It was our job to cut off clothing, start IVs, reapply bandages and tourniquets and administer morphine — all while wading ankle deep in bloody dressage, shredded uniforms, and pools of blood. Those are the scenes you don’t see in movies — rows of muddy, bloody, shredded men mulling, cursing, crying and calling for their mothers.”

Dr. Wayne C. Christiansen, who served in a medical unit during the Vietnam War

PORTSMOUTH — Growing up in Iowa, Dr. Wayne C. Christiansen said he remembered Memorial Day as a day of parades, cutting flowers, picnics, the end of school in his farming community, and looking at tombstones of people he never knew.

“As a Boy Scout — and I am an Eagle — I listened vaguely to long-winded speeches in front of war memorials as I struggled to keep the flag I held from slapping me in the wind. It was something I did, not something I felt,” guest speaker Christiansen told veterans and other residents at Monday’s Memorial Day ceremony at the VFW Post 5390 in Common Fence Point.

He grew up listening to “war stories” told by his father, uncle, and other family members and friends who served in World War II. They were always amusing tales, he said, but they omitted any horrors those veterans had witnessed. The war films of the day — which he and his friends would reenact in backyards and on playgrounds — also whitewashed the true nature of battle.

That all changed, however, after spending a year as a Navy corpsman with the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force in the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam. Christiansen enlisted in 1968, he said, to help keep the “Domino Theory” — if one country fell to Communism, the surrounding countries would also — from becoming a reality.

“Once in Vietnam, I learned that war was no Hollywood movie. It was 19-year-olds fighting and dying in a violent, brutal, muddy way. Domino Theory be damned; it came down to you doing your duties, and you and your buddies could stay alive and come home,” he said.

For 11 months, Christiansen carried an M16 assault rifle and a Navy medical bag — “and used them both.”

When his time in the bush came to an end, he was sent to the relative safety of the 1st Medical Battalion in Da Nang, which had a complete hospital in Quonset huts including a medical ward, a surgical ward, an operating room, an intensive care unit, and a triage area, all staffed by Navy corpsmen — but no nurses.

“In addition, there was a morgue,  where on occasion I brought the personal effects of dead Marines we sent home with their bodies,” Christiansen said, before taking a moment to regain his composure. “A sign over the entrance said, ‘Uncover. Here lies our sacred dead.’ It’s still emotional for me to remember that place, with its stacks of coffins, and rows of dead Marines in refrigerated drawers.”

He worked mainly in the triage area, where patients were assessed to determine the urgency of their injuries. 

Wading in blood

“It was our job to cut off clothing, start IVs, reapply bandages and tourniquets and administer morphine — all while wading ankle deep in bloody dressage, shredded uniforms, and pools of blood. Those are the scenes you don’t see in movies — rows of muddy, bloody, shredded men mulling, cursing, crying and calling for their mothers. It’s the price of war,” he said.

That was 55 years ago for Christiansen, who later wrote about his experiences in his book, “Camouflage.” He spent his medical career as an emergency physician at Charlton Memorial Hospital and is past director of emergency medicine there. He is currently the EMS director for the Somerset Fire Department.

“Knowing what I know, it grieves me to see young men and women suffer and die for sometimes questionable reasons and goals,” he said. “But regardless of the purpose, it should never mean that we do not respect, remember, and honor their sacrifice to our great country. That’s a lesson from Vietnam we must never forget.”

Today, Memorial Day has a much deeper meaning for him than it did as a youth. 

“Now, when I hear ‘Taps’ playing over the final resting place of a fellow veteran, I feel it and not just observe it. I hope all of you feel it too, and remember them in your own way,” he said.

Christiansen ended his speech by quoting the famous writer and playwright Damon Runyon: “You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year.”

“It doesn’t seem like too much to ask of us,” Christiansen said.

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The ceremony was led by Lt. Cmdr. Vic Schaefer, senior vice commander of Post 5390. Local Boy Scouts recited the Pledge of Allegiance and lowered the flag to half mast outside.

Dave Duggan, past commander of the American Legion Post 18, gave the invocation and benediction. Kendra Carrillo performed The National Anthem, and Ethan Bowley, a sophomore member of the Portsmouth High School band, played “Taps.”