July 11, 2019

Reaching the Pinnacle: The Origin of Independent Duty Corpsmen (IDCs) in the U.S. Navy

On the night of April 17, 1918, the ammunition ship SS Florence "H" caught fire while moored in Quiberon Bay in the south coast of Brittany, France. As the ship's crew hurriedly pushed crates of smokeless powder off their decks the combustible cargo soon ignited unleashing a series of deadly explosions. In its wake was the sunken hull of the

Jan. 22, 2019

A Portrait of HM2 Bobby Ray, Heroic "Doc" of Liberty Bridge

In the early morning of March 19, 1969, a Marine combat base at Phu Loc 6 near An Hoa, Vietnam, became the scene of a surprise enemy attack. As the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) infiltrated the camp's barbed wire perimeter, a 24-year old corpsman named Bobby Ray charged into the melee to render emergency aid to the mounting casualties. He would even

April 6, 2018

Remembering USS Relief (AH 1), the Navy's Floating Fortress of Health

USS Relief (AH 1). Nurses with their patients, on deck in March 1921.In 1936, "Our Navy" correspondent Mary McElliott was given special access to the hospital ship USS Relief (AH 1). She would marvel over its design and capabilities writing, "If you are accustomed to thinking of a hospital ship as a large institution, with a grim, forbidding