Doc!: The Adventures of a Navy Hospital Corpsman Paperback – September 1, 2014

I did same job in Vietnam , I could not put the bookdown

Very interesting story of a remarkable life in the Navy. It's more autobiographical on his superb career in the Navy than just about his days as a "Doc".

An excellent picture of the challenges faced during a highly successful Naval career. If anything Captain Sullivan understates the huge positive impact he had on the people he worked with and on the Navy's Medical Service Corps.

Starts off with a good story of his early career as a Navy Corpsman, including stints in Viet Nam. Then declines into an only slightly interesting story of his long Naval career as an administrator.

a top read

Reinforces what all of us former jar heads know an feel about our Navy corpsman.

Great

For some reason, I found these lines, from Chapter 8, to be some of the most interesting in the whole book: "Starting almost immediately I wrote June at least two to three letters a week. I was concerned when she failed to write back. Eventually my letters dropped off to one a week and then one a month. None were ever answered. Throughout my entire tour of more than two-plus years in Okinawa and Vietnam I never received a letter from June. SO, when mail call came I always found somewhere else to be because it was PAINFUL to be the ONLY member of my unit that NEVER got mail." Readers of the book find out that June was Hugh's first wife; that she apparently had a rather severe mental illness and that he married her after having known her for only two weeks. What is interesting to me about these sentences is that the use of the word SO seems to hang the entire blame for the painfulness of never getting any mail throughout Hugh's tours in war on a woman with a severe mental illness when the book also indicates he also had three sisters, two brothers-in-law and two parents. Did they not care to write him while he was risking getting his rear end blown off in a war either? He says he NEVER got mail. It seems rather telling to me that, at the late stage of life the author must surely be in to have lived such a long career and second marriage, that he's still carrying around such hurt feelings to reflect back on and hangs them on a woman with a severe mental illness without ever once pointing out that he also had other family members who failed to write him too; sane, emotionally capable family members. Exactly what this is all telling of, I'm not entirely sure but there seems to be enough information in the book to make some educated guesses just knowing how this world tends to turn. The author claims his father was an alcoholic who was never abusive, for example. Yet the sentences quoted appear to reveal enough emotional dysfunction to belie the idea Hugh didn't grow up in a family of abuse, or at the very least, serious neglect. He seems so keen on remaining in denial over something he doesn't want to see in his family dynamics that he hangs a painful memory of NEVER getting mail while risking his life in war, on someone not only biologically incapable of responding the way he wanted but who also knew him for an infinitesimally smaller amount of time compared to the family he'd grown up for years with and yet also NEVER wrote him. That denial must run pretty deep for him to not have even seen this clear incongruity in print before letting it hit the press. My guess is Hugh probably drinks quite a bit himself. Smoking at the age of 12 seems more indicative of serious childhood depression than just something one did because their parents did it.The dedication of the book claims that it was EASY for Hugh, at times, to be in the middle of an ADVENTURE with his career and FORGET the burdens his second wife was carrying back home for him to do so. I personally have to wonder how it could ever be EASY to actually FORGET such a thing! The book is certainly interesting in it's insights into the inner workings of the Navy and it's politics during a career climb but the little slips here and there regarding Hugh's family life (most of which I didn't bother to address) along with the fact that only he and his wife seem deserving of real names throughout the book leave me wondering what's really lurking beneath the surface in his personal life that he'd just as soon the whole world not really see. Given the alcoholism he speaks of in his father, his own drinking patterns he speaks of in the book and how easy he says it was to FORGET about his wife and the burdens, I would put good money on a bet that both Hugh and his wife are heavy boozers, hiding from quite a bit in the bottle.