The television show “M*A*S*H” made Americans somewhat more conscious of the role of the Army Medical Corps during the Korean War, decades after the fact. The average civilian knows far less about those who served in that capacity in Vietnam.
That will be addressed on Saturday, May 25 – Memorial Day weekend – in a special free program at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia. The program, called “Miracle Workers: American Medical Personnel in Vietnam, 1965-1973,” runs from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the museum’s Education Room.
Let it be known that this will be no TV sitcom. There will be no canned laughter. This will be a deeper, truer story. Those who attend will tell of their personal experience with the deadly serious business of saving lives in spite of the worst a hostile enemy can inflict on soldiers.
The format will consist of a panel discussion between three who were directly and intimately involved – a surgeon, a nurse and a seriously wounded patient:
- Capt. C.A. Sweatman was a surgeon with the U.S. Army’s 25th Division. During his tour in South Vietnam from 1967-68, he would earn the Silver Star.
- Capt. Linda Sharp Caldwell was a nurse at the 67th Combat Support Hospital in Qui Nhon from 1967-68. In that extreme environment, she acquired skills a civilian nurse seldom would.
- Lt. Alex Miller was a forward observer with the 4th Infantry Division. He was severely wounded in December 1969 in the Mekong Delta.
The panelists will tell their stories, and the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.
In addition to the panel discussion, an array of Vietnam-era medical artifacts will be on display in the museum’s atrium.
This is the latest of many live presentations by Vietnam veterans since the opening of the museum’s major exhibit, “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973.” That exhibit, which fills the museum’s Cistern Gallery, contains artifacts from every aspect of South Carolinians’ service in that war, including a display case dedicated to those who served in a medical capacity.
Capt. Linda Sharp with Vietnamese children.
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