Jim Savage had just turned eighteen and gotten married when he received orders to ship to Vietnam in April of 1965. About five months into his tour, Jim got a cut on his ankle. It wasn’t much at the time, but because of the mud and climate and filth, he developed an infection in his blood stream which ultimately settled in his lymph nodes and caused internal abscesses in his legs, chest and abdomen. He was air-evaced to a Saigon field hospital, where the dead tissue was removed and irrigation tubes inserted all over his body.

To top it off, Jim contracted malaria. He went from 182 pounds down to 119 pounds, and was transferred to a hospital in Japan. He had high fevers and started to hallucinate. The doctors talked of amputation, as the infection seemed to be penetrating into the bone. Jim spent five weeks in an isolation ward. During that time, he learned that his wife back home had given birth to a child prematurely, and the child had died.

Jim’s doctor was able to make special arrangements for him to be med-evaced stateside. He still had open wounds on his chest and abdomen, but he was bandaged up and put on a plane. He had trouble walking, and the air-evac staff on the plane to San Francisco asked, “How in the world did you get on this plane? You shouldn’t even be released from the hospital.” But Jim made it back: