The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps do not have medics, they have corpsmen. Navy corpsmen get their names from the U.S. Navy’s Hospital Corps. Established on June 17, 1898, the Hospital Corps gave the U.S. Navy the ability to give enlisted sailors formal medical training. Corpsmen assist doctors on board ships and submarines, and some are attached to Marine units. When in combat, corpsmen are trained to run towards the action to help the wounded, often risking their own lives to do so.

 

In the field, Fleet Marine Force (FMF) corpsmen helped provide emergency first aid to wounded Marines. By quickly disinfecting and bandaging wounds, treating burns, and setting broken bones, corpsmen helped ensure their buddies would survive the trip from the battlefield to a hospital ship. Corpsmen would often help lead the wounded back to aid stations, where Navy doctors could provide more intensive care. Wounded Marines would then be sent to a hospital ship, and finally a U.S. Navy hospital for recovery.

 

In the United States Navy in World War II, hospital corpsmen assigned to Marine units made beach assaults with the marines in every battle in the Pacific. Corpsmen also served on thousands of ships and submarines.

 

Hospital corpsmen continued to serve at sea and ashore, and accompanied Marines and Marine units into battle during the Korean and Vietnam wars.

 

During the Vietnam War, many of the 16-week Naval Hospital Corps school graduates went directly to 8404 Field Medical Service School (FMSS) at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, or Camp Pendleton, California, for nine weeks of field training, before deployment to a Marine Corps unit in South Vietnam.

 

Fifteen hospital corpsmen were counted among the dead following the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Hospital corpsmen also served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars providing corpsmen for convoys, patrols, and hospital or clinic treatment.