[gentle music] - Andrew Thundercloud: Some of the religious things that we have have a lot to do with warriors.

There were certain times that I had heard these warriors tell their stories, and I oftened listened to them.

And I never really gave it much of a thought.

You know, I just, it was something that I accepted.

That perhaps one of these days, you know, that I'm going to be doing that.

And I know my mother always wanted to have a doctor in the family.

So I became a corpsman.

My father had been a Marine during World War II.

He'd go around and tell people, "My son is a corpsman with the United States Marine Corps."

- Linda McClenahan: It was actually my intention to become a sister when I graduated from high school.

But in 1967, the Vietnam War was hot and heavy, protests were hot and heavy, and it moved me to a point of, you know, I was tired of the people in the street telling me how to think or the government telling me how to think.

So at that moment, I decided before I give my life to God, I'd give three years of my life to my country.

And so when I graduated in June, I joined the Army.

- Mike Weaver: I signed up into the Medical Corps, and the flight going over was terrible.

It was the most gut-wrenching, unnerving thing you've ever sat in because everybody in that plane knew where you were going.

Everybody knew that not everybody in that plane was gonna come back alive or not injured.

It was surreal.

Civilian stewardesses, cute gals, very friendly, trying to give you some water or pop or a snack, knowing that not everybody'd come back.

- Sue Haack: I worked for a two-star general, General Burba.

He said, "Your job in Vietnam is only gonna be six months.

"'Cause the guy that had it before you "had ten days left in 'Nam, and went outside the hooch "and shot himself.

He couldn't deal with the job anymore."

And there was only two of us women and 26 guys in the office, but I was picked to do the handling of the dead.

How they're killed, when they're killed, and send the letters home.

- And I never really talk about the first six months that I was in Vietnam.

I refuse.

You know, I just absolutely refuse to talk about that.

You know, all I'll say is I survived.

One of the chief hospital corpsmen from MAG-16 came to our unit and was looking for corpsmen to volunteer to go fly medevacs.

And that was the only time in my entire military career that I volunteered for anything.

- Got to the WAC detachment on Long Binh post.

Now, the WAC detachment, there were about 7,500, 8,000 women in Vietnam.

Most of them were nurses.

The rest of us were enlisted women or officers who worked in administration, finance, communications.

I was at the comm center, the communications facility there at USARV, United States Army in the Republic of Vietnam.

All the casualty reports went out of our office.

- One day, we were assigned to a remains unit for deploying some of the fallen.

They had not been, if I can use the term, processed yet.

So they were still-- Many of them were in body bags.

It was an old French factory building.

And the first time I saw the first Indiana Jones movie, where you get to the end of the movie and the Ark is being hauled down this huge aisle, and then the camera pans back and you see how large this building is, and you see all these other crates that look the same as that crate, that's the same feeling I had.

- You know, it was a daily, basically, all-day thing.

It never ended, the letters going home, having to send those.

There was nothing warm about a form letter on my typewriter, and I just added the name.

"Mr. and Mrs. John Doe, your son..." Then they were signed by the government, and just...

So you just...

It was a cold feeling.

I mean, you hated it, but somebody had to do it.

- When we fly medevac, we were, we'd fly from 6 o'clock in the morning to 6 o'clock in the evening.

Then another corpsman would come in and fly from 6:00 p.m. 'til 6:00 in the morning.

Once we landed and we started picking up the WIAs or KIAs, I got busy taking care of the wounded.

There were hundreds, hundreds of wounded Marines that I picked up.

I saw everything imaginable.

- One day on the radio, we picked up a squad that was under attack that was asking for help.

And they didn't get it.

And to helplessly listen... was kinda tough.

I lost God over there, so my idea of being a sister after I got out was out the window.

Of course, years later, I was able to put all that in the proper perspective.

You try to dehumanize it as much as you can, 'cause if you don't, you just can't get through it.

And then, it revisits you again and again and again.

[sniffs] I call it the demons.

And it will destroy you.

It will literally destroy you.

- Haack the WAC, Suzy with the Uzi.

We were silly girls in 'Nam.

You had to be.

You had to keep the morale up for the men, even if you didn't feel it.

You had to be there for them.

I was a soldier.

I couldn't do anything about protecting 'em there, but all the ones I had to put away, I guess the rest alive are mine.

I was just very protective of 'em.

You know, I've always said, "My soldiers, my buddies."

Always been.

Said that ever since I came home from Vietnam.

Just me.

[chuckles] - There were 15 of us that went over to Vietnam at the same time, and there were only three of us that came back.

I guess, to be honest with you, I really didn't wanna come home.

'Cause I was thinking, "Who can take care of these guys better than I can?"

The thing that I wanted to be remembered was that I was a good corpsman.

And that I'd hope somebody'd say, well, "Doc Thundercloud."

"Oh, yeah, I remember him.

Damn good corpsman."

You know, that's all I wanted.

- It would get to the point where a lot of choppers would be coming in and we'd say, "It's gonna be a busy day tomorrow.

We're gonna have a lot of casualty reports."

And we'd think of the people coming in as work rather than people 'cause it got too hard.

Yeah, it got too hard.

That was what hit me about the wall, actually.

I processed names all the time.

And I'd hear all these names.

And that's when I lost it the first time.

- I lost 18 schoolmates from Janesville.

The year I was in Vietnam, over 16,000 American military personnel were lost.

It is staggering to me.

I think that works out to about 40 or 50 a day.