Combat Corpsman

All his life Greg McPartlin wanted to be a Marine corpsman a medic skilled at saving lives. Three months of bagging-and-tagging bodies during Vietnam''s Tet Offensive took the luster off being a Marine-but not off McPartlin''s desire to serve his country.After assisting in the sea-recovery of Apollo 11-the first ship to bring men to the moon-the twenty-year-old McPartlin was redeployed to Vietnam as an elite Navy SEAL. Barred as a medic by the Geneva Convention from the make-or-break training considered vital to service as a Navy SEAL McPartlin had to show he had what it took.In a war where soldiers partied with their buddies in Saigon one day and crawled through an enemy-infested jungle hell the next McPartlin proved that he was not only an outstanding medic but a real Navy SEAL-the toughest of the tough.Combat Corpsman is McPartlin''s account of his year in what had been a Viet Cong stronghold until the SEALs took control. It''s the first inside story of a Navy SEAL medic a man who wanted to heal-not to kill-but did both to save lives.