Donated Oral History of Lieutenant General Quinn H Becker USA Retired

8/10/2019 Donated Oral History of Lieutenant General Quinn H Becker USA Retired

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SENIOR OFFICER ORAL HISTORY

LIEUTENANT GENERAL QUINN H. BECKER

36thSURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY


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FOREWORD

This donated oral history transcript has been produced from an interview withLieutenant General Quinn H. Becker, USA, Retired, conducted by Colonel (Ret) GarySadlon as part of the US Army War College/US Army Military History InstitutesSeniorOfficer Oral History Program.

Users of this transcript should note that the original verbatim transcription of therecorded interview has been edited to improve coherence, continuity, and accuracy offactual data. No statement of opinion or interpretation has been changed other than ascited above. The views expressed in the final transcript are solely those of theinterviewee and interviewer. The US Army War College/US Army Military HistoryInstitute assumes no responsibility for the opinions expressed, or for the general

historical accuracy of the contents of this transcript.

This transcript may be read, quoted, and cited in accordance with commonscholarly practices and the restrictions imposed by both the interviewee and interviewer.It may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without firstobtaining the written permission of the Director, US Army Military History Institute,950 Soldiers Drive, Carlisle, Pennsylvania 17013-5021.


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BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINELieutenant General (Retired) Quinn H. Becker

EducationNortheast Louisiana State, 1948-1952Louisiana State University, School of Medicine, 1952-1956Internship, Tripler General Hospital, Hawaii, 1956-1957Residency, Orthopedic Surgery, Confederate Memorial Hospital,

Shreveport, Louisiana (Army Sponsored), 1958-1961.

Assignments

Jan 1962-May 1963: Orthopedic Surgeon, U.S. Army Hospital, Fort Gordon, Georgia

Jun 1963-Jun 1964: Chief of Orthopedics, U.S Army Hospital, Fort Rucker, Alabama

Jul 1964-Jul 1965: Commanding Officer, 5thSurgical Hospital (Mobile Army),Heidelberg, Germany

Jul 1965-Jul 1966: Division Surgeon, 3d Infantry Division, Wurzberg, Germany

Jul 1966-Dec 1966: Chief, Orthopedic Surgery, 33rdField Hospital, Wurzberg, Germany

Jan 1967-Jul 1969: Assistant Chief, Orthopedic Service, Department of Surgery, WalterReed General Hospital, Washington, DC

Aug 1969-Jan 1970: Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia

Feb 1970-May 1970: Chief, Professional Services, 85thEvacuation Hospital, UnitedStates Army Vietnam

Jun 1970-Feb 1971: Division Surgeon and Battalion Commander, 15thMedicalBattalion, 1stCavalry Division (Airmobile), United States Army Vietnam

Mar 1971-Jun 1974: Chief, Orthopedic Service and Orthopedic Residency Training,Tripler Army Medical Center, Honolulu, Hawaii


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Jul 1974-Jun 1975: Student, United States Army War College, Carlisle Barracks,Pennsylvania

Jul 1975-Sep 1977: Surgeon, XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Mar 1976-Sep 1977: Commander, United States Army Medical Activity, Fort Bragg,North Carolina

Oct 1977-Jun 1980: Director of Health Care Operations, Office of the Surgeon General,United States Army, Washington, DC

Jul 1980-Oct 1981: Commandant, United States Army Academy of Health Sciences,Fort Sam Houston, Texas

Oct 1981-Jun 1983: Deputy Surgeon General, Office of the Surgeon General, UnitedStates Army, Washington, DC

Jul 1983-Feb 1985: Surgeon, U.S. European Command; U.S. Army Europe; andCommander, 7thMedical Command, Heidelberg, Germany

Feb 1985-May 1988: The Surgeon General, United States Army/Program ExecutiveOfficer; Health Care Systems, United States Army, Falls Church, Virginia

Decorations and Badges

Distinguished Service MedalLegion of MeritBronze Star Medal (with 1 Oak Leaf Cluster)Meritorious Service Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters)

Air MedalArmy Commendation MedalCombat Medical BadgeParachutist BadgeSenior Flight Surgeon Badge


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Lieutenant General Quinn H. Beckers Promotions

Rank Temporary Permanent

2LT 5 Jan 1956

1LT 2 Jun 1956 31 May 1957

CPT 1 Jul 1957 11 Jun 1959

MAJ 26 Nov 1962 11 Jun 1966

LTC 23 Sep 1966 11 Jun 1973

COL 2 Jun 1971 12 Sep 1976

BG 21 Sep 1977

MG 1 Sep 1980 22 Jan 1982

LTG 1 Mar 1985


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INTERVIEWER NOTE

I wish LTG Becker could see this! I said to my battalion commander as

we were traveling along Tapline Road in Saudi Arabia, during Operation Desert

Storm, just before the ground offensive. Up and down the many desert miles of

Tapline Road, located every few kilometers apart, were combat support and

evacuation hospitals with new Deployable Medical Systems (DEPMEDS) that

were ready for action. Also, there were UH-60 medical evacuation helicopters,

blood supply units, laboratories, medical supply units, ground ambulance units,

and medical command and control organizations. I explained to my battalion

commander that LTG Becker was the most instrumental person in the Army for

making sure we had the medical equipment and the trained people needed for

this war. The equipment and medical units, including the group of people

selected to lead these units were all part of LTG Beckers work as a senior Army

Medical Department (AMEDD) leader.As his former Aide-de-Camp, I watched him stress the importance of

modernizing field medicine doctrine, fielding new equipment, and sponsoring field

medicine training. He kept the AMEDD focused on its wartime mission. Many of

us who worked with LTG Becker consider him to be one of the most influential

battlefield medical advocates in the history of the AMEDD.

As people read his oral history, they will walk away knowing that medical

readiness was General Beckers biggest gift to military medicine. Self-described

as a field doctor, LTG Becker used the term medical readiness in the 1970s


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and 80s to refer to the concept of the entire Army Medical Department being

prepared for its wartime missions. I really do not think that LTG Becker expected

his contributions would be used in a 1990 Middle East War, which occurred

shortly after his retirement. During his time (1970s and 80s) as a senior

strategic leader in the AMEDD, the biggest threat that faced war planners was a

large Soviet Union force attacking Western Europe. It was expected that this war

would create large numbers of casualties. LTG Becker and his medical planners

had to make sure there were deployable, fixed and warm-based hospitals,

rapid patient evacuation systems, modern medical equipment, and trained

people lots of them. From the time LTG Becker spent as the Director of Health

Care Operations in the Pentagon, Commandant at the Academy of Health

Sciences, Deputy Surgeon General, European Command Chief Surgeon and

Commander of 7thMedical Command in Europe, and as the Army Surgeon

General, he advanced battlefield medicine to care for the large number of

casualties expected in a war situation.. LTG Becker carried the banner for fieldmedicine along with many other readiness contributions in stateside hospitals.

Another challenge for the AMEDD in the 1980s was reestablishing

confidence in the military peacetime medical system that provided health care for

soldiers, spouses, family members, and retirees. LTG Becker, as the newly

appointed Army Surgeon General, faced intense pressure from the media,

congressional leaders, and senior army officials about the quality of medical care

in the Army. His oral history describes this situation and reveals his honest and

transparent way of handling this situation and restoring confidence in military


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medicine. LTG Becker also explains many other interesting initiatives in this oral

history that include commissioning physician assistants, enlisted medical

training, establishing the Army Medical Department Regiment just to name a

few things that are now fully implemented.

In his oral history, LTG Beckers does not discuss fancy theories of

leadership. He would probably say that his leadership style is to care about

people let them do their jobssimple as that. Those who know Quinn Becker as

a person, realize that he gives credit and praise to others for advances in military

medicine. As a selfless soldier, he is quick to acknowledge others and deflects

credit away from himself. That is his genuine personality and his mindset.

