Doc Dempsey
"Doc Dempsey was a joker. Everything was funny to him--the war, the Army, the
heat, the rain, the Vietnamese, the doctors and nurses at the hospital where he
lay, his wounds--it was all riotously funny to him. He couldn't help seeing the
irony, the contradictions, the insanity, the nonsense, the stupidity, the
utter absurdity and waste of the war without pointing it out to others and
laughing about it. He didn't take the war seriously because the war wouldn't
take him seriously. It kept trying to kill him..."
[page 801]
At the time of his
wounding in Cambodia in 1970, James (Doc) Dempsey had served twenty-nine months
in the Vietnam War. Dempsey, a medic with 5th battalion, 7th Cavalry, First
Cavalry Division, was evacuated to Japan and was placed in the expectant (to
die) ward of the intensive care unit. He went into a coma for two months and was
given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Transferred to St. Alban's
Naval Hospital in Jamaica, New York, he survived eleven major surgical
operations and fourteen months in treatment.
Dempsey writes: "During my time in the Navy Hospital in New York,
several people trying to find me had difficulty because I was listed on the
morning report as KIA. It's not easy to find a dead man in a military hospital,
even when he's breathing. My official status also affected my pay for over a
year (I didn't get any), since the Army is not in the habit of paying dead men.
Although it took a lot of persuasion, in 1971 I was successful in proving that I
was alive, and collected all my back pay. I was then able to buy stationary and
notify all the kind people who had sent their condolences after my reported
death."
After he got out of the hospital, Dempsey got hold of his Army medical
records and altered them enough to stay on active duty, despite his disabled
condition, and became an Army recruiter in Texas. In 1981, the Medical Board
discovered his old records and ordered him to take retirement on 70% disability.
He joined the Fire Department in Laredo, Texas (near where he had been serving
at Fort Sam Houston) as Chief of the EMS service. Doc reports that he has had "a
great life, filled with funny stuff that makes me laugh at the oddest times."
He still laughs like he did in the hospital in Saigon.