“Live” Patient
4 JANUARY 1966
“LIVE” PATIENT
Dr. James H. Chandler completed his residency at Columbia University, then under one of a series of Vietnam-era physician recruitment plans, reported for duty with the US Navy. He received orders to the Marine Corps’ Field Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton. After graduating on this date, he was posted to “C” Medical Company, 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Division in one of the field units around Da Nang, South Vietnam. Before that year was out, LCDR Chandler was to earn inadvertent fame for which he continues to be remembered today.
Late in 1966, Chandler began what seemed to be another routine day in the field hospital’s OR. His third case of that day was a 20-year-old Marine who had received a neck wound while on patrol east of Dai Loc. Chandler was working from a disadvantage on this case as the pre-op X-ray was obscured by a large metal artifact apparently left on the stretcher under the patient’s neck. But as he explored the entrance wound, past the fractured jaw to the displaced larynx, Chandler’s instrument contacted a foreign body lodged under the posterior tongue. The object proved too slippery to grasp on several attempts with forceps, but using his fingers, Chandler was able to pop it loose. The proud surgeon held the strange cylindrical object up for all to see. The words, “What’s this?” were hardly out of his mouth when knowledgeable corpsmen in the OR broke scrub and hit the deck. Chandler had delivered a live M-79 grenade!
Reasoning it downright immoral to pass a live explosive to a corpsman, Chandler tendered the grenade himself on a gingerly stroll out of the OR. Employing a surgeon’s foresight that probably would have proven worthless, Chandler cradled the grenade in his non-dominant hand. The 200-yard walk to the far side of the chopper pad must have seemed eternal. After gently placing the device in a ditch Chandler, “…took about four steps calmly, and then ran like Hell!” The Ordnance Platoon of the 1st MarDiv harmlessly destroyed the grenade. It had apparently traveled only 10 feet prior to striking the Marine. M-79 grenades arm at 14 feet.
Chandler re-scrubbed and returned for five more hours of surgery on the same Marine. The neck wound proved surprisingly less serious than a second injury, a badly mangled leg. This case was the third to date in Vietnam in which a military surgeon removed a live explosive from a patient. In one of the most celebrated, on 1 October 1966 Navy CAPT Harry Dinsmore and EOD EN1 John J. Lyons jointly removed an intact mortar round from the chest of a South Vietnamese soldier at the Naval Hospital in Da Nang.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 8 JAN 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Dinsmore, Harry H. “Dr. Dinsmore’s Souvenir.” Navy Medicine, Vol 80 (6), Nov-Dec 1989, p. 6.
“Navy Doctor Removes Live Shell from Soldier’s Body.” The Pendleton Scout, 21 October 1966, p. 5.
Site visit, Field Medical Service School, Camp Pendleton, California, 12 March 1990.
“Surgeon Removes Grenade Lodged in Marine’s Throat.” The Pendleton Scout, 13 January 1967, p. 5.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: LCDR Chandler is remembered today with a photo and press release posted in the passageway of the Field Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton.
CAPT Dinsmore’s case got better press than did Chandler’s. The x-ray of the South Vietnamese soldier’s chest bearing an obvious mortar round, complete with tail fins, was widely published in medical journals of the day, including the Navy Medical Department’s journal, Navy Medicine.