LTG Becker has many great leadership attributes, but the one that

countless others remember is his leading by example. As often as possible, as a

General Officer, he would participate with candidates in the Expert Field Medical

Badge 12 mile road march, visiting and motivating the soldiers along the way.

Also, he would jump in the middle of a physical training session and become partof the unit as it ran and sang in formation. As many people at Fort Sam Houston

recall, he sent the entire Academy of Health Sciences, Health Services

Command, and Brooke Army Medical Center to Camp Bullies for a field training

weekend. As one of the company commanders for this training exercise, I waited

at Camp Bullis for the buses to arrive from Fort Sam Houston, and was I ever

surprised when Major General Becker was the first soldier that stepped off the

bus! Also, in 1980, as a Brigadier General, he set the example for other

physicians by attending the first ever Combat Casualty Care Course. LTG


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Becker enjoyed being enthusiastic and leading by example and for so many

others including myself, his leadership made us feel good about what we were

doing.

LTG Becker has a genuine and natural gift for relating to people,

regardless of rank, job, or level. Along with a friendly personality, he has many

diverse interests that include building and fixing things, welding, farming and

animals, construction, motorcycles, old Volkswagens, hiking, skiing, biking,

square dancing, and overall, just being with people. The unintended

consequence of his personality and diverse set of interests makes him the type

of person that people want to work for and he is rewarded with their loyalty, love

and respect. As the Army Surgeon General, I am convinced his success was

greatly due to his ability to he could relate many of his interests to people at all

levels, both inside his large organization and with senior warfighters in the

Pentagon. Described in War College strategic leadership terminology, LTG

Becker had a broad and experienced frame of reference which made him anextremely effective leader. In simpler terms, LTG Becker was loaded with

wisdom.

LTG Beckers Oral History tracts his life from the time of his youth into the

military, through his assignments, culminating with the time he spent as the

number #1 guy in the Army Medical Department. Near the end of his oral history,

LTG Becker shares some reflective insights about his career and the Army. For

me, the humbling part of interviewing LTG Becker was the fact that he never had

a grand plan for his career, and he never planned to be a General, let alone the


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Army Surgeon General. LTG Becker, his wife Marie and their children went to

assignments, where and when the Army sent them. His career was shaped

along the way with a supporting family, good people to work with, a hard work

ethic, and having a set of personal values that reflect honesty, dedication, and

selfless service. A take-away for a young officer reading this oral history is the

balance of clinical expertise, war and field medicine experience, and leadership

positions at all levels. LTG Beckers oral history is full of important lessons for

the military and medicine which applies to all ages, times, and situations.

This Oral History of Lieutenant General Quinn H. Becker is long overdue,

as his contributions to military medicine are dynamic and a rich part of the United

States Army history.

Colonel (Ret) Gary SadlonOral History InterviewerFormer Aide-de-Camp (1983-85)


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ORAL HISTORY

LIEUTENANT GENERAL QUINN H. BECKER

Q: General Becker, was medicine or the military an early interest in your life?

A: No, they really werent. Of course, after the WWII started I knew something

about the military, but I was not interested in it as a career. I thought more about

being a farmer, probably, than anything. My father was a country doctor. It kept

him working all of the time, and up at night. It was not something I wanted to do.

Q: General Becker, as a child, what were your interests and hobbies?

A: Well, I know that I wasnt terribly interested in sports as a young boy. I worked

on the farm and other jobs and enjoyed that more. I didnt have many hobbies,

other than I rode my bicycle a lot. Things were kind of tough in those days. This

was in the Depression so there wasnt a lot of money around for extra things and

everybody pitched in and did his part.

Q: What do you remember about your fathers style of practicing medicine?

A: Well, it was in a small country town and he was the doctor that did most of the

deliveries. He had to do them all in the homes. Most folks lived on the farm and

if we had bad weather or snow, he would go and stay for 3, 4, or 5 days until the

lady delivered. He worked quite hard and didnt get much money. Most people

gave him food so we had plenty of food to eat.


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Q: What academic areas were you most interested in during high school?

A: I think I was most interested in the sciences, mostly biology, and mathematics. I

liked all of my subjects, but those were my favorites.

Q: What high school did you graduate from? Did you have any extracurricular

activities or any academic activities?

A: I graduated from Ouachita Parish High School in Monroe, Louisiana, which was

my mothers home. We went to my mothers home in 1944 after my father died.

We had originally lived up in northern Missouri in a small town called Milan in

Sullivan County. I went to Monroe, Louisiana, and started high school, and

finished in 1948. During high school, I played football and enjoyed it very much

and made some lifelong friendships.

Q: Where did you go to college and what did you major in?

A: I went to college in northeast Louisiana in Monroe. It was called NortheastLouisiana State College at that time. When I first started there, it was a junior

college. At the end of the second year it became a four-year school so I stayed.

The first two years I majored in agriculture and did very well in it and enjoyed it. I

also took some zoology, botany courses, and biology courses. One of my

professors was excellent. He was a zoology teacher and he influenced me quite

a bit. I did very well in my studies and had high grades and decided at the end of

the second year that I should probably study medicine. I changed my major to

pre-med and spent the last two years studying pre-medical subjects.


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Q: You were also enrolled in ROTC and how did this fit into your plan for pursuing a

medical career?

A: Well, in college we had a ROTC program. I participated in that and enjoyed it

very much. It was a military police program at that time. I went to summer camp

at Fort Gordon, Georgia. I was the distinguished military graduate, so I was

commissioned a second lieutenant in the Military Police Corps upon graduation

from college. I had some interest in the military. I finished college in 1952 during

the Korean War. I was given a deferment when I was accepted down at LSU

School of medicine.

Q: What caused you to decide to enter the military as a physician?

A: In my senior year a new program came out. It was called the Senior Medical

Student Program. If someone signed up for that during the senior year, youcould go on Active Duty and remain in school, and draw the pay of a second

lieutenant. I was sworn in on the 10th of January 1956. That was, the beginning

of my Active Duty as a second lieutenant Medical Service Corps. I finished my

senior year with an adequate amount of money to live on.

Q: Were there any family were military that influenced you into the military?

A: No one in my family was military. There was no one that influenced me to enter

the military.


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Q: After completing medical school, you entered into a military internship at Tripler

Army Medical-what about your internship?

A: We had a great internship. Being a senior medical student in the military

program, they let me have my choice of internships. My first choice was Tripler

in Honolulu and I was lucky enough to get it. It was an excellent program. It was

a general internship and was well rounded. We covered all facets of medicine.

Tripler was a big, busy hospital taking care of all of the different services on the

island of Ouahers It was an outstanding opportunity for me.

Q: During you internship at Tripler, what interested you the most so that you could

decide on a particular residency and specialty?

A: I was interested in anesthesiology, surgery, and orthopedic surgery. I finally

decided on orthopedics and I applied for a residency. By the time I applied, all of

the military slots for orthopedic residents had been filled. I was given theopportunity to take any accredited civilian residency that would accept me: I

applied to several places, but my first choice was in Shreveport, Louisiana. The

hospital was called the Confederate Memorial Medical Center and was a branch

of the Charity Hospital System in Louisiana. It was a very busy 1,000-bed

hospital with a heavy workload in orthopedics.

I was there for four years in Shreveport, all of the time on Active Duty as a

captain. I received the pay of a captain, which was certainly more than the other


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residents made. My wife taught school and we lived fairly comfortably. It was a

very busy, hardworking residency. We were on call every other night for the first

two years.

Q: Back while you were at Tripler and before you went on to do residency, was that

your first experience of Active Duty in the military?

A: Yes, except for the ROTC summer camp. We were Active Duty military at Tripler

and wore our uniforms but didnt do much close order drill. Our main objective

was to learn medicine. We had many of the things that an active military unit

would have.

