James Bosman

“A Last Night with My Wife I, of course, had nothing to do with those sorts of decisions; as a T-4 and then a T-3—“Technician 4” and “Technician 3,” ranks roughly equivalent to and usually called sergeant—I worried about my job and my unit, and little else. At the same time, there were plenty of rumors about which way we were heading. Mostly, they predicted that we’d ship out to Great Britain. We kept training. I wangled my way into special rifle training, qualifying as a marksman and earning a badge. Ordinarily, medics didn’t carry weapons, not even pistols; our job in combat was to help the wounded, and according to the Geneva Conventions we were not supposed to fight or be fired upon. In combat, our helmets would have large red crosses; we would have armbands with the same very visible insignia. I took the course anyway. It’s possible I was the only medic who did that, at least in the 16th. Since I’d hunted from the time I was a boy, the course wasn’t all that difficult; I imagine a lot of guys who’d grown up in farm country found it a breeze, especially when it came to firing the M1”
― Ray Lambert, Every Man a Hero