The poem about "medic Kropp don't smoke " was widely circulated and promoted in my 2x2 circle, as promoting CO status among the friends here. I remember reading it to groups of young friends at our house on occasions. Alvin
You mean the newspaper article? I'm not aware of a poem...
Here's the article...it's about my ex-husband, David Kropp--before we married.
He was awarded 2 bronze starts (for valor) and 2 purple hearts (for injuries)
‘Fink’ Objector Now Hero
Sooner Saves 2 Fellow Soldiers January 13, 1967
The Oklahoma Journal, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
By TOM TIEDE, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
CU CHI Vietnam—(NEA) —Dave Kropp, 21, never fires a weapon, never throws a grenade and never kills the enemy in this war.
But no matter.
He's a soldier, anyway.
Nobody would have figured it. When he joined the 25th Infantry Division, Kropp was branded a square. No drink, no gamble, no swear. If he got unusually angry he would say, "Dang!"'
Then, word got out.'
"The louse," one guy fumed.
Kropp was a conscientious objector.
He had come by the title honestly enough. No political connections, no lofty theories on the legality of conflict, no condemnations of aggression. Kropp simply was and is God-fearing.
In Caddo, Oklahoma, he had grown up in a loosely knit but strangely enduring religion with no name. "Undenominational faith" it said on his draft papers. A sect with no church, no tithing, no headquarters and, unless somebody got up as a volunteer at the weekly fellowship meetings, no preachers. Just God-fearing
People here, though, didn't understand. He was, to some, a coward. A man who would not pick up a rifle and fight for his country. "Fink," was a name they used.
Or worse.
But no more. And never again. Recently Dave Kropp, a combat medic, wrapped up the name-calling in bloody bandages.
He was in the jungle at the time. His unit, company-sized, was spread out in an imperfect circle and hugging the ground. They had walked into a trap and. a regiment of guerrillas surrounded them.
The fight was furious. The sound of rifles was endless. Chunks were dug from the earth by automatic fire; bark was split from trees, and hundreds of hand grenades dropped into the U.S. position!
Casualties mounted.
"Help me!"
"I’m hit."
"Get a medic over here."
Kropp did all that he could. He wrapped wounds up with bandages from the victims' first-aid pouches. He picked pieces of shrapnel out of fragmented holes. He pulled fallen men back out of the line of fire. He cleaned and patched and comforted.
One of the early injured was hit in the back, the shoulder and just below the heart. He stopped breathing. The medic spread him flat and instantly applied artificial respiration.
But it didn't work.
Other operations, however, did work. And in the ensuing hours, Kropp saved at least two lives, possibly many others.
One was a man with a sunken chest wound. A .30 caliber round had penetrated the GI's lung and air was seeping through the small hole in short gurgling rushes.
Kropp acted rapidly, and confidently. He applied a large bandage which had been smeared with petroleum jelly. The cloth smothered the hole, the jelly was airtight, and the man began to breathe again.
"Am I O.K.?"
"Take it easy."
"Is it bad?"
"You'll be fine."
The medic bounced up and down between patients, partly from running, partly from ducking. And when men were hit in open clearings, Kropp would crawl out to them on his stomach.
There were scores of wounds, hundreds of punctures. One man had his elbow blown off; another had pieces of steel in his cheek; another suffered from a baseball-sized hole in his upper arm.
Kropp treated them all. In 30 hours of virtually continuous combat, the medic handled 25 casualties, some more than once.
Eventually, of course, the battle ended. Reinforcements arrived. The company was rescued. The survivors were comforted with cigarettes. Nobody offered the medic any, though.
Dave Kropp never smokes.
Photo caption: David Kropp in Vietnam