Q: Upon completing your residency there at Shreveport, your first assignment was

at Fort Gordon as an orthopedic surgeon on staff. What do you remember about

Fort Gordon and that period of time?A: Yes, my first assignment was at Fort Gordon and I was lucky enough to be

assigned there with one of the previous residents that had been with me at

Tripler. Hed been an orthopedic resident when I was an intern out there. He

greatly influenced me because; he was there as the only orthopedic surgeon at

Fort Gordan. I came in to be his number two man. He continued to teach me

orthopedic surgery and we had a busy service. In 1962 Fort Gordon was an

extremely large and busy post and I gained a lot of experience there.


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Q: Did you receive any other military training before your residency?

A: Before I went into my residency, and after the internship, I went to Fort Sam

Houston, Texas, and was there for six months in the Advanced Course. There

was a large class. In that group there were four medical officers that later

became general officers in the Medical Corps. It taught me a lot about basic

military that I needed.

Q: General Becker, you were at Fort Gordon for only a short period of time as an

orthopedic surgeon. You left there to Fort Rucker. Why did you go to Fort

Rucker?

A: Well, thats a strange story, but I was interested in being an astronaut, believe it

or not, and I could have qualified. I had my private pilots license. I, of course,

wasnt jet qualified, which was something that astronauts had to do, but it was

something that I could have done. I was very interested in it because I believed

at that time that once they got beyond the two-man program, those physicians,and physicists, and other PH.D.s, would be on the team. This later proved to be

true.

I sent my application to Washington and they answered me with a nice letter and

said, Yes, there is a possibility of that but first you should be a flight surgeon.

So I went to San Antonio, Texas, to Brooke Air Force Base to the primary course

in Aviation Medicine and spent several months there studying Aviation Medicine.


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I became a flight surgeon. And once that was done, the assignment people felt

that I should go to Fort Rucker, Alabama, the aviation center for the Army.

I was the chief of orthopedics, so I moved up in the world rapidly from only a staff

officer on a two-man service to the chief of a one-man service. As a flight

surgeon, I had an opportunity to work with the aviators and medical service

Corps officers that were involved with emergency air evacuation. I really enjoyed

my time there. It was a great assignment and I became familiar with Army

aviation.

Q: Now what about youre training to become a flight surgeon? How was that

conducted?

A: Well, at Brooks Air Force Base, they had an extensive course there. You learn

all of the things that an Air Force flight surgeon had to know, which had to do with

a great deal of high altitude medicine or problems that a flight surgeon needed tobe familiar with. We learned all of that and all about how to qualify people for

aviation training, and how to disqualify them. We also learned about the different

disorders aviators might get. We learned how to investigate aircraft accidents.

All of this training helped me in my later military career.

Q: Was Fort Rucker the first place that you really had a lot of interface with aviation,

line officers, and the Army? Did this assignment diversify you from pure

medicine into an operational type of an assignment?


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A: I think that it would be fair to say that thats correct. The commander at the

hospital at Fort Rucker was Colonel Spurgeon Neel. I consider Colonel Neel to

be the father of aviation medicine in the Army and also the father of medical

evacuation with helicopters. He personally influenced me a great deal by seeing

that I learned a lot more about the military. I also met many of the prominent

military officers on the post. As a flight surgeon two was required to fly to better

understand aviation and what pilots had to do. I had some time off and fly. In

later years this was to serve me well, because I took care of many, many flight

personnel and was able to help their career.

Q: After you left Fort Rucker, you went on to Germany, to Heidelberg, and you

commanded a small, mobile type of surgical hospital. What about that kind of

surgical hospital and what were your duties there?

A: I also remember when Colonel Pixley came by and interviewed all of us at Fort

Rucker. He was from the assignments branch. Colonel Pixley later became theSurgeon General. He came by and interviewed all of us and wanted to know

what we wanted to do. During that time at Fort Rucker, Id also gotten my

airborne wings up at Fort Benning. Colonel Neal was very generous in letting me

have a little time off to go up there and do that.

Well, with my increasing interest in aviation and airborne area, it was apparent to

Colonel Pixley, that I was interested in operational military medicine. He wanted

to know what I would like to do. I said that I would like to go to Europe and


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command one of the field hospitals. I had a taste of that on a field exercise at

Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I went there for Swift Strike III and was assigned as

the commander of the Second Surgical Hospital. It was deployed during that

exercise and I enjoyed it a great deal. I enjoyed the field so Colonel Pixley went

back to Washington and saw to it that I got that type of assignment in Europe.

I was assigned to the 5th Surgical Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. It was a

small MASH hospital, although at that time, officially it wasnt called a MASH.

The unit was called a Surgical Hospital Mobile Army, which is the same letters of

the acronym only reversed. I had five assigned officers, 100 very good medics

and some administrative people. Our job was to pack the hospital up when we

got called out for an emergency, and move out to the field. We would set it up

and be ready to receive casualties in a short period of time. We were in support

of V Corps. I got to know many of the people in V Corps and in our medical

group. Being a commander of this unit I provided many experiences that Ibelieved served me well in later years.

Q: What type of staff did you have in the surgical hospital, physicians, and nurses,

administrative and were they assigned to you every day?

A: When we would go to the field, we would pick up our physicians and nurses from

the hospital in Heidelberg. Their full-time duties were at the hospital, but they

were assigned to us in case of an emergency. I did have one full-time nurse,

who was an excellent officer. She was both my training nurse and my operations


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officer. She stayed with us all of the time and saw to it that our medics, both 91-

Charlies and 91-Bravos, licensed practical nurses and medics, kept their training

up-to-date. She also looked after a lot of the supplies to make sure we had what

we needed for combat. On a day-to-day basis, we had a supply officer, an

adjutant, and an XO that made up the full cadre of officers. The doctors and

nurses were not permanently assigned with us.

Q: How did you encourage doctors and nurses to participate in their training and in

their field duties? Did they get confused whether they worked the hospital or

whether they worked for you? How did that work?

A: Well, their first allegiance, of course, was to the hospital next door, but they knew

what their job was, if we had a war or some sort of a confrontation with the Soviet

Union they knew they would be a part of the 5 thSurgical Hospital. I would bring

them in and orient them to the field hospital. I think that was very important. We

took them all through the hospital and they met everybody. We also saw to itthat some of them went out with us on every one of our readiness exercises. We

didnt take them all out at the same time; this would have been ridiculous. One

particular exercise they participated in was called the Army Training Test (ATT).

We had to pass this each year. At this exercise I always took a large number of

doctors and nurses with us. They developed a feel for the mission and the unit.

When the ATT was over, theyd go back to their regular duties.


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We had Ob-Gyn doctors, surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, and nurses of all

categories. There were even some administrative officers that came with us,

such as the registrar. We did not try to jam it down their throats, so to speak, but

we very carefully made sure that they knew what we were doing and what we

were capable of doing. We would also have them come over and go through the

instruments and the medications that we had to see if perhaps there was

something missing that they needed that we didnt have. We made some very

significant additions to our inventory because of that. All of them, I believe, felt

very good about their association with the 5thSurgical Hospital.

Q: General Becker, while commanding the 5th Surgical Hospital, what relationship

did you have with your First Sergeant and the enlisted soldiers?

A: Well Gary, Im glad you asked me that. This was probably the highlight of my

tour as a commander of a small unit. It was my first experience, of course, as a

commander. And I had not had a great deal of experience with enlisted troops,except those who worked in the orthopedic service. I have to tell you it was one

of the great joys of being a commander; to learn and find out the great wealth of

knowledge, experience, and capabilities that our enlisted people had. We didnt

truly have a First Sergeant, because this position was vacant. We had a

temporary First Sergeant who was a senior medic, a Specialist-7, which is not

around anymore. He was a Spec-7, a very capable fellow. Hed been an

operating room technician. He stepped right up and did the job of the First

Sergeant very well. He and I became very close. I know that I got in his way


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several times, because I always try to help put up the tents and hed say, Major,

would you mind going over and sitting under that tree or go take care of

something else, somewhere else, until we get this done? Very politely, of

course.

Every now and then one of the enlisted troops would get into some trouble. The

First Sergeant and I would deal with that as best we could. We always tried to do

it in a compassionate way, but we also had to be fair. We realized that the rest of

the unit was watching what we did and I dont think anyone could ever say

whatever we had to do wasnt fair. We took very careful consideration of what we

did. I also always consulted with my training nurse, because she was very close

to the enlisted people. She had a great feel for them and she knew them well.

Shed been there longer, of course, than I had, and had developed a good

rapport.

I think the point of all of this talk is that in dealing with the enlisted people, who

are the real heart of your unit, and without which you cannot perform your

mission, that you have to be fair, compassionate, understanding, and to get to

know them as people as well as soldiers. Of course, I tried to set an example for

them, and to see that theyre careers develop that they have a chance to

progress. They all wanted to do their job, they wanted to do it well, and they

wanted to be considered for promotion when the time came. We had one or two

around that were very junior enlisted people that didnt understand that, but we


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worked with them also. We tried to get them so that they became very important

members of the unit.

Every one of them was an important cog in our great machine that we called the

5th Surg. Once we started to the field on an exercise, you can be assured that

that hospital was loaded on those trucks in record time and set up out in the field

ready to take casualties in a very short period of time. We were fully capable of

performing our mission. That was all due to the hard work of the good enlisted

people that we had.

Q: With your mission with V Corps, after you treated casualties, where were the

casualties being further evacuated?

A: As I remember, and this is not totally clear they would use the hospitals that were

set up there in Germany. Heidelberg and Frankfurt were our main back-up

hospitals.

Q: How did your family feel about living in Germany?

A: We had some great quarters in Patrick Henry Village. At first, we started out in

temporary quarters at Patrick Henry Village later we moved to our permanent

quarters at Mark Twain Village, which was much closer to the 5 Surg. We had a

good life there in the military community. The kids went to the military school.

We had three kids then. One was too young to go to school, but the other two

went to school. We also had a Sunday school class for the military children and


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in fact, I taught one for a little while when I had time. We got to meet the other

families similar to how we lived at Fort Rucker. It was further widening our

experience as a military family and it was a very good life. It was a great place

over there because we had a lot of friends, especially the people from our unit

and from the hospital. So we counted it as an extremely positive experience. Im

not sure whether my kids would totally agree with that, but I know to this day they

still talk about their time in Germany and in the schools over there.

Q: While you were the commander of the 5 Surg, how were you able to keep your

clinical skills sharp in orthopedics?

A: Thats always a tough problem for a clinician. What I did though, I went to the

clinics over in the hospital and saw patients when I could. Also, I went to the

operating room and the orthopedic guys over at Heidelberg Hospital felt like I

was part of the staff there. I did not spend enormous amounts of time over there,

but I was able to maintain my clinical skills.

Q: General Becker, when you completed your tour as the Commander of 5th Surg

Hospital in Heidelberg, where did you go from there?

A: Well, I think I was in command there about a year, maybe a little more. I went

down to see the chief surgeon for the United States Army, Europe, who was

General Douglas Kendrick at that time. General Kendrick talked to me and he

said he had an interesting job for me as the Division Surgeon for the 3d Infantry

Division. I knew enough to know that, generally, that was a Lieutenant Colonel


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position and I was a junior Major. I asked him if that was a problem and he said

he didnt think so. He wanted me to go up to Wrzburg and be the surgeon. I

said, Well, sir, I will certainly try so I went and it was a great experience. I

learned a lot about the real Army in this position. I learned how the field Army

operates.

The G-3, for some reason, took me under his wing. I think he understood that I

didnt know that much about the field army other than my experience at the 5

Surg, I certainly didnt know about the division. I had a good assistant and a

good sergeant. They ran the office, which gave me a chance to get out with the

G-3 and some of the other senior officers in the division and learn a lot. I also

had little clinics spread out over the entire 3d Division area, which was a large

part of that Wrzburg community. There were places like Schweinfurt and other

cities where we had clinics. They were supporting, of course, the various

battalions and the brigades in the divisions.

I got to know all of the battalions commanders and the brigade commanders,

and what their problems were with the medical support. I personally learned a

great deal there about division level and battalion level medical support. We had

all of the medical TO&E gear that went with the units. When we had a big

exercise all of the field equipment for the battalion aid stations and the medical

companies would be set up. Sometimes, we would be out as long as six weeks.


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So it was a great education for me and I enjoyed it very much. Im not sure my

wife did, because we were gone for long periods of time.

But, again, our family life was good in Wurzburg. We lived in quarters and we

had good neighbors. My wife was a teacher and taught in the schools there as

she had done in Heidelberg. Sometimes it was part-time, and sometime it was

full-time. She enjoyed it and the kids liked the school.

We had a great division commander, who later became the DCSPER of the

Army. For some reason he liked me, and he helped in my education. He had

been in the Second World War and in the Marne Division over in Italy during

combat. He had a wealth of experience and was a real father figure for me. All

of these things enhanced my education and maturation as a military officer who

knew more than just medicine.

Q: As Division Surgeon, what was your relationship with the brigade surgeon and

battalion aid station commanders throughout the 3d Infantry Division?

A: I was the division surgeon and I think I did outrank all of them. They were all

captains. They came directly under my purview for their training and for any of

their medical duties. They did not belong to me as they would a commander.

They worked for the battalion commanders and the brigade commanders.

However, those commanders also looked to me to be sure their surgeons

expertise in medicine was maintained. We had continuing medical education


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programs for them. We saw to it that they kept up-to-speed and that the

medicine they practiced was of high quality.

Also, I had a great relationship with the medical battalion commander who was

down at Aschaffenburg. Oh, I guess it was an hours drive away. He and I got

along very well. He was a senior lieutenant colonel, Medical Service Corps,

whod also seen a lot of Active Duty, I think, in World War II. He understood that

I didnt know everything I was supposed to know and so he oriented me to the

med battalion and all that it did. I became involved in all of the activities of a

medical battalion and the deployments of the medical companies. If there were

problems that affected the possible medical wellbeing of the troops, I would take

that on as a problem and bring it up to the commanding general of the division, or

the proper staff section. Actually, I worked through the Chief of Staff. I didnt go

regularly directly to the Division Commander. I always touched base with the

Chief of Staff, who I worked for. The Chief of Staff was an old soldier and he wasvery nice to my wife and I, he kept us in the inner circle of the officers of the

division. We had a lot of great parties and great camaraderie.

I think, that that assignment probably convinced me that a medical officer was an

essential part of the Army and that you needed some physicians in uniform that

knew something about the Army, other than just straight medicine. We needed

officers to give the military commanders in the field and their staffs the type of


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medical advice, medical support, and medical planning that was needed to carry

out their mission.

Q: As you look back at your duties as Division Surgeon, would you say that the

future military leaders should emphasize putting top quality people into TOE

assignments in order to round out their careers?

A: Yes I agree with that. I think that a medical officer, who wants a career in the

military as a military medical officer, not just as a teacher of military medicine.

For the fellow thats going to be a general officer and somebody thats deeply

involved with the Army and in the growth and development, of the medical

department, certainly should have some experience at the battalion level, if

possible and the division level for sure. Its not always possible to have a

medical officer be a division surgeon, but it is a great place to learn.

