One Job
"Few people are aware of the personal sacrifices the aid men went through. We were not strangers with the platoon we served with, everyone was a comrade. And unlike the other members of the platoon who can't stop to aid a wounded buddy, have no idea how it tears the aid man apart to witness one of his buddies wounded and helpless. We eat, sleep, laugh, and yes even cry with these comrades, we become a family, and like any family, death effects us all. But more so because it is the aid man who remains with the wounded, until he can stabilize the wounds and have him delivered to batt. aid station. I can never describe the feeling you get when you see your closest friend dead from his wounds, and knowing that you were unable to save his life. But it has one advantage, you learn not to become to close to anyone, because the pain is to deep when it was a friend who had died. You have to remove every emotion in your body, or end up a raving madman. No one can ever understand that unless they themselves lived it. In every war history book you read, there is never a description of what the aid man truly feels, and you never will. That is why I have chosen to give a detail account of the pain and sorrow that the aid man lives with every single moment of the day. It isn't the acts of the aid man that becomes important but rather the inner pain that he carries within himself. A pain he dare not show publicly, for to do so you risk the probability that others may see that pain, or (fear) which would demoralize the riflemen who puts their trust in your hands. I'm human and like all humans I'm born with fear, but we can control that fear when faced with the realization that there are others who depend on you're ability to save their lives. I never considered myself a brave man.There wasn't a moment that I wasn't scared, but that's a disadvantage an aid man has to live with, we either control it, or demand to be relieved of their duties. There is one thing I discovered in combat, the vast amount of soldiers can control that fear, While there are others who are to stupid, to understand the meaning of fear, and they are the most dangerous, because in their drive to win medals and return a hero, they take risks that eventually ends up getting someone else killed."---Albert Gentile, Aid-Man for Company B, 333rd Infantry, 84th Infantry Division, WWII.