Voices that Inspire

What inspires you? From WFSU Public Media, here is this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Bill Pike. I was in the U.S. Army and I was a combat medic while I was in Vietnam. I saw a lot, a lot of people die. It is not a glorious thing by any means. One day the whole company walked into a box and ambushed. And pretty much the first platoon was wiped out within minutes. I was the only medic left and I did my best to save people. And I got a lot of people into a kind of a crater in a big field of tall, pretty tall grass. I remember hitting the ground one time and the bullets going right across, right in front of my eyes. They were getting closer and closer. So I got a radio off a dead radio telephone operator. I called suggested that probably the only way that we would survive is to call in an air strike. When the jet came in to drop 500 pound bomb, essentially on our position, I really didn't, at that point in my life, I really didn't particularly care whether I lived or died. It didn't occur to me to have a point of view about that at all. And to me, the metals that I was given, I don't know if you'd, I was going to say I'm proud of them. I don't know, maybe this is, I'm not quite the right word, but I cherish them because they let me know I did. I don't know if I did a good job. I did the best I could. I don't think I could have done any better that day than I did given what I was working with. I tried really hard. Discover more Vietnam stories at WFSU.org slash Vietnam. You're listening to Voices That Inspire, produced by WFSU Public Media and partnership with our local community.