I spent 10 years active in the USAF during the Vietnam era. I did not make it over there as there was not too much demand for my allied medical profession there, there usually being only one or two pharmacists in country, but instead spent two years in Turkey. Called up later as reservist for Desert Storm, at a contingency hospital in the UK, so luckily have never seen combat or been in a combat zone as many thousands of service personnel. I did have to deal somewhat with those who returned from those combat zones, and even worse with the families of those serving in those zones and the one who had lost loved ones. Even being detached from the immediate ugliness it is sometimes difficult to deal with the long reaching costs.
Things have changed quite a bit for pharmacists in combat zones. There aren't many Army pharmacist who haven't deployed at least once. I've been lucky in that regard. I've volunteered for deployments several times but just haven't been picked. I did spend 3 years at Landstuhl as the clinical pharmacist for the trauma surgeons. Our patients were 12-36 hours post injury. We got 2-3 plane loads every day. The shear number of wounded was staggering. Before going to Landstuhl I was at Ft Carson and didn't have any idea how many wounded there were.
I was an enlisted 11B during Desert Storm and did not deploy even though our unit was supposed to. Hated it then, but see it as a blessing now. Will retire from the reserves next year and be done. My wife still has 6 years left in the Air Force and my son has 2 yrs left on his enlistment as a Marine. He is due to deploy sometime next year. If Trump does anything at all for this country I hope it is to get us out of the Middle East for good.
