care of me and made sure I got on the medevac helicopter, which got me to the Division Eight Station. There, other medics took over. Had an IV put in in the chopper on the way to the bunker. And one shot of morphine. And they started asking me my name, rank, and service number. And I thought, "You got to be kidding me, man." I guess it was... Make sure we tag this body properly. And so I looked up at one medic and I said, "You think I'm going to make it?" And he said, "You just might." I figured under the circumstances was pretty much a word of encouragement. So I was put on a helicopter again, flown to a Quonset hut on the South China Sea, all this done within an hour. And my life was saved by a team of five physicians. But it was the medics that got to me first, and the medics in the helicopter that got the IV in. And it was the medics in the bunker in the Division Eight Station that I think ultimately saved my life, and the reason I'm here talking to you today.

I mean, any military person who has ever been wounded or shocked or gone through trauma or whatever and had to call for a medic or call for help, and has attended by medic, boy I'll tell you, you never forget that. And I never forget those young men who saved my life. The tragedy is I never knew their names. They went on to other situations in the war. And looking back, God knows I really owe my life to them.

Looking back, I didn't know that they were medics at the time. I didn't know they were Navy corpsmen, trained medics, four of them, attached to the Marine Corps at the time, that happened to be on that hill when I was on it. I mean, again, providence I think intervened in my life and saved my life right there on the battlefield through the lives of four medics, and their skill to respond instantly to a life-threatening situation for a soldier. And later, I look back, what are the odds that four trained corpsman medics are going to be right there with you when you have three limbs basically blown off and are bleeding and died on the ground? What are the odds? Pretty remote. But that's what medics do. They get there and they stop the bleeding. They get the IV in, they stabilize you as best you can. They talk to you, they encourage you, and they get you as soon as humanly possible to further aid and ultimately surgery. And they did that all within the hour.

In Vietnam, the statistics were that if you were wounded and were able to receive medics and medical attention within the hour and didn't have a head injury, you stood a 98% chance of survival. But what that did was complicate life back in the States. Because what happened was we had 10,000 amputees out of the Vietnam War. More arms, legs, and eyes were lost in the Vietnam War than in World War I and Korea combined. So you save life on the battlefield through incredible miraculous medics and their training. And that just complicates the rehabilitation process back here. But at least your life is saved on the battlefield. I consider that, and in my case, certainly a miracle.

And I didn't have a sense that I was literally drifting out of life, that life was oozing away from me. And I had this sense, powerful sense, that if I slipped into unconsciousness, I would never regain it, I'd never come back. I'm out of here. I know I'm leaving here, and if I lose consciousness, I ain't making it back. I mean, I just had that powerful knowing, in an instant almost. And so I fought to stay conscious and their voices, their shouting, their activity, kept me in it, kept me conscious. Now, a fascinating thing about that is that's part of medical training, the training of medics. I was just earlier this year in Schweinfurt, Germany where ironically, that it was 30 years to the day I was wounded in Vietnam, April 8, '68, and April 8, '98. And it was the first time I'd been in an army helicopter since I was in there with a medic putting an IV in my arm, blown away, 30 years ago. And I went down to see in Schweinfurt, Germany, training of army medics. And I saw their training and it was very realistic. And I noticed how they're trained to talk, in effect, their patients, "Stay with me. Don't lose it. I'm here." That's part of it, to keep the patient conscious. Because I knew if I'd lost consciousness, I was gone.

Well, it's amazing what flashes of insight you get when you lay there dying. One of the flashes of insight that I got was how easy it was to potentially drift off into nothingness, or drift off into the dark, or just let the black overwhelm you, and just let life ooze away. And that, I guess maybe since that moment, life has been a lot of effort. It took the medics talking, encouraging me, talking to each other, doing things, trying to save my life, helped me fight to stay in the game. There've been other people along the way in Vietnam, in the hospitals in Japan, in Walter Reed, in the VA system, who helped encourage me when I was down, when I felt my life was oozing away in one form or the other, mentally, emotionally, physically, helped me get strong at the broken places.

That's the great line by Ernest Hemingway, who himself got wounded in World War I, almost became a single leg amputee. And 10 years after his war, wrote a book called A Farewell to Arms. In there, he's got a great line. He said, "The world breaks us all. But afterward, many is strong at the broken places." For me, the war in Vietnam broke me, almost killed me. But medics helped me get strong at the broken places.

I was particularly impressed with one young man who went through the training, because he was not only good technically, and in it, and with powerful distractions and bombs going off and smoke grenades and so forth, they make it very realistic. And they're taking two or three patients at a time, two or three litter casualties at a time. And he kept talking to him, kept talking to him. And I thought, "This guy's really good." And so afterwards, I brought him over and I said, "I would've been honored for you to treat me." And afterwards when I left, he told Stars and Stripes, he said, "I want to remember the general, but I'll always remember the senator in a wheelchair." I hope every medic in the military, regardless of which branch of service, realizes that they got one United States senator, that somebody, one of their predecessors saved on the battlefield, that now appreciates their service.

When you were acknowledged as a medic, it was much like you being acknowledged as a young lieutenant in the assault or a young radio telephone operator. The snipers pick the RTO, the first, and the person on each side of them because one of them must be a leader. They also pick off the squad leader or the team leader, the point person. But the guy who is obviously the medic is the guy who can help save some lives, and they go after him too. And also, when that Red Cross was painted on the side of a Dustoff, those Dustoff pilots were the most courageous pilots in Vietnam, because they braved everything to get there and save a life. And so the medics and the Dustoff pilots saved my life, and that's how I wound up to be a United States senator. I would never have made it here without them.

