Greg Gibbons
A photo of Greg Gibbons, who is featured in the War: Through Their Eyes, Warriors & Nurses student multimedia project
The Heat of War
Rifle in hand, gaze unwavering, Greg Gibbons marches in formation for a Veterans Day ceremony, held at the Winnebago County Courthouse. As he marches, his hands, strong and sure, grip the rifle, much as he did 40 years ago when he was a Navy Hospital Corpsman with the Marines. Left. Left. Left, right, left.
Gibbons knows the routine. He is among the newest members of the United Veteran Honor Guard, a unit made up of area veterans that is called to perform military honors to the passing of fellow U.S. veterans or ceremonies such as the one at the courthouse. Since retiring in 2010 from Mercy Medical Center in Oshkosh as a nurse, Gibbons has performed more than a dozen such ceremonies in Winnebago County.
Each ceremony is different, yet the same. Each soldier that he helps honor had once been a vital patriotic American fighting for the country’s freedoms.
Although it has been more than four decades since Gibbons, now 64, had boots on the ground in Vietnam, he can still recall the distinct odor of swamp, sweat and fear.
To download the entire story, please download this PDF.
In this video, Greg Gibbons talks about the weather in Vietnam, the amount of care taking in his role as a hospital corpsman and one of the positive experiences he had while deployed. |
War: Through Their Eyes, Vol. 2, Warriors & Nurses, a student/faculty multimedia project that focuses on the veterans in the College of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Warriors & Nurses are the stories of the students and alumni who have seen war in the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts in the Middle East, and yet have found their way into a field of healing.
To read the entire 80-page book, please download this PDF. Warning, it is a large file.