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Summary - March 1967

The hospital continues its growth in the number of beds, but especially grows in neurosurgical capabilities.  MAJ LaRue Keller is assigned as the first Head Nurse of the Neurosurgical Intensive Care unit. (Source Don Patrick)

March 1

March 6

CPT Donald Patrick performs what may have been the first neurosurgery at the 24^th.  His account of the event:

On March 6, LT Thoan (Webmaster note:  LT Thoan was ARVN) came in the ER with a tiny entrance wound in his right frontal region, but was decerebrate, deeply unconscious and with a dilated right pupil. A small frag had cut on artery on the surface of his brain and a huge blood clot had developed, crushing his brain and trying to push it down through the little hole in the base of the skull. Like a coke bottle in a freezer that pushes the cap off. Anyway, I grabbed one side of his litter and we ran to the OR, burst in the door and sent everyone into frenzied action. even though no one really knew what they were doing except me, we clipped and shaved his head, prepped and draped, incised the skin, and drilled a hole in less than 10 minutes. I opened the dura and out popped a huge gout of blood. It was a simple matter to aspirate the rest of the clot, coagulate the tiny bleeder, and close. In hours, the patient was awake and drinking a coke. Word got around what had happened and the hospital attitude toward what I did for a living became much more positive.

March 15

From an email message sent by Dr. Donald Patrick to the Webmaster:

I would like to find John Matthews, the soldier I operated on at the end of an exhausting 72 hour stretch for me. The date was March 15, 1967, or so. He had four penetrating fragment wounds, all requiring craniotomies, and I could barely see and had a terrible headache. He lost an eye from one of the fragments that penetrated his right eye and went into his right frontal lobe, but other than that, when I saw him at Fitzsimmons General Hospital a year later, he was in good health and spirits.

March 25

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a march  of 5,000 anti-war demonstrators in Chicago.  In an address to the demonstrators, King declares that the Vietnam war "is a blasphemy against all that America stands for." (Source: Vietnam War: An Almanac.  Bowman)

March - Exact Date Unknown

LT Ginny Devine arrives at the 24^th Evac.  During her 17 month tour she works on the POW Ward and the Pre/Op Recovery Ward.  While at the 24^th, she meets her future husband, LTC Robert Leaver, neurosurgeon and Hospital Commander.

PFC Freddie Fields joins the 24^th Evac and is assigned to the Pre-Op Ward.

CPT Ed Buster, MD, neurosurgeon, joins the 24^th Evac. (Source: Donald Patrick)

Dan Cunningham, Medical Lab Technician, joins the 24^th Evac.  He remembers serving with Rick Rounds, Bill "O" Goersich, Ted Uzelac. Tom Caltalano, MAJ Veach, SGT Vaughn,  SGT Wicks, Ken Bowen, CPT Kling, CPT Jewell, LT LaRocca, Cherry, SP4 Macintosh, and Butch Favero. (Source:  Dan Cunningham)

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Updated October 14, 2000