To Post Everlasting: Douglas White, Remembering America’s Heroes
(EXCERPT) chemist, hero in Vietnam, By Betty Barnacle Mercury News
Despite heavy gunfire, Douglas Lloyd White left cover in Vietnam to
pull a seriously wounded Army buddy to safety. He won the Silver Star
and Bronze Star for his bravery.
Mr. White, a Santa Clara Valley resident since 1959, also won the
Purple Heart because he was hit in the face and leg as he saved the
other man's life.
Last Monday , 35 years after that Tet offensive battle, Mr. White died
at 57 of skin cancer his wife, Annette, is sure was related to the
shrapnel that was embedded in his face so long ago.
The cancer, diagnosed in mid-2001, started in Mr. White's left cheek
and spread into his ear.
``It was on the same side of his face in the cheek where he was
wounded,'' Annette White said.
Mr. White had a large scar on his right leg where military doctors
removed a big piece of shrapnel. But his wife said a much smaller
piece that pierced his face was not removed.
Although she told his current doctors about her fair-skinned husband's
war wounds, she said, they were unable to verify her theory that
shrapnel was what caused the skin cancer they fought with
chemotherapy, radiation and seven surgeries.
Mr. White, a chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park for
30 years, was born in Colorado in the same small town of Hotchkiss
where his father, Lloyd Leonard White, wa...
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Otis Willie
Associate Librarian
The American War Library
http://www.americanwarlibrary.com