A conscientious objector who served as a medic during the Vietnam War offers an unflinching, compelling account of his experiences on the battlefield, describing his work with the injured and dying in the heart of combat. After beginning his career at Disneyland, Ben Sherman spent twenty years as a college administrator for three different institutions before retiring. In addition to his writing, he currently works as a speaker, consultant, trainer, and group facilitator and spends his leisure time designing and building sets for small independent theater productions. 1 Bags The bags are exactly where I should begin. They are where the war ended for fifty-eight thousand, and where it started for me. Black rubberized bags with reinforced plastic handles on each end, they were strong and durable, with heavy zippers you could pull with your whole fist. Entering the morgue tent, one hesitated to take a full breath. My first duty in Vietnam was spent zipping up smells. The only solace was that the remains had quit screaming. Some bodies had the distinct odor of burnt cloth or flesh. Others simply gave off old sweat, bad socks, tobacco, or belly gas. Even a tent vaporized with Lysol couldn't cut the continuous olfactory blight of human waste staining the underwear of the shell left behind. Our caring was meticulous, even while we tried, in our own way, to put our minds elsewhere. Each personal item was tagged, each button refastened. Neglected pockets and stripes were neatly resewn. Homely, wondering faces were shaved and cleaned. Without a sound, we each functioned with one mind, one obligation. Someone inventoried each coin, chain, watch, wallet, ring, and all were placed in small brown paper sacks. No one wanted their loved one coming home with someone else's personal stuff in his pocket or with field dirt ringing his neck. And the army didn't want a hometown mortician opening the box to find a mess instead of a hero. For every face locked into every rubber womb, I made a quiet promise to do this or that with my life for his sake. With some pride, I thought that as a medic I stood for part of the solution. I had come to this place to save a life, not take one. This plugging of rectums with cotton balls was a temporary setback. In one year minus one day, I could scrutinize my life for whatever meaning this horror held. A year from now I might even laugh out loud again. "Graves Registration?" I asked the clerk. "But I'm a medic." "New medics get the morgue tent first. Anything's better than the bush. Nobody asks for the morgue. But it'll pop your cherry. You'll be ready for anything after a few days of body-packing." "Uh, I don't . . ." "I know. The guys over there'll show you what to do. They're not grave diggers, either. Plain old medics like you." "We dig graves here?" "Nope. 'Grave diggers' are what we call the regular morgue specialists, lifers in Saigon at the big hospitals." "Uh-huh." I scrambled to keep up. His words and feet were way ahead of me, heading down the dirt road. "We don't get that many DOA anyway. It'll be pretty boring here. Just passing a few days, y'know? Only bodies we get are those who died in flight or across the street at 3d Surg. Most field KIAs go straight to Saigon. Then home." KIA. Killed in action. Upon entering the tent, the clerk handed me a blue tunic to exchange for my fatigue shirt, then disappeared without another word. Two lanky black medics worked over a corpse on a stainless steel table. They nodded politely but didn't speak. Their mouths puffed forward in a pout, like you had to hold your lips a certain way to concentrate. Their eyes were swollen, and I rubbed my own as the stench of disinfectant mixed with the humidity in the tent. I hung my fatigue shirt on a hook by the door next to their two. The stenciled names weren't showing. I didn't introduce myself, and they didn't offer. The two of them taught me by show rather than tell. When they were done preparing the corpse, I helped roll him onto an open rubber bag. One of them placed the brown paper sack full of personal belongings carefully between the knees as the other zipped the bag from the feet up over the head. A chill rocketed from my toes to my neck at the sound. The two of them picked up the full heavy bag by the two side handles and slid it into a silver aluminum box, then closed the cover and snapped it shut. The gurney bumped over the back threshold of the tent as they rolled the box out to be stored in a refrigerated steel building behind the morgue. Somebody else would ship him home. Stacked at the end of the morgue tent were more six-foot-long aluminum boxes. Ten or twelve of them. Each one eventually took somebody home. Near the stack of caskets, an open shelf stored extra sets of large fatigue pants and shirts and piles of olive drab T-shirts and socks. An open bandage box held dozens of packs of varying brands and quantities of cigarettes. I helped with the next KIA, who was