Valley medic says he was fortunate to serve his country in Vietnam

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is one in a series of articles on Vietnam veterans from the Rio Grande Valley.

RIO GRANDE CITY – Serafin “Doc” Guerra felt woefully unprepared for the magnitude of his responsibility.

Guerra, a 23-year-old native of Rio Grande City, was an Army combat medic during the Vietnam War. That meant he carried a weapon and fought like every other infantryman and was trained to provide basic first aid while under fire.

The danger, lack of adequate supplies and equipment and the magnitude of the wounded in a single battle were things he could handle. Having to give up was difficult.

 “There were times that I wished I was just an infantryman, because then I only would have to worry about myself,” said Guerra, a combat medic from 1967-1968. “I always wondered, ‘Did I do enough?’ ‘Was I good enough?’”

Guerra had a lot to absorb quickly, especially for someone with only an eighth-grade education. The eldest of 12, he dropped out of school to help support the family as a migrant farm laborer.

“While I was there (in Vietnam), I thought I wasn’t doing enough....

You did all you could and you finally gave up on them ‘cause you thought they were dead,” said Guerra, who served with the Recon Platoon and Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, First Infantry Division.. “And all of that goes through your mind at the end of the day. You sit there at night and you try to go to sleep, but you try to solve the problem; you try to find out what could I have done better.”

He says he’s been blessed to stay in touch with the men from his company. They still call him “Doc.” Sometimes, he hears from the families who lost loved ones.

“The families want to know what happened. How he died. Did he suffer?

And sometimes,” tears welling in his eyes, Guerra paused and cleared his throat before continuing. “There was just so many, so many that we lost.”

He recalls numerous battles and ambushes. One day, Guerra helped save several men. There were no casualties that day, and only seven were wounded.

Guerra said as soon as the choppers lifted into the air, he could see smoke as mortar rounds and artillery hit the ground.

“But the timing was wrong and they hit us after we had taken off,”

Guerra said. “When we came back that afternoon, common sense says ‘Don’t land in the same spot because they got that place zeroed in.’

So we landed in the same spot and as soon as we did, this time their timing was right.”

As they were walking toward camp, he said, there suddenly was a burning sensation in his leg. Then, he heard the explosions and artillery fire. People scrambled frantically. Guerra saw that four men who had been walking just ahead of him were on the ground, not moving.

His training kicked in.

Bullets whizzed by and mortars exploded all around the wounded men as Guerra crawled from soldier to soldier. As he started to work on the them, he heard rounds come whistling by.

“I would just cover myself. They were landing very close, so I started to pull the guys out of there instead of working on them; just pulling them out of there.

“I brought one to a safer area and then would come back, and I would hear another round and I would pull somebody else,” Guerra said.

Guerra quickly discovered that the burning sensation he had felt in his leg was caused by shrapnel from a mortar round. The doctor began to work on his leg and although Guerra passed out, he has fond memories of coming to.

“They gave me a Coke,” he said with a smile. “I hadn’t had a Coke in about three months, and I drank that Coke in one sip.”

Guerra was awarded three Bronze Stars, two with Valor, as well as an Army Commendation Medal, Purple Heart and an Air Medal. But perhaps the one that means most to him is the Combat Medic Badge, which is given to those who served at least 60 days in the Medical Corps in the line of enemy fire.

“I got those medals for doing what I had to do. I was a medic. There were no Rambos; everybody was scared. I was scared, too,” Guerra said.

“Freedom is a right, and it was and is my obligation to the land of the free and to those who died to keep it free. I was very fortunate to be called to serve my country.”