Our battalion medical officers learn an awful lot. They didnt learn a lot of what

happens at division headquarters, but they certainly did at the battalion level. I

think all of them realized that there is a great need for medical officers that have

military orientation and training. Division surgeon is a great training ground for

anyone that is going to go forward. Weve had some excellent senior medical

officers that have not done that. They have interfaced with the line Army in other

places, which I believe to be extremely beneficial. If you dont know where line


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officers are coming from and what the Army is all about, youre ill prepared to

properly support the entire Army.

Q: General Becker, following your assignment as division surgeon you were able to

stay in Wurzburg and work in the hospital. What did you do?

A: When I had finished my tour there as the division surgeon, I went down to the

hospital in Wurzburg and was the orthopedic surgeon there. I was also the

Deputy Hospital Commander. The commander there had known me from the

division times and wed become good friends. He needed somebodyto help him

with some of the duties at the hospital. I spent the majority of my time, of course,

running the orthopedic clinic, and doing orthopedic surgery. It was a good time

for me to get back into my clinical skills. As the division surgeon, I would come

down to the hospital when I had an opportunity and work there.

Q: Your next assignment was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington,D.C. How did this assignment come about?

A: I can tell you that it was the biggest surprise of my life when I was assigned to

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, because up until this time I was not working

in the big medical centers. Id only been in small hospitals, like Fort Gordon and

Fort Rucker. The chief at Walter Reed knew about me through one of his

assistant chiefs. He had stopped by to see me at Fort Rucker because he is also

a flight surgeon. He told the orthopedic chief about me and the chief called and

asked me if I wanted to come to Walter Reed to be on the staff there and help


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with the training of residents. I said, Well, are you sure youve got the right

man? And he said, Yes, I have the right man. We would be very pleased to

have you here. I said, All right. Ill certainly come.

So our family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland into a little house. I went to work

as the Assistant Chief of Orthopedics. There were two assistant chiefs and the

fellow who had recommended me, George Baker, whose place I took while he

went to Vietnam. We had a great deal of hard work because we were at war.

This was in 1968, early 68, and we were receiving the casualties from Tet. We

had hundreds and hundreds of orthopedic patients there with only a small staff.

We had our residents, and we had two assistant chiefs, and the chief of

orthopedics. Our patients were very badly injured.

Walter Reed did not get the lightly injured patients. These patients all went to the

hospitals nearest their home. Only the casualties with multiple severer injurieswould come to Walter Reed. I remember from going over the medical boards on

each one of them that they usually had anywhere from 12-25 significant

diagnoses from their wounds. We had very complex patients.

The chief of orthopedics was Colonel Walt Metz. Colonel Metz was the

consultant to the Surgeon General in orthopedic surgery. And I got to see

another aspect of military medicine, which I had not seen before. The very

serious problems in orthopedic surgery throughout the entire Army came to


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Colonel Metz for solution. Often times he would call up his two assistants in and

we would consult with him on these cases. Ive seen him sit there for hours and

hours going over charts as thick as three or four inches on problems that had

come to the attention of the Surgeon General. Then he would write a lengthy

report and letter to the Surgeon General with his thoughts and recommendations.

We had to medically board almost all of our patients. One of my chores as

assistant chief was to oversee these boards, and to ensure that they were

properly prepared. This is another significant part of military medicine and I was

well indoctrinated into that. I spent a great deal of my time in the operating room

with the residents. We had pre-op conferences and post-op conferences. At

pre-op we would bring the patients record in. The resident would present the

case, and then we would all make a combined decision as to what would be

done. However, the chief of orthopedics had the last vote. On rare occasions, he

might overrule us. But for the most part, it was all a fairly unanimous decision.They were generally fairly clear-cut cases.

We did some groundbreaking work in the treatment of war wounds there. I was

very proud of that. We did a lot of ambulatory treatment of open fractures that

were infected and we got them to heal. That was not true in civilian medicine at

that time. An infected open fracture almost always wound up as an amputation

in civilian medicine. We were able to prevent many, many of these. Doctor Metz


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was an outstanding orthopedic surgeon and taught me an awful lot and so were

all of the other people that were on the staff.

We had a good association with the other services in the hospital, because often

our patients had multiple diagnoses. For example we were very close with

ophthalmology because we kept the patient because of his severe extremity

injuries. The ophthalmologist would come by and work on him or take him to the

operating room. We also had close rapport with the oral surgeons, because

there was an awful lot of dental work. We would help them if they needed to do

bone grafts on fractures of the jaw, etc. Of course we knew all the general

surgeons and the neurosurgeons. Occasionally people would have medical

problems, like malaria, they almost all had that, and we would be consulting with

our medicine friends. For the most part the whole medical team was very close.

Most of the time we had 600-700 patients assigned to the service and we onlyhad 300 beds, including those out at Forest Glen. So, once a patient was able to

dress his own wounds, meaning a stump or open wound, and take care of

himself, meaning he could either get around in a wheelchair or on crutches, we

would then let him go on convalescent leave. Then wed put somebody in the

bed that was in worse shape than he was. Now, I grant you that would not be

very well accepted today in modern medicine in civilian life, but it worked very

well. The families and the patients were extremely able to take care of these

wounds and they came back looking better than they had when they left. Their


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mothers food agreed with them a lot and they all picked up weight. They were in

bad shape when they got to Walter Reed. It usually took them about, 4, to 8

weeks to get to Walter Reed, because most went from Vietnam to Japan first.

Q: General Becker, what part of your former military training that became of any

value to you while you were at Walter Reed Army Medical Center?

A: I think that all of it helped me a great deal. Certainly, I had a great deal of

empathy with the soldiers from my association with the enlisted men in my units.

But one of the big things that helped and may not be apparent was that my flight

surgeon training was invaluable. We had several people wounded who were on

flight staffs, or who had been, and some of them were very experienced aviators.

They had wounds, which actually disqualified them from service unless a waiver

could be granted. If a person could still perform the duties for which he was

trained, waivers could be granted. We had to know if one of our aviator patients

could safely operate an aircraft. I would examine them and then when they werewell enough and back in good physical condition, we would go and fly an aircraft,

either him as a pilot or with a senior pilot with us, if that was necessary, to see

how they did. Very often they had wounds of the upper extremity, which had

healed but were disqualifying. Wounds of the lower extremity, such as partial

amputations of the foot, loss of some of the toes, somewhat deformed fractures,

open fractures that had healed of the lower extremity, nerve damage; etc. would

also disqualify them. Very often we were able to return them to Active Duty,

which I think was a great service to the Army because it saved having to train


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more aviators. Some of these aviators had two tours in Vietnam and had been

instructors at Fort Rucker. To replace them would have taken a lot of years I

found this aspect of helping the Army very satisfying. There were many

associations that lasted throughout my military career because of those

evaluations.

Some of the other valuable military training that I had was airborne training.

Occasionally, we had someone who needed a waiver to go back on airborne duty

and I was able to help with that, too.

Q: General Becker, as you look back at the large-scale type of war that brought

about a large number of casualties, such as Vietnam, how important do you think

these large medical centers in the United States or in Tripler are to the Army for

large scale type of conflict?

A: Well, of course, Im a little bit prejudiced about that, but I think, if one closelyexamines that question, youd be rapidly aware that, first off, civilian hospitals are

not equipped to deal with those kinds of injuries in a large scale like we had at

Walter Reed. Now, certainly, they could handle some of the small ones and

maybe we dont need every small hospital that we have. However, the large

medical centers are the real backup for all of our forward hospitals.

First off, there were military physicians who understand and treated patients

different in the military hospitals than they did in the civilian hospitals. Civilian


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hospitals notoriously closed wounds or did all types of moving of large pieces of

skin that cover defects and a lot of surgical manipulations on open infected

fractures. This would have lost a lot more limbs and caused a lot more deaths, is

my opinion, in the Vietnam conflict. All of the military hospitals who treated them

a good deal differently, mostly non-surgical, and we were very successful. The

record speaks for itself on that.

