Re: Conscientious Objector

[Marc James Small <msmall@infi.net>]

At 09:29 PM 9/1/02 EDT, AMPSOne@aol.com wrote:
>Medics by
>the Laws of Land Warfare are not supposed to be targets, but they also are
>not supposed to carry any arms or provide weapons and ammunition to other
>soldiers. A medic in Korea -- the type described as removing wounded and
>dead from the battlefield in Korea -- would be typical. A number of medics
>have been awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism under fire, so simply not
>carrying arms does not mean that they carried any stigma for objecting. 

Cookie

Since 1940, the US has required its medical personnel to be armed.  The
medics in every unit in which I served certainly were armed, and did their
qualification firings with the rest of us.  There are repetitive tales from
WWII, Korea, and Viet-Nam of medical personnel fighting to preserve the
lives of their patients.  I recognize the logical disconnect in all of this
but, trust me, the US Army mandates that its doctors qualify on their basic
weapon and carry such into a combat zone.  (The highest performer in my
Dad's CA (AA) Regiment in 1941, incidentally, was the Regimental Surgeon,
an avid hunter.  I encountered the same in 1981 in the 329th Spt Gp in the
VaARNG, where our doc routinely outshot the rifle team.)

In a similar vein, Chaplains are exempt from qualifying on their basic
weapons but Chaplain's Assistants are not.  I had a number of friends who
served in Viet-Nam as such, and all were armed and, in at least several
cases, saved their Chaplain's lives as a result.

Fire superiority saves lives.  Compassionate nonsense costs lives.

Marc



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