Page 111 - The History of Veterans at Highland Springs

BLAKE E. WATERHOUSE, MD
HIGHLAND SPRINGS RESIDENT, ARMY
I applied in 1964 to enlist in the Army Medical Corps when I completed my specialty training in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic in 1965. But the Army notified me that they had their full complement of physicians, and no more were needed. By early 1966 the Viet Nam conflict had seriously escalated, and the US Army was then in need of more physicians. I served as a Captain in the US Army Medical Corps from 1966 – 1968. I spent a few early months stationed at Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio, TX, and the remainder of my time I was stationed at Fort Hood, TX in the Internal Medicine Department of the Darnall Army Medical Center. During the Viet Nam conflict, as soon as Tripler Army Hospital and Brooke Army Hospital reached their maximum patient capacity, the Army began air-evacuating injured and seriously ill troops from the Viet Nam combat zone to Ft. Hood. Most of the injured troops had sustained “minor” gunshot wounds or punji stick stab wounds. The seriously medically ill troops usually had malaria (or meningitis, Dengue Fever, Cholera, etc). The malaria cases were almost always resistant to the usual malaria medications that had been used successfully in the past. So, we had to immediately try different medications and different combinations of medications. We also published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association alerting physicians across the country and gave recommendations to them on the diagnosis and best treatment options. We were also able to provide hundreds of teaching slides of malaria, and other tropical diseases, to the UTSW Medical School. The combination of the weekly arrivals of the air-evacuated injured and seriously ill troops from Viet Nam, plus the troops and their dependents stationed at Ft. Hood, plus the retired military and their dependents in the area, made for an exceedingly heavy, busy, and complex hospital practice. In addition to the usual medals, I was honored to receive the Army Commendation Medal for the medical care I had given to the patients I cared for at Ft. Hood.
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