Epilogue
The Vietnam War had its precedents in
American military history. At the turn of this century the U.S. Army in the
Philippines, only a few years after the end of its trials during the Indian Wars
of the American frontier, again fought an enemy that often used guerrilla
tactics. In 1898 many American soldiers serving in Cuba suffered the torments of
tropical disease. World War II in the Pacific, although conventional in nature,
once more subjected American soldiers to the hardships of warfare in the
tropics. But advances in weapons and military transport made the Vietnam War a
virtually new experience for the American armed forces.
This was especially true for the Army
Medical Department. Its experiences with patient evacuation in the Korean War
had only foreshadowed the problems it would confront in South Vietnam.
Helicopter ambulances in Korea had rarely needed to fly over enemy-held areas,
and the terrain of Korea, although rugged, lacked the thick jungles and forests
that obstructed the air ambulances in Vietnam. While Army hospitals in Korea had
been highly mobile, moving often with the troops, the frontless war in Vietnam
resulted in a fixed location for almost all hospitals. French armed forces had
used the helicopter for medical evacuation in their unsuccessful struggle in
Indochina, but since they had used aircraft that were soon obsolete, their
experiences could offer little guidance to the Americans who arrived in Vietnam
in 1962.
Statistics
Records produced by the various U.S.
Army air ambulance units in Vietnam show that the Medical Department's new
aeromedical evacuation system performed beyond all expectation. Although figures
are lacking for some phases of the system's work, enough reports have survived
to permit an assessment of what it accomplished. It is, possible both to
describe the number and types of patients transported and to compare the risks
of air ambulance missions with those of other helicopter missions in the Vietnam
War.
Air ambulances transported most of the
Army's sick, injured, and wounded who required rapid movement to a medical
facility, and also many Vietnamese civilian and military casualties. From May
1962 through March 1973 the ambulances moved between 850,000 and
