What They Don't Tell You About Being a Combat Medic in Vietnam

What does it really cost to serve? In this episode of Ask A Vet, we sit down with Patrick Dillon — a Hell's Kitchen-born, Irish-immigrant-raised combat medic who volunteered for the U.S. Army the day after his draft number was called. What followed was a lifetime defined by war, service, survival, and an unrelenting drive to help others.

Patrick shares the raw, unfiltered story of serving as a 91B Combat Medic with the 498th Army Air Force: flying surgical C-130 missions to recover the wounded as the Vietnam Peace Treaty was being signed, performing emergency C-sections in the jungle, carrying out acts of mercy no one talks about, and coming home to rejection, shame, and silence. His story doesn't end in Vietnam. It continues through the Irish Troubles, the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia, the crack baby crisis in Harlem, Somalia, Kosovo, Ground Zero on 9/11, Iraq before the bombs fell, Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, and COVID-19.

Patrick is also an artist, screenwriter, and filmmaker whose work has been shaped, and sometimes defined, by everything he witnessed. 

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EPISODE CHAPTERS:

00:52 – Growing Up in Hell's Kitchen

09:00 – The Draft Lottery Night 

14:00 – Volunteering & Becoming a Combat Medic 

19:30 – Arriving in Okinawa: Stump Duty 

22:00 – Flying Surgical Missions Over Vietnam 

28:00 – Coming Home: San Francisco Airport 

35:00 – The Peace Corps & Saigon Falling 

43:00 – Somalia, Kosovo & Haiti 

01:08:00 – Hitting Rock Bottom & Getting Sober 

01:14:00 – The Babies of Harlem Hospital 

01:40:00 – PTSD, Art & Finding a Reason to Stay