Q: General Becker, what type of relationship did Walter Reed have with the V.A. or

any other type of hospital that a patient would go to for long-term rehabilitation?

A: We had a good relationship with the V.A. That was the main place that we sent

our patients who we couldnt make the prosthesis for or couldnt finish their

treatment. Incidentally, the great majority of the patients from Walter Reed were

over 100 percent disabled, especially the younger troops. They certainly could

not return to duty and many of them had significant neurological injuries that

were long, long term we sent them to the V.A. As our hospital became full ofpatients it became clear that we had to evacuate the patients out to the V.A.

They did a good job with them, because we had the patients in pretty good shape

for them. However, they were not equipped at that time to handle a great mass

of acutely injured patients with open wounds and low blood volumes, etc.

Q: Following your assignment at Walter Reed you were selected to go to the Armed

Forces Staff College. What was that school like and how did that affect your

career?


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A: Well, I think the Armed Forces Staff College was a great school. It gave you a

broader view of all of the services.

It wasnt just about the Army, because thats about all I knew anything about at

that time. I went down to Norfolk, Virginia, and took that course. It certainly was

not, as I look back on it now, a replacement for the Command and General Staff

School, but I did learn an awful lot about staffing procedures and that sort of

thing. Also about the other services and how they function, which stood me in

good stead for later years. I got to meet a lot of people and make a lot of

associations that lasted throughout my military career.

The Armed Forces Staff College, I think, is a worthwhile training experience for

anyone thats going to serve at a higher level, especially at the Pentagon.

Q: Following the Armed Forces Staff College, you had deployed onto Vietnam as amedical officer. How did that assignment come about? What did you do in

Vietnam?

A: Well, while I was at the Armed Forces Staff College, all of the senior medical

officers in those days were expected to go to Vietnam and my turn came. I went

and I was assigned to the 85th Evacuation Hospital up at Phu Bai. Prior to going

there though, I was interviewed and went through an orientation down at the

MEDCOM headquarters down in Long Binh. It was proposed that after 6 months

I would go to the 1st Cavalry Division as the division surgeon and medical


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battalion commander. I went to the 85th Evac and assumed my duties as the

chief of Orthopedic Service. I was the only orthopedic surgeon there that was

fully trained. I had two young doctors that had 6 weeks OJT training in

orthopedics to help me. I was also chief of surgery and the deputy commander.

Most of the other doctors in the hospital except the commander were either

draftees or Berry Planners. We had an excellent staff. We received many,

many, many casualtieswe were always busy. We usually ran about 300 major

surgeries a month, which kept our wards full.

The hospital was not much to look at. It was inherited from the Marine Corps and

had sea island huts for wards. The operating room was a large square room,

which was about, 50 feet X 50 feet with an operating table in each corner. It was

all open and the nurse that circulated did so from the center of the room. She

could take care of all of the tables. It was, as much like MASH that you saw in the

movies as anything Ive ever seen. We operated in our fatigues with our gownover them and wore our boots in there. It was often very wet and bloody. We

were kept quite busy with the casualties. This was in 1970, early part of 1970.

The unsung heroes in our hospital were the nurses. Many were young and

inexperienced you could not tell this after they had been there a few days. The

nurses worked 12 hours on and 12 off seven days a week. Actually it was more

liked 14 hours on and 10 off. With our medics, they cared for our post op

potientes almost on their own. The doctors were in the O.R. most of the time.

Our emergency room staffed with nurses and corpsmen was the best I have ever


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seen. They would have IVs and airways going in a matter of 2 or 3 minutes from

the time the casualty entered the E.R. and great number of lives were saved due

mainly to the efforts of our dedicated nurses and medics.

Q: Even before you went into Vietnam, do you remember any type of the pre-

mobilization training that you went through to prepare to go to Vietnam or was

there a train-up period as they do with force protection of yourself or anything like

that?

A: No, I dont think I received anything like that. I think during my ROTC time Id

learned something about crawling through, under the barbed wire with the guns

firing over my head. But for this exercise, I think being a lieutenant colonel they

probably assumed I already had all of that and I didnt get much training. I had

an awful lot of training about casualties from Vietnam at Walter Reed though. I

knew what to expect and what needed to be done to get them ready to be

evacuated so that they would arrive in Japan in the best condition possible.

Q: How about when you were at the 85th Evac Hospital? What about other than

injuries caused by wounds how about disease or non-battle injuries? Did you

have a lot of experience with that?

A: We had some. We ran an orthopedic clinic there and there was always a few

sports injuries, fractured ankles a busted knuckle or two from a fight, and a few

things like that. But they were not many. Maybe some non-battle injuries might

have been a jeep accident or two. The great majority of our patients were true


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battle casualties. I know that wasnt always the case, especially in the echelons

lower than us like at a battalion aid station or a medical company. We did have

some malaria that was rampant in Vietnam. Of course, we always had to be on

the lookout for that. Our medical doctor was kept busy with some of the medical

diseases. We also treated some of the Vietnamese. In orthopedics we took care

of the kids with injuries. A lot of the time theyd step on one of the little toe

popper bombs, get a frag wound, or get burnt.

I was the deputy commander and oversaw the rest of the staff, but frankly I spent

98 percent of my time doing orthopedics. I was on call every other night. When

my junior assistant was on call, if he got a complex problem, I got called. So it

was, I think, truthful to say that about 80 percent of the time I was up every night,

not all night, but Id be up once or twice. The nights I was on duty, very often I

was up all night. Then, of course, we worked all day long.

Q: About half way through your tour you had some new duties and a new

assignment. What were those duties and how did that come about?

A: Well, I think wed already related that it was planned that I go down to the 1st

Cavalry Division I went down and was interviewed by the division commander,

General Casey, and I was acceptable to him. In June of 1970, I went to the 1st

Cavalry Division, assumed the duties of the Division Surgeon and the Medical

Battalion Commander. This seemed like two jobs, but it was, in fact, the best job

I ever had because ordinarily in my former job as the division surgeon I had to


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coordinate everything with the battalion commander. I spent half of my time

coordinating. Well, that was eliminated in the 1st Cav, because if the division

commander told me to do something, I was able just to go get it done, because I

had all of the troops and the where-with-all to do it.

The medical battalion was the 15th Medical Battalion and one of the great

medical battalions in the United States Army, as far as Im concerned. The 1st

Cav had its own medical evacuation helicopters in its Med Evac Platoon. We

were able to evacuate our wounded to our medical companies and to our aid

stations and take care of them there. We had the full armormentarium, to take

care of patients at that level.

Q: What was the organization structured like in the Med Battalion command?

Companies and platoons?

A: It was fairly standard. I was a commander and I had an XO. I had a medicalofficer who was the commander of each medical company and they each had a

Medical Service Corps officer as their executive officer. They were all taking

patients and they were, in fact, running little hospitals. Our medical companies

were spread out and fully deployed. The company commanders main duty was

taking care of patients. The XO ran the administrative and the other parts of the

medical company for the commander. I think that worked out very well, even

though these medical corps officers were not truly experienced in running units,

they were very good at understanding hospitals. They caught on quickly, I can


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tell you that, and they were very effective. The men that I had over there had

been selected from their previous jobs as battalion surgeons. They did an

outstanding job. They were well supported by their Medical Service Corps

officers and their first sergeants, etc.

Q: Was there any type of surgical capability in those medical companies at all?

What was their mission?

