Vietnam and The Persian Gulf War
In 1966, recognizing the dire need created by the Vietnam War for physicians in the military, Dr. Cifarelli voluntarily enlisted in the United States Army. He served in Vietnam from 1966 through 1967, attaining the rank of Captain and serving as Chief of Medicine at the 67th Evac. Hospital in QuiNan, Vietnam. He was awarded a Bronze Star and a Letter of Commendation for his service during the war.
Dr. Cifarelli's respect and admiration for military service never faded. In 1982 he re-joined the Army, in its reserve unit as a Lt. Colonel. Two years later he attained the rank of full Colonel and continued to serve in the U.S. Army Reserves Medical Corps through most of the 1990s. During that period he was named Chief of Medicine and later Commander of the 349th General Hospital in Los Angeles, a unit called to serve in the Persian Gulf War. He also commanded the 458th MASH Unit and later served as a Consultant to the U.S. Army Surgeon General, obtaining a top secret clearance at the Pentagon. As the millennium arrived Dr. Cifarelli finally retired from the military.
Read more about this topic: Philip S. Cifarelli, Military Service
Famous quotes containing the words vietnam and, vietnam, persian, gulf and/or war:
“Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America.”
—Myra MacPherson, U.S. author. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, epilogue (1984)
“I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies.”
—Benjamin Spock (b. 1903)
“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook.”
—Kate Richards O’Hare (1877–1948)