Former Marine praises
lifesaving medical care

---

By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Looking at H.C. "Hank" Stackpole today, it's hard to believe the retired Marine Corps lieutenant general was given up for dead during service in Vietnam.

Tanned and fit at age 67, the president of the Hawaii-based Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies described his near-death experience at a Pan-Pacific Surgical Association symposium yesterday at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel.

He said his life was saved because of excellent medical care in combat and military hospitals.

"No other country in the world could have carried it off."

The young Marine officer had been in the field south of Da Nang fighting for 30 days when a large-caliber, high-velocity bullet blew "a perfect hole" through his left femur, causing extensive nerve and vascular damage.

Stackpole said a corpsman who wanted to be a doctor and had extra instruments was able to reach into his aorta and clamp the artery, which saved his life.

He said a helicopter picked him up with three other injured Marines, but on liftoff the North Vietnamese opened fire, and the helicopter hit the ground hard.

The artery clamp held but he suffered numerous other injuries. He was the only one left alive on the helicopter, and he had no use of his legs, but he knew magnesium alloy in the craft could reach flash point, he said. "Instinct said, 'Get out,' and I did."

He began crawling toward friendly lines and was about 70 or 80 feet away when the helicopter exploded.

He said a young corporal ran through an open rice paddy to carry him to safety while two platoons covered the rescue with a volley of fire.

Again he was picked up by a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire on takeoff and had 59 holes in its engine. He said the pilot said he didn't know if he could make it but he would try. By some miracle, he did get the chopper to safety and saved the lives of all aboard, Stackpole said.

He was put in a stage 3 triage at Chu Lai as "one of those who wasn't going to make it. I had no pulse and no blood pressure, but I was still awake and aware."

A Roman Catholic, he said there was no Catholic chaplain in his unit, so when he wasn't in the field he had gone to Mass held by an Episcopalian chaplain. Luckily, that chaplain recognized him and saw him muster all his strength to make a movement, Stackpole said.

He kept telling corpsmen standing by, "He's alive, he's alive," Stackpole said. They kept saying, "It's a waste of time," but eventually sent him to the hospital, he said.

He had two cardiac arrests and "was clinically dead" on the operating table at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, but he woke up two days later, without potential brain damage and still with his left leg, which was to be amputated.

He said he's grateful to a young German doctor, a captain, who found a faint pulse and said to wait on the amputation.

He wore a leg brace but worked out the best he could to regain his strength, he said. About six to seven months after his injuries, he was called by the medical board to be retired as a major.

He challenged the Navy captain and two lieutenant commanders on the board to run an officers' obstacle course with him, telling them he would retire if any of them could beat him.

None did, he said. "The will to live, the will to heal and the kind of care made all the difference."

Stackpole began his last active-duty assignment in July 1992 in Honolulu as commander of Marine Forces Pacific. He retired as a lieutenant general in 1994 after 36 years in the Marine Corps.

About 100 doctors from throughout Pacific Rim countries and the Western United States attended the symposium, coordinated by Paul R. Cordts, colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and a Pan-Pacific Surgical Association board member.

He said the purpose was to get different perspectives on trauma management in various subspecialties. Although the United States has the most modern medicine in the world, Cordts said "we have a lot to learn" from other countries.