(By April Dembosky, KQED for California Healthline produced by Kaiser Health News)<\/p>\n
Many of Ron Fleming\u2019s fellow soldiers have spent the last five decades trying to forget what they saw \u2014 and did\u00a0\u2014 in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
But Fleming, now 74, has spent most of that time trying to hold onto it. He\u2019s never been as proud as he was when he was 21.<\/p>\n
Fleming was a door gunner in the war, hanging out of a helicopter on a strap with a machine gun in his hands. He fought in the\u00a0Tet Offensive\u00a0of 1968, sometimes for 40 hours straight, firing 6,000 rounds a minute. But he never gave much thought to catching a bullet himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 21, you\u2019re bulletproof,\u201d he said, as he sat on the edge of his hospital bed at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. \u201cDying wasn\u2019t on the agenda.\u201d Continue reading article here…<\/a><\/p>\n This story is part of a partnership that includes\u00a0KQED,\u00a0NPR\u00a0and Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the\u00a0Kaiser Family Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.<\/p>\n
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