"Doc" Shappee
HM3 James Shappee was a twenty-three year old Navy Corpsman that was from Miami,
Florida and was attached to India Company while we were on Hill 65 and during some of the
operations we were involved with. I shared our hut with him and two others and got to know
him rather well; as well as one might allow in a combat situation. He was a conscientious man
who treated his job with dedication. Just the type of guy you wanted around to fix you up if you
were the unlucky grunt that was lying wounded on the battlefield. "Doc" Shappee first saw
action in the Dominican Republic during the uprising there in the '60's. His first christening
under fire occurred there while on a street patrol. Snipers had opened fire on his patrol and
"Doc" Shappee's flak jacket stopped a small arms round from wounding him, possibly critically.
On a future patrol in the same area their patrol again received sniper fire and this time
he had the time and foresight to dive behind a sandbag wall for cover. While diving over the
wall a rifle round took the heel of his boot off. Close call number two!
The next action he saw was in Vietnam. Our unit was ambushed one time while on patrol.
During the firefight we took several casualties that were keeping "Doc" Shappee busy as he ran
from one wounded Marine to another administering the necessary treatment. This he always did
without questioning his own safety. If he heard a Marine yell "Corpsman up!" he was gone like
a shot. On two occasions while he was running from one wounded Marine to another he
stumbled and fell. It wasn't until later that evening when he realized what had happened.
When he sat down to clean his .45 caliber pistol he saw what had occurred during the
ambush. The holster for his pistol had three bullet holes in it. One bullet had entered the handle
of the pistol, smashed through the magazine in the handle and had exited out the other side of
the handle and the holster. The bullet had probably missed his hip by millimeters as it entered
the handle from the rear. Close call number three. The second bullet had entered the holster,
ricocheted off the pistols slide and back out through the holster. The evidence of this trajectory
was proved by the two bullet holes in the holster that lined up with a streak of copper on the
side of the .45. Close call number four.
On Saturday, February 18, 1967 our company was on an operation in the Quang Ngai
province and had received another casualty. A medivac had been called in for the wounded
Marine. The medivac chopper arrived with an escort of two Huey gunships. There was a lot of
enemy activity in the area but the choppers had been informed that our landing zone had been
secured and for the medivac chopper to land on the smoke grenade that was used to mark the
landing zone.
As the Huey gunships circled our landing zone they saw our Marines that were forming
a perimeter around the landing zone and mistook them for North Vietnamese Army. They then
proceeded to engage the enemy and opened fire on us with their M-60 machine guns. It took a
moment for us to radio the choppers and inform them of their mistake. When the choppers
ceased fire and the dust cleared, our four-time-lucky corpsman lay dead with a bullet through
the head. His cause of death was listed as "Misadventure (possibly friendly fire)". His name is
listed on the Wall in Washington, DC on panel 15E, line 60.
You are missed, "Doc."
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