.gif)
COLUMBUS – Join professor, author, and Purple Heart recipient James Kearney for a talk about his newest book: “Duty to Serve, Duty to Conscience,” co-written with William Clamurro, which details his experience as a 1-A-0 conscientious objector during the Vietnam War on Thursday, June 29 at 6 p.m. at Nesbitt Memorial Library, 529 Washington St.
Despite all that has been written about Vietnam, the story of the 1-A-O conscientious objector, who agreed to put on a uniform and serve in the field without weapons rather than accept alternative service outside the military, has received scarce attention. This joint memoir by two 1-A-O combat medics, James C. Kearney and William H. Clamurro, represents a unique approach to the subject. It is a blend of their personal narratives—with select Vietnam poems by Clamurro—to illustrate noncombatant objection as a unique and relatively unknown form of Vietnam War protest.
Because of their status as “a new breed of conscientious objector”— i.e., more political than religious in their convictions—the authors’ experience of the Vietnam War differed fundamentally from that of their fellow draftees and contrasted even with the great majority of their fellow 1-A-O medics, whose conscientious objector status was largely or entirely faith-based.
Both men initially met during training and then served as frontline medics in separate units “outside the wire” in Vietnam. Kearney served first as a medic with an artillery battery in the 1st Infantry Division, then as a convoy medic during the Cambodian invasion with the 25th Infantry Division, and finally as a Medevac medic with the 1st Air Cavalry.
In this capacity Kearney was seriously wounded during a “hot hoist” in February 1971 and ended up being treated by his friend Clamurro back at base. Kearney’s actions that day earned him a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and a Distinguished Flying Cross for Heroism. The letter accompanying his Distinguished Flying Cross reads, “Specialist Four Kearney performed his duties as medic with courage and professionalism. Although wounded by enemy fire, [he] ignored his own wounds to care for the wounded.”
