...Fi!

The two Latino-Americans grew up in the Texas Hill Country, not far from each other.  Roughly the same age, they both entered military service soon after high school. Staff Sargeant Alameda, USMC, and Hospitalman Alvarez, USN (not their real names) met and became good friends when both were assigned to a Marine Corps Logistics unit shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Staff Sargeant Alameda was a regular Marine. Hospitalman (HN) Alvarez was a Navy hospital corpsman assigned as medical support to that Marine unit.

Navy Medicine provides health care to the Marine Corps, which owns no intrinsic medical assets. Many Navy doctors, dentists, nurses, medical service corps officers, and hospital corpsmen are assigned to the Marines over the course of a career. They wear Marine Corps uniforms, drill and exercise with their Marines, adhere to the same physical standards, and otherwise become an integral part of the units they support. Above all, the relationship of a hospital corpsman to his Marines is the most important and revered. Every Marine depends on his "Doc" for his life, and he knows that the Doc is prepared to make heroic efforts to save the life or limb of a Marine.

So there they were, in the early days of OIF traversing southern Iraq, miles behind the initial assault. The unit had stopped for rest and chow. Diving into his MRE, Staff Sargeant Alameda strolled around near his vehicle. A sudden, deafening explosion disrupted the tranquility of the place, quickly followed by a primal scream. The young Marine had stepped on a concealed Iraqi land mine. He lay in agony on the sand, bleeding profusely from the remant stump of a leg blown off.

"CORPSMAN UP!" came the immediate call. Hospitalman Alvarez, as any corpsman would do, rushed to the aid of his fallen friend and comrade, mindless of his own personal safety. As he knelt beside the victim, another explosion unexpectedly scrambled the scene. The ensuing primal scream came from HN Alvarez himself. He had knelt onto another concealed mine, whereupon he suddenly became not the rescuer, but the second casualty. And he too had lost a leg in the detonation.

Thanks to the most sophisticated and capable field trauma care in history, both amigos were rapidly medevaced to a nearby emergency resuscitative surgery site, where they underwent immediate life-saving operations to control bleeding from their traumatic amputations. They were then air lifted out of Iraq to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany where they received their secondary definitive surgery. Within three days of the initial explosions, the two comrades in arms arrived at the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, MD. They were two of the first four OIF casualties received there.

Even though they were now safely ensconced in a hospital room thousands of miles from the war, emotionally and physiologically they were both still in combat. The support they gave to each other in those first few days, and that given and received from fellow Marines, made a huge difference. Both survived their initial wounds and ultimately wore state of the art prostheses. If you passed either of them on the street six months after their injuries, you would not recognize either one as an amputee.

Once he recovered from his injuries, newly promoted HM3 Alvarez elected to stay in the Navy and requested orders to NNMC Bethesda. He wanted to continue caring for wounded Marines.

The year after his knee hit that land mine he and his spouse were honorees at the annual Hospital Corpsmen Ball. They seemed ill at ease sitting at a head table with a Navy Medical Corps Captain and his equally uncomfortable spouse.

The HM3 didn't feel particularly worthy of all the honor and attention. He never considered himself a hero. He was just the Doc taking care of a wounded Marine.

Similar scenes have occurred thousands of times since OIF began in early 2003, and will recur as long as this or any conflict involves Marines going into harm's way. It's what Hospital Corpsmen do. It's what all of us in Navy Medicine do when called the serve the Marines.

We remain supremely honored to do so.



Semper Fi, Marines!