“Emergency Care for America's Heroes”

This is an excerpt of an interview with Dr. Ronald Blanck as part of GSACEP’s History of Military Emergency Medicine project.  Dr. Blanck retired from the army at the rank of Lt Gen. He served as the Army Surgeon General and the Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command.

GSACEP: So tell me, what took you into the path towards the Army?

DR. BLANCK:  I always loved the Army. From the time I was a little kid, and it wasn’t so much a conscious decision that I would serve. It was just something that I assumed that I would do. Of course, the draft was still in place, so when I finished my internship I marched into the draft board and said, “Hey, I would like to volunteer, but only if you send me to Vietnam.”  They said something like, “Be still my heart, we can probably accommodate you.” Indeed they did, so I got my induction orders and orders to Vietnam on the same piece of paper.

GSACEP: Wow. What motivated that bold statement? 

DR. BLANCK: As I was finishing internship, I was deciding what I wanted to do. Should I go right into residency?  I didn’t want to practice, and I knew there were uncertainties with the draft so I said, “Hey, perfect time to go in the Army and find out what’s going on in Vietnam.” I thought that would be of great interest. I can’t say fun. I never thought it would be fun, but rewarding, you know, all of those kinds of positive things, it was.

GSACEP: Tell me a little bit about—take me back to Vietnam. I am really interested in understanding how those experiences there helped shape you into the physician you are today. Can you take me through the feel and some of the experiences that still hold strong in your memory?

DR. BLANCK: I was with the Artillery in the Central Islands with wonderful people.  We supported a variety of other units in the area. I loved going in the field. I spent Christmas at Duklop, a little outpost near the Cambodian border with eight other Americans and about 200 climbers.  I did like taking care of people. I loved going out on medical civil affairs—medcaps, we called them, where we’d go to the highlands and mountain yard villages. I’d hand out mats and help them with sanitation, this will sound trite and even immature, but it was adventure.  I just thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t like being shot at very much, but that happened. But I’ll tell you what I liked most of all is the people that I was with who were very professional.  That concept of service was very, very important to me.  I was only there for two years, when it came time to decide whether or not stay, I really wanted to have that opportunity to continue to serve. I was very fortunate to be accepted into the residency at Walter Reed.  I think I was the first DO to go there.

GSACEP: What was your military training like to get you ready for Vietnam? What were the added sorts of teaching or protocols that you underwent before you shipped out? 

DR. BLANCK: I went to the four-and-a-half-week basic officer’s course for physicians. It was nowhere like an officer basic course. We learned about tropical diseases and preventive medicine. We learned water purification; all those kinds of things that gets at the health and the preventive aspect of medical care. Then we learned about trauma. We actually took care of a goat that had been shot and learned to intubate. They gave training in those aspects of medical care, as well as some environmental and survival training. We did shoot M14s.There was that kind of reality familiarization. There were no simulator courses in those days.

GSACEP: Can you tell me in those early days, what were your feelings and what your fears, I guess, as the combat sort of raged around you?

DR. BLANCK: Well, I can’t say that combat raged around me that much. We had rocket mortar attacks, and we had occasional firefights that I would be involved with or part of, but you know, in my little area, I took care of many more illnesses than I did wounded. Even if there was an attack a quarter of a mile away, I wouldn’t be involved in that. A helicopter would come in and take them to a hospital.  I was never in a hospital in Vietnam. I was always in the field, so my care of those wounded was somewhat limited. I mean, there were a couple of instances clearly when I did, but the only mass casualty that I was really involved with had to do with a contaminated water supply. Everybody got sick from contaminated water. I started IVs in about a hundred people, they would whip them out and go to the john because they had diarrhea then come back.  I would start them up again.  That went through the night, I just kept them hydrated. There was nothing else really to do.

GSACEP: In looking back at that whole time period, do you think there were experiences or qualities or skills that you pulled from your time in Vietnam that really held true in the years that followed as a physician?

DR. BLANCK: Well, certainly it gave me experience. It gave me confidence. It allowed me to do the things that I had been trained to do, but more than that, it gave me the opportunity to learn about things I hadn’t been trained to do. Plague, for example, and how do you deal with that? I think it was that kind of a very positive maturing experience.