While Colleen was going to parties in California and Washington, I was going camping. Well, not exactly the same kind of camping one might think of by using that word but they still call it "going to the field". About 120 soldiers from the hospital went down to Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul, and spent a week setting up, operating, and tearing down a tent hospital. It was hard labor putting these things up and down but pretty fun. Group suffering always seems to be more fun.
We operated a real Emergency Room down there and saw a few patients. CPT Tom Zickgraf shows his healing hands.
We also did real operations. MAJ Robert Lim guards the pre-op entry from undressed visitors. I was leading a tour of the hospital for the 18th MEDCOM Commander when a "real world CODE BLUE in the ICW" was called. I turned and ran straight to it but luckily the patient had just fainted when he woke up from the anesthesia and saw his vasectomy scar. Phee-ew. No real code blue after all, but it was good drill for the Commander to see how ready we were to do real medicine in tents. This would be the plan and we would be the main support effort if we ever transitioned to hostilities in Korea.