HEALTH IS AN OLIVE
DRAB AMBULANCE

By 1LT John F. Lamm

hey were already waiting in line as the olive drab ambulance with the big red cross rumbled down the rutted road and through the gate of their village.
   Weary, children-laden mama-sans, sun-leathered women and a few old men stared patiently as the vehicle ground to a dusty halt in front of the school. Its escort, a gun jeep, parked under a nearby tree.
   Children sprang up from nowhere, eagerly watching as three medics clambered out of the truck and hurried to open the rear doors. They moved forward and the medics obligingly let them help carry in their supplies. Two young boys reached in, dragging out a box bigger than both of them, and carried it off to the schoolroom set aside for the MEDCAP.
   While one medic set up in the back of the truck to handle minor skin cases, the other two, now swarmed by children, laughingly walked into the school.
   An old woman quietly shuffled into the room, sat down, pointed to her chest and coughed. The usual. The medic listened with his stethoscope, nodded and gave her a bottle of the green medicine. An interpreter told her to take the prescribed dosage twice a day and come back next week if it didn't clear it. She will.
   A woman carrying one child, with two more in tow, bustled jabbering into the room and went through long pains to describe her children's afflictions to the medic. He examined each and gave her a bottle of white medicine and a box of


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yellow pills for each. She smiled and jabbered her way right back out of the door.
   Then the problems began. Another mother with a child came, complaining of the same afflictions. But the medic only gave her the white medicine. She couldn't understand why the other woman should get both medications when she only got one. It wasn't worth the argument so the medic gave her a box of the same pills. She smiled graciously, thanked the medics and left. They smiled, shook their heads and went on with their work.
   But the rate of hypochondria in Vietnam is probably no greater than in the United States. Correspondingly, the whole MEDCAP becomes worthwhile when a young girl is discovered to have hepatitis and the interpreter arranges for her to be taken to the district hospital and the eventual cure.
   Other illnesses, potentially serious, were eliminated in the preliminary stages by inoculation.
   Simultaneously, at the ambulance, the third medic treated skin problems caused simply because there was no soap. He cleaned the ulcers, applied a medication and passed out soap, neatly wrapped in leaflets explaining that it came from the South Vietnamese Government and its allies.
   The MEDCAP ended the same way it began, with the children carrying the huge boxes back to the ambulance. The skin specialist medic was presented a coconut for his efforts and the other two received the profuse thanks of a wrinkled old gentleman.
   Once loaded, the ambulance carefully picked its way through the gaggle of children, edged behind the MP jeep and rumbled back through the gate and down the rutted road.