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The slug tore through the Huey's door, smashed both bones in Yunck's left leg, and severed the main artery. A crewman tied a tourniquet below the knee, and the copilot sped the little chopper at 100 m.p.h. to a medical sorting and clearing unit only minutes away. There Yunck received morphine, blood and other intravenous fluids. Then he was flown' immediately to Charlie Med. Elapsed time: 35 minutes —five minutes to the clearing station, ten minutes there, 20 minutes to Danang. During the final flight Yunck continued to get blood by transfusion, and he was on the operating table for the unavoidable amputation within minutes of reaching Charlie Med.
Blood & Air. He had been kept alive by a copter and the second most important lifesaver in Viet Nam: a splendidly organized whole-blood program. Americans and some native residents in Okinawa, Japan and Korea are donating enough to make a generous supply constantly available—in November alone, 2,000 pints were flown in. Only half were used as whole blood, which deteriorates after three weeks. As Commander Wilson notes philosophically, "War is a study in waste," especially in dealing with an element as unpredictable as casualty numbers. But in fact, the unused blood is not really wasted: some units in Viet Nam are getting the equipment needed to separate and preserve the more durable plasma. And the Navy is planning to make a full field test of frozen whole blood in the near future.
A third vital factor in Viet Nam medicine is air conditioning of operating rooms, recovery rooms, and wards for the critically ill. In Viet Nam's two monsoon seasons, instruments rust and sterile dressings won't stay sterile in un-air-conditioned hospitals, but equipment is on the way and should soon reach the farthest-forward treatment units. The 1st Cavalry has even taken a "people pod," built to carry troops suspended from a helicopter, and converted it into a mobile hospital with two operating rooms, its own power supply, running water—and air conditioning. It will be helilifted by a CH-54 or "flying crane" right into the battlefield.
Emptying Beds. Ironically, the greatest insurance of adequate and immediate hospital care for the wounded in Viet Nam is the armed forces' ability to get them out of there. There are 1,600 military hospital beds "in country," but no man knows when these might be filled, leaving no room for a second wave of casualties. Reports come in daily to the Far East Joint Medical Regulating Office in Saigon, run by Major Robert M. Latham—how many "in-country" beds are occupied, how many beds are available at hospitals elsewhere in the western Pacific.