A: Their mission mainly was to resuscitate and get the patients ready for

evacuation. They occasionally did some emergency surgery. They had blood,

and they stabilized the wounds and the limbs. When they had patients that were

lightly wounded and they needed a little dbridement of a small wound they did

that there. They kept them in the ward until they were all right and they could go

back to duty and saved them from getting into the evacuation chain. Over there,

if a soldier got into the evacuation chain, he almost always wound up in Japan

and he was a loss to the unit. These medical companies saved hundreds oftroopers by getting them back to duty. They also kept from overloading the

replacement system.

I dont think that was true of all of the medical companies in Vietnam. At that

level, in several of the divisions, the medical helicopters over flew these medical

companies and the patients were taken directly to hospitals. That was not true in

the 1st Cavalry Division. Almost all of the patients that were taken out in front of

the medical companies were evacuated there first. The Army level medical


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evacuation helicopters would then pick them up and back-haul and the patients

to an army level hospital.

Q: How would you classify the young, enlisted medic and their training and their

ability to do the job at the front line while you were in Vietnam?

A: I think that is a great question, because it was the most amazing thing to me to

see the young medics that came over. In the division, they were under my

purview. They were certainly not under my command, but I was responsible for

their training and their qualification as a medic. I often went down to see what

they were doing. Of course, they were out with the troops. They were highly

respected by the troops and for anyone who received so little training, to be able

to do so much, were a truly amazing thing to me. They were very successful. I

never remember one complaining. I saw hundreds of them, I guess. We lost a

lot of them. I think that was one of the real eye opening experiences of my

military career was the respect and the capability that these young medics had incombat.

Q: While you were also in Vietnam in the 1st Cav there were probably a lot of other

officers, or other folks that you had relationships with later on in your years that

you would come back and served with later. Do you remember some of those

folks?

A: Oh, yes, I certainly do. My chief of staff was Colonel Meyer, better known as Shy

Meyer, and he later became the Chief of Staff of the Army. In fact, I worked for


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him later. So he and several of the other officers in there became high ranking

officers. Then the division commander later, after he got out of the Army, was in

a position involved with the medical boards and the review of medical boards and

I interfaced with him considerably later on. Several of the lieutenant colonels that

were on the staff at the time became senior officers, and, in fact, in Europe when

I served over there later, the G-3 and the lawyer, the JAG officer, were promoted

a couple or three notches above what they were in the 1st Cavalry. We all

served on the staff of United States Army Europe (USAEUR). It was a great unit.

All of the officers were outstanding and the 1st Cavalry is one of the finest

divisions in the Army. Im sure I can get an awful lot of argument about that. Id

be glad to argue anyone about it, to tell you the truth. So would any of those

officers I served with over there.

Q: Being both, Commander and Division Surgeon how did you manage being a

major staff officer position as the division surgeon and also as a commander of amedical battalion in Vietnam?

A: Well, it wasnt difficult, because I had a lot of excellent help. As Ive already said,

it was a great asset to be both. The division surgeons job took about 10 percent

of my time, not including the time I went to the generals briefing every morning,

because as a principal staff officer I went every morning. Im sure that counted

as division surgeons duties, but it would have been important for the medical

battalion commander to be there, too. That gave me the unique ability to

respond to whatever was happening that day very quickly without a lot of


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coordination. As medical battalion commander I worked for the support

command commander and I was never a big problem being both the Battalion

Commander and Division Surgeon.

The division surgeons duties were taken care of by a very capable Medical

Service Corps officer, a small staff, and a preventive medicine officer. One of our

bigger problems was preventive medicine and urine drug testing throughout the

division.

The battalion commanders job, of course, required more of my time. But I also

had a good executive officer there and so I was able to be out with the medical

companies quite a bit. This was necessary, I believe. I was not at home base a

great deal of the time. I spent a good deal of the time coordinating with other

levels of medical support. We had back up hospitals. One of my jobs was to go

around to each of these hospitals and visit the 1st Cav patients to see how theywere being taken care of. I would also check on them to see if they had malaria,

because any malaria patient was counted against the 1st Cavalry Division

commander. Im not sure how that worked, but I know that the Division

Commander was very upset any time we got a malaria patient. Often when the

patients would go to one of the rear hospitals, theyd be taken off of their

suppressive medication and sure enough their malaria would appear and the

diagnoses would be made.


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We would be charged with that patient. So I would visit all of the hospitals, see

how our patients were doing, and check on the malaria problem. Having our own

helicopters was an asset because we were able to get down to the hospitals that

were spread throughout the central part of Vietnam.

Q: General Becker, what were your thoughts of the adequacy of medical and

surgical care provided to the 1st Cav Division?

A: Well, of course, everybody did a great job over there, but I dont think that they

had everything that they needed. I believe that there needed to be a surgical

capability further forward than it was. The medical companies were not designed

for forward surgical care. However, we did things that they needed to do but that

should be formalized. I always believe that you dont need a tremendous

capability up there, but you certainly need, if youre going to save more lives, you

need to be able to operate on these guys quick. You have to evacuate them

quickly and do the surgical lifesaving procedures quickly. The helicopter wasevacuating them quickly and we werent as well prepared surgically for

everything we should have been.

Also, the stabilization of the patient with blood is important, including fluids of

blood. I.V. fluids as we had in those days were not the equivalent of blood. So

we needed blood as far forward as we could get it. I still believe that thats very

important. I am aware that there are some developments that may come in the

future that my give adequate substitute for whole blood. The forward surgical


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units that have been developed in the Army recently would fill that requirement

very well.

Q: General Becker how did your medics and pilots assigned to you in the 1st Cav

perform during Vietnam?

A: You know, one of the real highlights of my service in the 1st Cavalry Division was

the air medical evacuation unit and dealing with the medics throughout the

division. Weve already spoken about them and those that we had with the med

evac unit. Also, our crew chiefs, gunners, pilots, and maintenance people were

outstanding. They would truly go to the limit of their strength and endurance to

bring in a patient. They would often hover over the jungle to pick up a patient

and at the same time be taking live fire. One cannot ask for anything more out of

people than that. They were truly the real heroes of the war, as far as Im

concerned. There could never be enough said about them.

Q: Did you have any problems or issues with disease and non-battle injury during

Vietnam?

A: Oh, yes, in combat theres always that concern. I think in the disease category,

malaria was the biggest problem. The commanders were hard pressed by higher

commands to keep down the number of malaria patients. This meant that all of

the troops were supposed to take their suppressive medication. That was always

a problem. The best way to get them to do that was have the sergeant watch

them swallow the pill. That was done in most units and was effective. As long as


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the troops took their medication they generally kept the malaria suppressed. I

think the truth of the matter was most of the troops in Vietnam had malaria and it

was suppressed by the medication. If you took your suppressive medication long

enough you would often not ever have a clinical case of malaria. But many of the

patients that we had in our medical companies and back at Walter Reed showed

up with malaria when they were so badly wounded that suppressive medication

was not a high priority.

There were a number of issues with the commanders getting excited about

keeping down the numbers of malaria patients, as weve alluded to before, as it

was in the past with frostbite. I dont think it was a terrible loss of manpower over

there and neither was non-battle injury. But the majority of the problems over

there, as I saw them and from where I stood and sat, were wounds from the

battle itself.

Q: Following Vietnam, where were you assigned?

A: I was assigned to Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, where I had been an

intern. I had actually told the personnel people, send me anywhere but to the

East Coast or Hawaii, because Ive already been there. But it seems like that the

best way to get an assignment is ask not to be sent. It turned out to be a great

assignment for me, so I never tinkered with the assignment process after that.


