Stuart Poticha, the youngest surgeon on faculty at Northwestern, received a phone call from a Colonel informing him he was going straight to Vietnam before his draft card ever arrived. At Basic Training, he couldn’t hit a target feet from his face and generally refused calisthenics. His antics — and those of his fellow doctors — were tolerated only because “court-martialing a surgeon caused too much paperwork.” But Stu Poticha could save lives. And the 12th Evac Hospital in Vietnam, where he was Chief of Surgery, did that better than anyone else.
