Biography:
Oklahoma veteran grateful to the corpsmen who saved his life in 1969
Saturday is Armed Forces Day, and Jerry Compton, of Tulsa, is
still most grateful to the U.S. Navy corpsmen who saved his life during
a 1969 battle in Vietnam.
BY BRYAN PAINTER Published: May 19, 2012
TULSA — On that day in Vietnam in 1969, blood was everywhere. It was Jerry Compton’s blood.
The U.S. Navy corpsmen performed CPR and worked on Compton like there was no tomorrow, because there almost wasn’t. Now on Saturday, the annual observance of
Armed Forces Day, Compton is still so grateful they said, “You’re not
going to die on us.”
“My eternal thanks to those who pulled me through that time when death was positioned to claim me,” said Compton, of Tulsa.
Compton was unconscious, but he knows what the corpsmen did and what
they said because just a few years ago he received a letter from one of
those corpsmen, Michael Steinhilber.
“I had spent almost 40 years running searches on various
veteran-related websites looking for Jerry Compton, and even going so
far as to call some of those that I could find phone numbers on,” said
Steinhilber, who lives in Hawaii. “Unfortunately, I was looking at the
wrong side of the U.S. For some reason I thought I saw a Med Evac
Disposition Record that showed that Jerry Compton had gone to a hospital
in Pennsylvania.”
What the corpsman really wanted to know was how Compton, now 70, had
lived after the injury. Did he have a good and healthy life? Did he have
a family? Basically, did he just enjoy his life?
“Many of these questions were answered in a phone call between Jerry and I on Memorial Day 2009,” Steinhilber said. The blast
Compton was in the U.S. Army’s “Scout Dog Platoon.” These Scout Dogs were in use among infantry units.
The Scout Dog teams went out in pairs. By doing this, one team could
work point while the other team would take a break in the middle of the
patrol.
Compton and his dog, Smokey, were in the middle of the patrol.
Compton said a Viet Cong soldier was sitting in the bushes with his fingers on the command of a detonating device.
“I guess the point Scout Dog team missed it and when the middle of
the patrol passed,” Compton wrote to Steinhilber, “the man in the bushes
squeezed that button.”
Life instantly changed
“Bang, my life was instantly changed.”
Compton remembers when he and his fellow Scout Dog handlers had
discussed what they would do if something like this ever happened.
“We were of almost unanimous agreement that we would rather die than
go through life as a crippled and useless person,” Compton said. “Well,
let me tell you that we were wrong, at least as far as I was concerned.”
At first, Compton wanted to die.
“I found myself slippin’ away from the light and into the darkness of
death,” Compton said. “At that point, I changed my mind and wanted to
live. I preferred the light to the darkness. I began to holler for the
medic, I know the medics would not have left me there to die, but I had
been blessed with the right attitude to want to live.”
Fight for life
Steinhilber and Mike Cavanaugh were U.S. Navy corpsmen.
At the time, they were aboard a ship which had been moved into the
area to support Operation Bold Mariner on the Mui Batangan Peninsula. The two corpsmen were hanging out outside of the ship’s triage watching all the activity ashore.
They noticed an Army helicopter coming in behind the ridge and then it disappeared.
A few moments later the helicopter came over the ridge line, set his
nose about 10 feet off the water and was flying right at the ship.
Steinhilber thought they had a medical evacuation coming in. But the
ship wasn’t ready yet.
The two men ran to the helicopter deck.
The aircraft came around their stern and circled the bow and then
was right in front of them on the deck. Cavanaugh and Steinhilber
attempted to get some of the safety nets down, but the helicopter just
landed on the deck in front of them.
Steinhilber went to the left side of the helicopter and Cavanaugh was
on the other side. They found a man on a stretcher and started to slide
him out and down to triage. While sliding him out, Steinhilber heard
someone screaming, “God, God, please somebody help me.”
About this time, another stretcher which had been upside down behind
the pilot flipped over and there was Jerry Compton, with extreme
injuries to his legs.
The two corpsmen reached to put Compton on the stretcher.
“Your legs were directly in front of me,” Steinhilber wrote to Compton. “I attempted to grab your leg area but it was a mess.”
Steinhilber got a hold of Compton so that he and Cavanaugh could lift
the man out of the dustoff helicopter and start down the ramp to
triage.
But just as they cleared the ramp en route to the triage door, Compton went into cardiac arrest. Steinhilber yelled for help.
Compton was placed on a gurney, still on the stretcher. For what
seemed like days, Steinhilber, Cavanaugh, Jerry Feldman and Joe Kowalski
worked on him.
Steinhilber and Kowalski were administering CPR and starting IVs of
blood. Feldman and Cavanaugh were “using every hemostat we had to clamp
off bleeders — veins and arteries.”
Finally, they got a marginal pulse and respirations and had the operating room standing by for Compton’s arrival.
Casualties were not what had been expected and eventually the two, Steinhilber and Cavanaugh, were sent back to Quang Tri.
Cavanaugh was later killed in a crash while they were on a resupply and medical evacuation.
Steinhilber left the country that year and returned to Hawaii and continues to reside there.
‘Very happy life’
Thanks to the hard work of the corpsmen, Compton has left quite a legacy.
There are six children, 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
There is Compton being inducted into the Arkansas Valley Conference
Hall of Fame, a part of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association.
Compton has talked with Steinhilber. But he also wrote the former medic a letter.
He said how grateful he was that the corpsmen didn’t give up.
“I have a very happy life,” Compton wrote. |
