DR. JIM KIMBALL

In the Viet Nam era, I was enrolled in the University of Iowa Medical School. There was a physicians' draft, and we students became resigned to the fact that we were all going to serve one way or another. We had the option of going into the service right after internship or into the Berry plan, which allowed a residency instead of going directly. However, as soon as it was over, two years of service was required. I joined the Army with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. This means a three-year commitment, instead of two, because I was paid during my senior year.

I started my internship at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., at a time when the interns worked every other night for a year. I was satisfied I had made a good choice. The other guys who went into medicine were paid $15 a month, had their room and board, with no free time until the year was up. The benefit of going into the Army was that I was making $700 a month, which  helped pay for schooling and support of my family - at that time, Mary Ellen and Joe. I figured I might as well get paid for doing what I was doing.

From Washington, D.C., we were sent to Schofield Barrack in Oahu, Hawaii. We were there about eight months, when Lyndon Baines Johnson decided to send a half million young men to Viet Nam, so I got to go there. The first place to which I was assigned was Cuchi, in MDCAP (Military Civil Action Patrol). The idea was to win the hearts and minds of the village people by providing medical service. Every day I went out with my three medics, set up in a church or  school, and we did whatever we could to minister to the Vietnamese. While doing that I decided if we were going to do it, we should do it right, so I proposed to build a 50-bed hospital in Cuchi. I had it all worked out. There were numerous medical personnel in the area to help. The agency, USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) agreed to provide me with all the material and the local Vietnamese would build it. The U.S. medical personnel were going to man it, but at that point the higher-ups in Saigon informed me that all they wanted from us were soap and vitamins.

Newsman Morley Safer happened to be going through when I came back from that meeting I was mad and I gave him the story with my bias.  It made the 6:00 news with Walter Cronkite. I was labeled a non-team player. They threatened to send me to Viet Nam, which didn't amount to much since I was already there. But a colonel believed in me. I was awarded a bronze star, and sent to another unit.

Unfortunately, I had a little time bomb ticking. From exposure to the Vietnamese, I had contracted tuberculosis, was sent to Fitzsimmons Hospital in Colorado for a year, and was on medication a year and a half. I was in isolation for four months, which is an experience I wouldn't  wish on anyone. But it could have been worse. Ten years prior, the treatment for TB was barbaric. Lungs were removed or collapsed, the chest cavity filled with ping pong balls, and patients put in bed for a year. Young guys in their 20s came out of that experience looking like they had come out of the Dachau concentration camp. They were permanently disabled. I was treated for pneumonia and recovered fully.

After that, in 1968, I came to Des Moines and spent six months at an induction center, during which time I moonlighted in Osceola, working afternoons and weekends with Drs. Bristow, Armitage, and Laustad. In September of that year, I joined them permanently, and we moved to Osceola. In 1969, we lost Dr. Armitage, and Dr. Dennis Wilken joined our practice in 1970. Dr. Bristow was killed in 1973. In 1984, I began a Family Practice residency at Broadlawns Medical Center. This is the Polk County Hospital, which has offices for the Social Service Agency, Pediatric Services, and in general tries to provide a net for people who sometimes fall through the cracks. Basically, my position was to teach the practice of medicine in rural Iowa, emphasizing concentration on the patient and not on the disease process.

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Last Revised March 13, 2013