In Georgia, we have a wonderful story of a guy named Desmond Doss who comes out of World War II. And he went in World War II as a very religious person, very mild-mannered, quiet, religious person, went in as a conscientious objector, but joined the Marine Corps, became a medic, and went to the Pacific. And on Iwo Jima, saved the lives of over 30 men there in a pure hellacious situation, and won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Here's a medic, but a medic conscientious objector. He committed his life not to taking life, but saving it, and risked his life for the lives of his fellow men. Wow. That's really what a medic is all about.

I think it is a special breed. I think they have to have a special commitment to people and to life and to lifesaving. Because in effect, they're not underarms, so to speak. Soldiers are pretty much armed to the teeth. I was when I got wounded, I had about everything you could carry, M-16, 45, knife, everything, grenades. But medics are there to not take life but save it. And actually, every time they do their job, they put themselves at risk. Every time. When they go to that wounded soldier, sailor, airman, marine corpsman, whatever, whenever they do that, they put themselves at risk. They put themselves in harm's way as well, but they're there to save a life and not take it.

I think military medicine continues to work miracles on the battlefield, whether it's Vietnam or Persian Gulf War. Military medicine on the battlefield works miracles, but you can't work miracles without miracle workers. And that's what I think our medics, our medical corpsmen, corps men and women, our nurses, our doctors, that are engaged in battlefield medicine, I think that's what they're all about. And without them, we couldn't have an army, we couldn't have an air force, we couldn't have a Navy, we couldn't have a Marine Corps, we couldn't have a defense structure that protects the country.

When I was Secretary of State in Georgia, part of my responsibility as Secretary of State was to put the Confederate battle flags on display there in the state capitol. And I began getting a little interested in my own personal history. I found out, amazingly enough, just a few years ago, then I'm the great-grandson of a Confederate war veteran. Not just a Confederate war veteran, but a Confederate war veteran who served under Robert E. Lee outside of Richmond. And on July 13th, 1864, in the Battle of the Crater near Petersburg, became a single arm amputee on the right side. He lost his right arm. So my great-grandfather fought in the Civil War and lost and became an amputee, but he was medevaced to the big Confederate casualty hospital in Richmond, and then later discharged near my little hometown outside of Atlanta. But because of radical reconstruction, he didn't get any veterans benefits, no healthcare, nothing.

But after about 10 or 12 years, my great-grandfather applied to the state of Georgia for an artificial arm in 1889. In other words, that was the only benefit pretty much out there if you're an amputee, apply for an artificial arm or leg. The amazing thing about is when I saw the great documentary by Ken Burns on the Civil War, there was one fact that stood out from this brutal war and all this horror of the Civil War. And that was that at the end of the war, for the state of Mississippi, one fifth of its budget went to artificial limbs for Confederate veterans. One fifth of the entire state budget of the state of Mississippi after the Civil War went for artificial limbs, for veterans of the Civil War. Isn't that amazing?

So I will say too, that the rounds, the caliber of the rounds in the Civil War was such that if you got hit in a limb, you were pretty much subject to amputation, because it tore it, and tore the bone and the ligament so severely because the caliber was so large that if it didn't rip the limb off, it was later amputated. And of course, in many hospitals, they ran out of chloroform and so forth. I mean, you got a great scene in Gone With the Wind when Dr. Meade operating in a hospital in Atlanta, he ran out of chloroform. So war produces terrible tragedy, and if you don't believe it, just see Saving Private Ryan, and also see the powerful role that medics play, and have played. But it's fascinating to find out that I'm a descendant of a war veteran who also became an amputee, and that after the Civil War, the state of Mississippi had to devote such a powerful portion of its budget to just taking care of amputees. And that was repeated virtually in every state in America after the war.

I will say to you, after going to Gettysburg, that if you survived a wound, you were just lucky, because they really didn't have the kind of medics we normally think about. And they left their dead and dying on the battlefield, and retired from the battlefield, and the citizens of the hometown and friends and relatives had to come and nurse them. Now there's a powerful story out of the Battle of Gettysburg, and it pertains to a General John B. Gordon, who at that time was a brigade general at Gettysburg. He was in the advance on day one at Gettysburg, and came across a union major lying supine on the battlefield. Got down off his horse, offered the major, his opponent, aid and comfort. The major said, "My wife is a nurse. She's in town, and if you get the word to her, she'll come and help me."

That night, Gordon got the word through the lines to the wife. She came, and in effect, saved the major's life. Years later, then U.S Senator, John B. Gordon from Georgia, encounters the major in New York, and says, "I knew a man who died at Gettysburg with your name." He said, "I am that man, sir." And said, "I knew a General Gordon who saved my life." And he said, "I am that man, sir." But the powerful lesson there is that during the Civil War, you didn't have medics running around taking care of people. If you got wounded, you lay there, bled and died, or else somebody from the town or a family member came and hauled you off the battlefield. So thank God we've come a long way.

Well, the ending of Private Ryan hit me personally. And I think it should affect us all. And at the end, the protagonist played by Tom Hanks basically whispers in the ear of a Private Ryan whose life has been saved in this case. And basically he says, as I understand it, he whispers in his ear, said, "Earn it." And at the end of the movie, there's Private Ryan, obviously 50 some odd years older, at the grave site of the man who helped save his life, among the gravestones of those who helped save Western Europe and win World War II. And he turns to his wife and says, "Have I lived a good life? Have I been a good person?" In other words, reinforce me. Tell me I've earned it.

And I think that's one of the things that weighs on my mind. You can't go through what I've been through and in effect have your life saved by medics and by providence, the hand of providence, and come back and not want to do something meaningful with it. And I got into politics in terms of further public service and fortunate to be here in the Senate. And I think about my obligation every day, and can I answer that question, "Have I earned it?" The medics gave me a chance to earn it, and I feel like I have to earn that every day.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was CPT Max Cleland.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

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