Military medical aid to civilians: Altruism or *policy?

Medical services have long been an integral part of the military and warfare. The primary mission of military medical services is to preserve the military's fighting strength. Civilians, however, are also caught up in wars. This dissertation discusses the care of civilians by military medical services, and the use of medical services as a tool to advance war aims. Following a discussion of the role of medical care of civilians in previous wars, this thesis focuses upon U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Archival sources serve to delineate the various programs, both in hospitals and in the field. The development and transformations of the programs and their relationship to the changing war effort and war aims forms the body of the work. This paper evaluates the quality of medical care delivered to the Vietnamese people, and discusses the use of medical care as an instrument of policy to advance the war effort. The quality of medical care delivered to the Vietnamese people varied greatly. Those receiving care in hospitals with American medical personnel received excellent care. Those seen in village and hamlet settings by the medical sections of line units frequently did not. Follow-up or long-term care was absent. Individuals may have benefited from the care they received, but there is no evidence of a improvement in the Vietnamese health care system. Did the use of medical care aid the war effort? Certainly the "hearts and minds" of those who benefited directly from military medical care may have been won over to the U.S., but there is no evidence that the Republic of Vietnam benefited. Conflicting lines of authority and confusion over medical assets offered to civilians reflected the larger ambiguities of the American war effort. Medical care can be instrumental in winning popular support under certain conditions: an absence of satisfactory medical care, a population whose support is sought by both sides of the conflict, and a limited war or insurrection. In Vietnam the first two of these existed, but the limited war phase of the conflict had passed before the major United States troop buildup.