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I was assigned there as the Chief of the Orthopedic Service and the Director of

the Orthopedic Residency Training program. It was a great job for me. It was

entirely different from what Id been doing in a lot of my fie ldwork. The residents

were outstanding and I had a good staff. I had two assistants. One was a hand

surgeon and the other was a general orthopedic surgeon. We had four residents

in each year so that made us a total of sixteen. A couple of them werentactually

at Tripler all the time. They were down getting some hand training or childrens

training at the childrens hospital in Honolulu. Also, we were still getting a lot of

casualties from Vietnam, but they were mainly troops who lived in Hawaii. The

residents were very busy all of the time. We stayed busy working with them in

the operating room and holding our pre-op, post-op conferences. We had huge

clinics, which included the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, Marines, the Coast

Guard, and even some veterans, because that hospital covered all of that for

Hawaii.

We took care of all types of patients in orthopedics. We also had a unique group

of patients. This group was involved in motorcycle accidents. It was a custom in

Hawaii to rent motorbikes or scooters to our troops coming in off of the ships

without any instruction, helmets, or anything else, and they would take off around

the islands and have all types of accidents there. So it kept us busy.

The commander of the hospital was an old friend from Walter Reed and he sent

me on some very interesting projects. I went back to Vietnam twice while I was


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stationed at Tripler. I went back their once to determine why so many of the

Vietnamese casualties were dying of wounds. I interfaced with the Vietnamese

Surgeon General and many of the people in the U.S. Command in Vietnam. It

turned out that they didnt count anyone as killed in action out on the battlefield.

Even though someone was killed outright on the battlefield, which we always

counted as KIA, they counted as wounded. So it increased the number of people

dying of wounds in their hospital statistics. In fact, they only had about 4 percent

of their soldiers dying of wounds after they reached a treatment facility, which

was pretty good for a fairly unsophisticated medical system. Our percentage was

probably 2. They did very well, I believe.

Also, I made another trip back to Vietnam for consultation and to work on a

problem that Defense Attachs Office (DAO) in the United States Command

wanted us to work on. The DAO was interested in them having a training

hospital, which meant that they were going to train residents and doctors. I wassent over there to determine what sort of material they would need for this

hospital. I took a couple of folks with me that knew a lot about equipment. We

made a long list of equipment for them to put in their hospital. It turns out that the

contract read that anything that was attached to the wall the United States would

pay for and any freestanding stuff the Vietnamese paid for. So my job was to

find everything that I could that was attached to the wall so that the Vietnamese,

who didnt have much money, could have their hospital. We were able to fairly


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well equip that hospital. Im not sure if it ever got built before Vietnam fell,

because this was very close to the end of the war.

At Tripler, the work with the residents was very satisfying and was one of the

highlights of my career. Its always a good thing to work with young people and

see them progress in their training. Many of them went on later to be training

chiefs of orthopedics. They also contributed a great deal to the orthopedic

knowledge in the United States.

Q: General Becker, at this point while youre at Tripler and the head of the residency

program and Chief of Orthopedics, you were able to refresh your clinical skills?

Prior to this you spent a lot of time in the field units. Was there a problem in

getting your clinical skills as you came back to Tripler?

A: I think that it was good for me to be back in clinical medicine again, even though I

did quite a bit of war surgery over in Vietnam, especially in the early part of mytour there. I think I was pretty much at the top of my orthopedic surgical career.

After my Tripler assignment, when it came time for my new assignment, I was

selected to attend the Army War College. It was with a great deal of

consternation that I made up my mind whether to go or not I had enough time in

by then to retire and I could have stayed in Hawaii. I had several offers of places

to practice and teach. My wife and I had many long discussions about what to

do. I finally decided that Id been in the Army a long time and I really liked the

Army so I should go and see what this War College was all about and what might


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happen after that. In 1974, we decided to leave Hawaii, which we both loved a

great deal, and went off to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Q: While you were in Carlisle, how did this broaden your knowledge about the

Army?

A: Well, of course, it broadened my outlook a great deal, because Id had kind of a

narrow look at things, even though Id served at least as high as division. I got to

be able to see things on a much broader scale, more from a total state

department or government look at things, and, of course, from multi-service and

total Army look out.

At War College, I received an overall view of how the Army fit into the big picture

of the government of the United States. I had never considered many of these

things that were happening there because Id been mainly in medical fields. It

was a tremendous experience for me. It was also a time when I could reflect onwhat Id done, because we did have some time to look at things. We had

excellent teachers there and the seminar system worked very well. I met all

types of folks from every service and the civilian hierarchy of the government.

They all had an influence over me. I also was able to do a little clinical practice

there. I made many friends, because I took care of their kids with minor or major

orthopedic problems. Some of our classmates were injured in some of the sports

activities there, especially softball.


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The curriculum was very foreign to what Id been used to in medical schools and

universities, but it was very interesting and I think that it broadened my view of

things considerably and stood me in good stead for the years to come.

Q: How did you become selected as the commander of Womack Army Hospital at

Fort Bragg, and also at the same time XVIII Airborne Corps as the XVIII Airborne

Corps surgeon?

A: When I finished the year at the War College, my orders came down to go down

to the XVIII Airborne Corps as the surgeon for General Hank Emerson. This was

fine, except that the unofficial personnel system in the orthopedic service kind of

had me tagged to go to Walter Reed as the Chief of Orthopedics. This job at

Walter Reed didnt seem to be working out as many of the people in orthopedic

surgery had planned, especially the chief, Colonel Metz, who Id worked for

before. He was now the Chief of Surgery at Walter Reed.

We finally had found out that the Surgeon General, himself, had made the

decision that I go to a field unit, because the Army had challenged him fairly

severely for sending people from the War College back into clinical assignments.

He felt that I should not go to a clinical job. He looked back through my record,

or somebody had, and found I had taken airborne training about 14 years ago at

Fort Rucker. So thats how I got chosenas the XVIII Airborne Corps surgeon,

the senior medical officer in the Army on jump status. It turned out to be a great

assignment for me. I was the surgeon for a three-star general with a great staff


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there. Of course, we were planning for all types of contingencies. That was one

of the biggest parts of our duties.

General Emerson arrived the same time I did so he had many changes in mind

for Fort Bragg and the XVIII Airborne Corps. One change was starting new

fitness program called the Pro-life Program. One of my jobs was to design that.

We also got into combat football, which had company-size units going against

each other out on the football field. It was kind of controlled mayhem, a lot of

people injured and what not. So we had to modify the way that was done.

General Emersond, some of his senior officers and I re-tooled combat football a

little bit so it was safer. It was something that the troops loved to do. We

changed it from jungle rules to real rules. We had a considerable number of

referees, and field judges, etc. to keep things under control.

We went to the field on many occasions. These were great field exercises, whichgave me a good deal of training, which I hadnt had for a long time. Id only been

there three or four months when the commander of the Womack Hospital left on

a new assignment. I told General Emerson that I would like to be the

commander of that hospital. He spoke to the Surgeon General and the

commander the Health Services Command, and arranged for me to be the

commander of the hospital as well as XVIII Airborne Corps surgeon.


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So I was again in a two-hatted job, which I liked very much. The hospital

command took the majority of my time, but I still kept my hand in over at XVIII

Airborne Corps and I would go out on maneuvers with them, and go to the staff

meetings and planning sessions. I had an excellent XVIII Airborne Corps staff

which did the nuts and bolts work of writing contingency plans.

The hospital was quite a challenge and a very interesting assignment. I had a

good staff and an excellent Command Sergeant Major and Chief of Professional

services. Together we were able to provide excellent healthcare for Fort Bragg

and Pope Air Force Base, which was our neighbor there. I got the chance to work

with my chief nurse and the chief of the administrative services and all of the

various echelons of command in a hospital. It was a great experience for me and

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was also able to do some orthopedic practice. I would

go to the clinics on occasions and work in the operating room, but I was not what

you would truly say is a fully engaged orthopedic surgeon. It was one of thebetter assignments of my career.

One of the things I remember was that th

Donated Oral History of Lieutenant General Quinn H Becker USA Retired

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Transcript of Donated Oral History of Lieutenant General Quinn H Becker USA Retired