RDUSA201905

Vietnam,” Theresa says. At times she

wondered whether they would ever

put the war behind them.

D

r. Kenneth Swan, who went on

to become a professor of surgery

at the University of Medicine

and Dentistry of New Jersey, thought

of McGarity often immediately after the

war. But over the years, he managed to

repress the memory of the soldier he’d

rescued from death. Then, one day in

1989, Peter MacPherson, a journalist,

asked him, “Do you ever make mis-

takes?” The question brought it all back.

When Dr. Swan tried once to discuss

McGarity at a medical symposium and

got choked up, he knew he could no

longer ignore the soldier’s fate.

“I didn’t think I’d like what I’d find,”

he says. In fact, he felt there was a good

chance that McGarity had died. But he

had to know. “I had to face up to what

I had avoided for 20 years. I had to find

out if my decision had been the right

one and, if it wasn’t, what it had cost

McGarity. I had to learn the truth.”

Locating McGarity seemed nearly

impossible, however. Dr. Swan re-

membered many details about the

soldier, but not his last name. With

more than 300,000 wounded Viet-

nam veterans listed in the Pentagon’s

archives, tracking down one soldier

without knowing his surname proved

an awesome task. It took two years

of searching before Dr. Swan and

MacPherson, with the help of the mili-

tary, located McGarity.

BIG DAYS

ARE RIPE

WITH

POTENTIAL

©

(^20)
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A (^) C
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