That'll allow me to sleep tonight, thanks.
Its been something I've pondered over the years, did I allow emotion to over ride reason. When EMS began as an industry I remember the advice "don't take any notice of the patient less it detract from your performance". The advice came too late for me.
Well remember a medevac of an old Vietnamese woman dressed in the typical black pajamas. She was standing in a rice paddy with the opening scene of "Apocalypse Now" playing in the background as F-5s worked over a village. Clutched to her chest she was a bundle that I took to be personal possessions. In the cruise looked back to see her sitting in the middle of the five across Huey seats, as we flew with the rear doors open the slipstream was plucking at her pajamas, the slipstream afforded a look at what she had clutched to her chest, the bled out body of a child no more than nine months old, missing both legs at the groin and an arm at the shoulder, yet the old woman was staring straight ahead through the windscreen, unblinking, with a look that said "this is how we live". Cried so much the co-pilot offered to take over, I declined, as if I was going to bring some personal restoration to sanity.
Had its black humour moments though, picked up a load of wounded ARVN solders when one of the backseaters said look at this. Turned around and one soldier was on his knees with trouser lowered to same and proudly showing his penis, or rather where it should be, severed completely at the base by a gun shot we were told, a surgeon couldn't have done a better job. He thought it a great joke, wonder if he later realised the limited options he may face in future life.