In the Line of Care: Behind the lens – a corpsman in the Dragon’s Den

There is a photograph in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) historical archives of a young corpsman named “HM3 Levitt” hydrating a casualty with intravenous dextrose. The photo is captioned “CASEVAC corpsman on evacuation flight to a field hospital at Phu Bai, Vietnam in 1966.” Over the years the picture has proven to be extremely popular and widely used in articles, books and exhibits as a means of telling the story of the war and depicting the vital role of corpsmen like Levitt who flew casualty evacuations. The backstory of this young corpsman had been wholly unknown to us here at BUMED until a chance phone call in 2016 from a retired corpsman who knew the subject in the photograph: Ira Leslie Levitt (1) that led to an opportunity to speak with him.

Some five decades after the photograph had been taken, the memories of the war were still fresh – even raw – for Levitt. Like many who enlisted in 1963, Vietnam had not been in his vocabulary, but like most veterans of the war that experience the frontlines would prove life changing. The following is an excerpt from this oral history detailing the story behind this photograph.

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“We landed in Da Nang at daybreak, and they dropped the ramp and told us to roll out on the tarmac. Everyone that was already there was laughing at us. There are ’Red Horses’ (2) on the tarmac. I thought to myself, ‘What are we doing here?’ They loaded us up on these big 8- and 12-wheelers and took us across the Da Nang River to Marble Mountain (3) where the helicopter squadrons were.

Aboard the choppers, we had dextrose and water and our first-aid kits. We could do almost anything. We weren’t supposed to start blood transfusions, but we did. And we improvised sometimes. When we didn’t have a scalpel, we would cut the sheath for a hypodermic needle on an angle so that it had a sharp point. If there was a wounded guy who wasn’t getting any air, we would slam it down in his cricoids, right at the Adam’s apple where there’s a soft spot. (4) I’d wrap his neck with a piece of gauze, and now he’s breathing and he’s got an IV.

My responsibility was to keep them alive until I got them to the field medical aid station and the field ambulance. There were a couple times that we were close enough to the Station Hospital in Da Nang that we could take them down there. (5)

I was in Marble Mountain for maybe four or five months, and then I went to Phu Bai, (6) which was about ten kilometers south of the old Imperial City of Hue. That’s where I spent most of my time and that’s where that photograph was taken.

I was 22 years old at the time, and I thought I was already a man. I was serving with kids 17 and 18 years old; these same kids were coming back to us with mortal wounds. One day I threw a poncho out of the helicopter after we evacuated a patient, and in the poncho was a leg. That really set me off for a while.

I didn’t lose many, and I think the guy in that picture of me holding the bottle of dextrose and water made it. I first saw that photograph three years ago and that brought it all home. I had never seen that picture before, but that’s what it was like all the time. Every day that I was on the job it was like that. We’d take fire every day.

We’d hear, ‘WIA [wounded in action], three down, coordinates XX.’ We’d fly over to those coordinates, and we’d say ‘Pop Smoke.’ (7) We’d identify the color for verification, because in the beginning, you might land in the wrong place in the middle of the night and they’d be shooting at you. We came back one time and there were a hundred holes in the bird, but not one of us got hit. That’s when you realize there’s a power bigger than us, right?

As I look back today, I thank G-D I'm still alive, however the memories never go away.”

The Navy Medicine Oral History Project was started in the 1980s as a means of capturing the stories and important experiences of the men and women of Navy Medicine, both past and present. Future installments of the “In the Line of Care” series will feature some of these stories captured over the years.

SOURCE:

Levitt, Leslie I. Oral History, April 26, 2016 (Conducted by A.B. Sobocinski). BUMED Oral History Collection.

HISTORICAL NOTES:

(1) In 1965, Levitt served as a general duty corpsman aboard the hospital ship/station hospital USS Haven (AH-12) then moored in Long Beach and went through Field Medical Training at Camp Pendleton before being assigned to First Marine Aircraft Wing in Iwakuni and then to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM) 163 in Okinawa. When he deployed to Vietnam in October 1965 he was assigned to HMM-161 in Da Nang. In January 1966, HMM-161 returned to Okinawa, and HMM-163 took its place in Vietnam, whereupon Levitt was reassigned back to HMM-163, and would remain with HMM-163 through December 1966. He was released from active duty in January 1967. (2) In 1956, the Air Force developed the Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operation Repair Squadron (the Red Horse Squadrons). The first such unit, the 554th Civil Engineer Squadron (Heavy Lift) was deployed to Vietnam in October 1965. (3) Cluster of five marble and limestone hills located south of Da Nang. The five hills are named after the five elements: Kim (metal), Thuy (water), Moc (wood), Hoa (fire) and Tho (earth). During the Vietnam War it was home to the Marble Mountain Air Facility (MMAF) used by various U.S. Marine Corps squadrons. (4) An incision through the cricoid cartilages in the neck in order to a pass a tube as an emergency airway (cricothyrectomy). (5) Naval Station Hospital Da Nang. The hospital was located five miles north of the Marble Mountain Air Facility and was thirty miles from the DMZ. It was in operation from 1966 to 1970 as part of the Naval Support Activity Da Nang, which at the height of the Vietnam War was the Navy’s largest overseas shore command. Established in 1966, the hospital had an initial fifty bed capacity, that increased to 700 beds by 1968. Andrew, Jr., “For the Wounded a Place of Hope,” Stars and Stripes, 5 June 1968. (6) Phu Bai Combat Base (Phu Bai Airfield), Army/Marine base seven miles southeast of Hue, 1963-1975; home of the Naval Activity, Phu Bai. (7) During the Vietnam War, helicopter crews were able to locate their fellow Marines on the ground by asking them to "pop smoke in the landing zone.” The brightly colored smoke grenade identified the ground unit location, and provided landing zone wind information to the pilot. (Source: USMC Combat Helicopter Association, http://www.popasmoke.com).

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