Helicopter Rescue in the Vietnam War

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-56
Author(s):  
T. Scofield
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Whole Blood ◽  
Medical Management ◽  
The Other ◽  
Medical Resources ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Surgical Teams ◽  
Rapid Evacuation

The medical successes realized in Vietnam can be attributed to several factors: rapid evacuation of casualties by helicopter or ambulances; the availability of whole blood; well-equipped field hospitals; highly skilled and well-organized surgical teams; and improved medical management. Of these important factors, rapid evacuation by helicopter contributed the most to saving the lives of the wounded. Without effective helicopter evacuation, it would have been difficult to exploit the other factors and management of medical resources would have been less efficient.

TOWARDS A NEW MORAL HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR?

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 757-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENDRICK OLIVER
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The Other ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Policy ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Ethical Critique

Intellectual developments since the mid-1960s have served to assist the efforts of those responsible for American policy in the Vietnam war subsequently to empty the history of that conflict of ethical critique. This article argues for the necessity of ethically informed historical enquiry and, with respect to Vietnam, proposes that there now exists the best opportunity for a generation for scholars to construct a fresh and credible moral history of the war. Increasingly, we have access to the perspectives of the ‘other side/s’: the revolution in the south, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam regime in Hanoi, the People's Republic of China, and the USSR. An examination of the motivations and interactions of these parties, combined with the continuing exegesis of American policy debates, makes clear just how critical concerns (and failures) of ethics were to the development of the conflict. In particular, it clarifies the manner in which US leaders abdicated responsibility in exaggerating the relatively limited strategic challenge that they faced in south-east Asia. Vietnam was not a ‘necessary war’; nor can the decision to fight it – given its predictable consequences for south Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers alike – simply be explained away through the discourse of the honest ‘mistake’.

Fighting and Writing: America's Vietnam War Literature

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Ringnalda
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
War Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Vietnam War Literature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Vietnam War

A familiar sight at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. is people tracing onto a piece of paper the name of a relative or friend who was killed in Vietnam. On one hand, this gesture is sadly poignant, even cathartic. On the other hand, it is also symptomatic of many Americans' perceptions of the Vietnam war, whether in the sixties or in the eighties: when we have the name of something we somehow also possess the thing named. Even though there is obviously an enormous semiotic gap between that symbol, etched instone, and its object, long gone, that symbol nevertheless acquires a powerful ontological status. A traced symbol of a symbol on a symbol becomes reality. When I recently witnessed this scene, I couldn't help asking myself, “just what kind of legacy is this?”

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