U.S. Army Captain Doctor Eugene Fishman had been in Vietnam only two months when the Bell UH-1 he was flying in down Highway 1 (’friendly territory) from Nha Trang to Cam Ranh Bay took a round in its rotor, forcing the pilot to autorotate the Huey to the ground.

I remember the pilot saying, `Hold on, I’m taking her down,’ said Fishman. It was an unconscious feeling: I didn’t think we were going to die. I knew the Huey could feather it. Dr. Fishman and the others aboard were lucky. Thanks to the pilot, they landed safely and were evacuated out on another chopper.

Terrifying as it must have been, Fishman’s experience was soon alleviated by the sort of humor combat veterans deem necessary. As he later described it: I remember turning to my medic afterwards and saying, `I feel so embarrassed. I pissed in my pants.’ He turned to me and said, `Don’t feel bad, Doc, I shat in mine!’

Fishman, who had never been out of his native Los Angeles before being assigned to Vietnam, was considered one of the old guys when the then 27-year-old physician hit the beach, World War II style, in a Navy landing ship at Cam Ranh Bay in 1966. When we landed, we pitched our tents in the sand, he remembered. Obviously, a buildup was happening. Cam Ranh was turning into a major port.

The next morning Fishman got a hell of an awakening. To shake up the newbees, a GI discharged dynamite in the distance. And, of course, we turned around and did it to someone else the next day, he said, laughing. He was soon off to the arid Top Cham region of Vietnam, where he ran a nonsurgical dispensary unit for GIs at the 101st Airborne Division compound at Phan Rang Air Force Base. They moved in on the 101st, since the Airborne were always out on patrol, according to Fishman. Humor abounded, but Vietnam quickly became…Vietnam.

With a standard-issue sidearm holstered on his hip, Fishman would often go out on Medical Civil Action Program (MEDCAP) operations in the area near Phan Rang to dispense medicines to the indigenous population and to set up public health programs. MEDCAP missions included treating sick village chiefs and providing entire villages with anti-malarial medication, topical creams for a variety of skin conditions and antibiotics.

Pondering those patrols, Fishman later recalled how villagers would often invent reasons to see him, such as pinching their skin until it bruised. Culturally, it was an honor to be treated by the Bac Si Hoa Ky (American doctors), and, so villagers thought, it would have been insulting not to respect their presence with a visit. Fishman marveled at the often-traded story among Vietnam doctors of packing off down a hill, only to turn around to witness villagers trading little blue pills for little yellow ones.

It wasn’t altogether altruistic, Fishman now concedes. We wanted to provide American personnel with a safe-as-could-be environment. To that end, Fishman, now a 60-year-old Los Angeles-area internist, also implemented a system whereby an American GI who contracted venereal disease could identify the prostitute who gave it to him and keep the hooker off the streets until she was cured. Every town in South Vietnam had its strip with the Hollywood Bar, New York Bar, he recalled. When a GI came in with a case of VD, he would be asked who his sexual contact had been. Invariably he would say, `She was about 5 feet tall, had long black hair and slanted eyes, and I met her at the Playboy Bar.’

Of course, that description matched practically every woman in Vietnam, working girl or not. So Doc Fishman saw to it that prostitutes were given photo IDs with their name, a number and the club in which they worked. If a GI then got VD, the notorious White Mice (South Vietnamese police) would pay the girl a visit, get her treated by Vietnamese doctors and require that she stay out of the bars for 10 days.

While it was true that evacuation hospital medical personnel worked from one dustoff to the next, carting traumatized soldiers with head, limb or torso wounds off Hueys and into surgery, Fishman believed most of the doctoring done in Vietnam paralleled the type of work he did and that many Americans have a misconception about physicians who served there. The war wounded went to field hospitals set up for major trauma, he said, but most people don’t understand that most docs were in fairly safe areas treating run-of-the-mill colds, skin infections, diarrhea and self-induced injuries like accidental gunshot wounds.

Perhaps the most difficult pill Fishman himself had to swallow before his tour of duty was up in July 1967 was something that occurred one day after he heard a gunshot in the distance. A Korean artillery unit was stationed on the western perimeter of the base. Somehow the Koreans always knew, even before their American counterparts, when a new shipment of goods had arrived at the PX. They would pile aboard a 3/4-ton or 2-ton truck and race there to load up.

I was going back to my detachment and heard the shot about 200 yards away, said Fishman. A Korean GI had been late for the truck and come running as it pulled out. His buddy gave him the barrel of his carbine to hold onto–intending to haul him aboard. When he grabbed it, the trigger jerked.

The soldier was not killed, but, as Fishman painfully recalled, The bullet went into his right eye and exited his left. When I got there he was conscious and talking, but the orbits had been shot out. He was lying there vomiting up the rice that he had for lunch through what remained of his eye sockets. I lost it too, Fishman admitted.

Later, a Korean doctor came to Fishman’s hooch to present him with a bottle of Korean ginseng liquor in a beautifully lacquered box as thanks. He never could drink it.

Although Gene Fishman was not through with the Army when he left Vietnam in 1967–he was reassigned to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey–his tour of duty affected him deeply, as it did every doctor in-country. Years later, he still had vivid memories of how the people of the anti-war movement had greeted returning Vietnam vets with their spit and curses.

I’d heard about it from my brother’s roommate, who was the liaison officer at Travis Air Force Base, Fishman recalled. He advised me to change out of my fatigues. I did, took the bus to San Francisco and flew home to L.A.

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