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*Applied bacitracin*....how shameful to even request/recieve a PH for such minor injuries....just as I figured!

I cannot understand the mind of someone who would go to the Corpsman for something that only required a topical disinfectant. It suggests to me that his whole 'military career' was intended as nothing other than a political springboard from the very beginning.

I compare this to the Union officer in the Civil War who was completely disemboweled by a shell fragment. The surgeons told him that there wasn't anything they could do, he was a 'goner'. He insisted that they operate on him. He gutted it out, recovered, and demanded to be returned to duty.

I cannot understand the mind of someone who would go to the Corpsman for something that only required a topical disinfectant

I cannot fault him for that. He was bandaged up, routine stuff. Why not go to a corpsmen for it?

However, a Purple Heart? Paleeze.

How many of you combat veterans, applied and received a PH for wounds, which did not require stitches and was signed off as a "Returned to duty"?

My distant cousin, Lt. William Henry Pohlman, was shot in the left hand on the Union line at Gettysburg during Pickett's charge. He wrapped it in some cloth and kept fighting. Later, he was shot in the right hand and could hold neither gun nor sword. However, he stayed on the front line until the fighting ended, when his men urged him to seek medical help. He walked down to the hospital, where they dressed his wounds and made him lie down. He died nine days later after, I am sure, incredible agony, never complaining. He had been training to be a missionary before the war started, like his father. My great-grandfather was named for him (William Henry Colman).

You ever hear of the Dog Days of August? Well in Vietnam the Dog Days of August run about year around. almost any penetrating injury if it is not properly treated becomes infected. Ever hear of cavernous sinus thrombosis probably not. One of my patients popped a zit between his eyes on the bridge of his nose. Apparently some of the exudate (pus) went the wrong way. Several days later he was told by his CO to go on sick call. He delayed five or six hours and when he was brought into the hospital he was running a 105 degree fever. Two days later he passed away from secondary bacterial meningitis. That zit killed him. Kerry's wound involved the removal of a piece of shrapnel don't know how big nor how deep it penetrated do you? It penetrated and thats what makes a potentially serious wound out of what may also have been little more than a splinter. The point is in Vietnam where men were exposed to warm humid conditions and where keeping wounds clean is a matter of life and death until you know the size of the shrapnel and whether the wound was a scratch probably not if shrapnel was involved you can't judge whether the wound was real or like Frank Burns (egg) shell fragment in the eye was a laugher or not.