Dr. Tom Cole: Performing surgery on children with birth defects
Clip 2

As a medic, I served up in Walter Reed (Medical Center) and I became an oral surgeon. I performed surgery on children who had birth defects, particularly cleft palates. I remember one patient who had no lips at all. A French surgeon performed a study on her and found she had cancer in the parotid gland which makes saliva for your mouth. The French were in Vietnam before the Americans went in there. The surgeon had to cut her whole cheek off. He then took the skin from her arm and gave her a new cheek. It was things like this that made the Vietnamese like us. That's what our whole program was about - getting the Vietnamese to like us better than they liked the communist, because the communist didn't do anything but treat them like trash.