Photo By Cpl. Michael Dye | The Navy Corpsman with Black Sea Rotational Force 13 pose around the birthday cake...... read more read more
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MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU, Romania – “Corpsman up!” yelled Gunnery Sgt. Jose Reese, the company gunnery sergeant for Logistics Combat Element with Black Sea Rotational Force 13, as he read “Corpsman up”, an inspirational poem for Navy Corpsman, at the celebration of the 115th Navy Hospital Corpsman’s birthday ceremony aboard Mihail Kogalniceanu, Romania, June 6, 2013.
The ceremony was held at the base theater where dozens of Marines and sailors honored the memory of fallen Corpsmen and celebrate 115 years of serving as the Navy’s medical first response force.
“This birthday means a lot to me,” said Petty Officer 2nd class Gabriela Cano, a Navy corpsman with BSRF-13 and a Las Vegas native. “It was great to see so many people show up to help us celebrate.”
The Hospital Corpsman is not only one of the largest branches in the Navy, but Corpsmen also have the most Medal of Honor recipients in the Navy.
The celebration included two guest speakers, United States Marine Corps Sergeant Jimmy Gavilanes, a Purple Heart recipient, and Lt. Col. Steven Wolf, commanding officer of BSRF-13. Their speeches shared personal stories of past experiences with corpsmen in combat.
“I was preparing my squad for a foot patrol,” said Gavilanes with choked emotion in his voice. “I was en route to the gathering point when I heard a thud; we were taking accurate mortar fire from the enemy. I low crawled to the nearest bunker about 30 meters away. When I arrived inside there was a young Corpsman already there. He looked at me and I noticed blood flowing from the back of my neck covering my flak in blood, my body started panicking. I will never forget what the corpsman told me. He looked at me and said ‘you are going to be ok Devil Dog,’ and started treating my wound.”
Sgt. Gavilanes went on to describe what the corpsman did to treat him.
“The corpsman started to pick me up and I asked him what he was doing,” said Gavilanes. “He said ‘I’m going to carry you to the [medical evacuation] site’, I told him that he was out of his mind because we were still taking mortar fire, but that corpsman carried me all the way to safety while taking heavy fire.”
During the ceremony a video was played to honor the fallen corpsmen. After the video, Wolf discussed how the video had special meaning to him.
“You will have to excuse my emotions,” said Wolf. “I served with one of the corpsman in the video. I just want to say thank you, no Marine goes into combat without their corpsman.”
After the cake-cutting ceremony there were very few people who were not visibly affected by the ceremony. Marines rushed forward to thank, hug and shake hands of all the corpsmen in attendance. All the service members then sat side-by-side with their fellow corpsmen to enjoy a meal and festivities celebrating the value of corpsmen to Marines.
“It was a good ceremony,” said Cano. “It means a lot to me to have everyone gathered to honor the corpsmen that paid the ultimate sacrifice.”
| Date Taken: | 06.14.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 06.27.2013 07:01 |
| Story ID: | 109348 |
| Location: | MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU, RO |
| Hometown: | LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, US |
| Web Views: | 610 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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