Career
Jennings served in the Pacific Theater of Operations with the 25th Evacuation Hospital at Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, the 8th General Hospital, New Caledonia, and the Joint Purchasing Board, Auckland, New Zealand. On December 11, 1944, he was commissioned as 1st lieutenant in the Regular Army Medical Corps and promoted to permanent captain on July 7, 1945.
Jennings returned to the United States in May 1946. In August, he was assigned to McCornack General Hospital in Pasadena, California to work in plastic and reconstructive surgery on casualties of World War II. He was promoted to temporary major on October 30, 1946. In early 1948, he moved with the last of his plastic surgery patients to Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco. While at Letterman, Jennings completed a residency in general surgery. He was accepted for further plastic surgery training at the Barnes Hospital of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and began two years training with the Blair Brown Group of Surgeons on July 1, 1949. He was promoted to permanent major on February 3, 1950, and to temporary lieutenant colonel on December 9, while he was in St. Louis.
In July 1951 Jennings reported to Brooke Army General Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, as assistant chief of plastic surgery to assist in caring for Korean War casualties. While on this assignment, he was certified in 1953 as a diplomate of the American Board of Plastic Surgery. On August 1, 1956, he was promoted to permanent lieutenant colonel and concurrently assigned to Walter Reed Army General Hospital, Washington, D.C.. He served as the chief of the plastic surgery service and as consultant to the surgeon general on plastic surgery. He was promoted to temporary colonel on August 10, 1959.
From July 1961 Jennings served in Germany as a staff surgeon, V Corps, in Frankfurt for a year and as commander of the 130th Station Hospital in Heidelberg starting in August 1962. He was promoted to permanent colonel on February 1, 1964. On his return to the United States in August, Colonel Jennings assumed command of Martin Army Hospital, Ft. Benning, Georgia, and concurrently served as post surgeon. In this assignment, he was responsible for the medical support of the 11th Air Assault Division (Test), which subsequently deployed to Vietnam as the 1st Cavalry Division (Air Mobile). He also supervised the medical aspects of the conversion of Ft. Benning from a division-type post to a complete training center, together with the medical care provided casualties from the Vietnam War.
In May 1968 he was assigned as command surgeon to the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. He was promoted to temporary brigadier general on September 1, 1968. On February 1, 1969, he assumed command of the 44th Medical Brigade at Long Binh, with additional duty as surgeon, Headquarters, United States Army, Vietnam. Jennings left Vietnam to be sworn in on July 1, 1969, as deputy surgeon general, and was promoted to permanent brigadier general on August 1. He was sworn in as surgeon general on October 1 and concurrently promoted to temporary lieutenant general.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)