"You needed me with you," said Neal. "It must have been similar to the streets of Saigon, which I knew very well."

"I only knew the field, too," said Gentile. "It's all I remember."

HEAVY FIRE

"When they gave me the first Silver Star," Gentile said, "we were under heavy fire, forever it seemed, and all of the other medics were dead or badly wounded. I was trying to treat all the wounded. You forget about maybe getting killed after awhile and just do your job. Mine was to grab my bag and start treating wounds."

"I was on the hospital ship till my wounds healed enough to move around," said Conroy. "We stopped in at the Philippines for a few days, then sailed for Vietnam. It was back to the field."

Conroy had been wounded on an operation in the Au Shau Valley during a 1st Cavalry Divisional Operation. They had made heavy contact with North Vietnamese Army troops then; the soldier ahead of him stepped on a mine.

"I took shrapnel in both arms and legs, but the front of my body was protected by a pack that I was carrying, which belonged to another GI who had been wounded earlier in the day.

"It wasn't long after that," he reflected, that the whole division was transferred to III Corps near Tay Ninh.

Tallon was stationed for a three-month period at the Phu Cat Airbase in Central Vietnam, 20 miles or so inland from Quy Nhon.

"They sent two of us up there to train a new detachment of photo interpreters to handle the increasing traffic at this instillation. Missions were being flown throughout this sector, including many north of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone)," he said.

"This base was out in the country. There were no GI shanty towns outside the perimeter."

FILLED WITH SHRAPNEL

It was in May 1968 that Gentile was severely wounded during a 101st Operation near Quang Tri.

"It was during a heavy firefight with the NVA. Once again, all of the other medics were dead or wounded. A near miss from a RPG filled my legs and feet with shrapnel, with a large piece tearing out a good chunk of my thigh.

"My platoon sergeant filled me with morphine and bandaged me up enough to function. I couldn't move around so the guys still up" -- he paused to gather himself -- "the guys still up dragged the wounded to me, and I did what I could to help them."