Positivity: Man who saved life, survivor to meet

From Alice, Texas, a long-but-worth-it story about war heroism:

Originally published 04:41 a.m., September 10, 2007
Updated 04:33 a.m., September 10, 2007
Stateside, July 28, 1968, was a typical summer day.

The Boston Red Sox defeated the Washington Senators 10-8 at the capital’s D.C. Stadium. Psychedelic rockers Jefferson Airplane played San Francisco. “The Green Berets,” with John Wayne, had audiences filling theaters to see a heroic vision of U.S. operations in Vietnam.

Halfway around the world, an Alice man experienced that war without the glory.

Lance Cpl. Henry “Hank” Fletcher, then a 19-year-old attached to Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, lay in a patch of grass for six hours that day with a hole in his chest. A rocket-propelled grenade had struck only several feet away, peppering him with shrapnel. His eyes were closing when a young Navy corpsman from Phoenix named Jerry Walker — who had traversed through automatic and sniper fire to get to Fletcher — sealed his wound using a pack of cigarettes.

Fletcher survived. Both men left the war behind and started careers and families. Fletcher still lives in Alice and now works as an Exxon Mobil operating technician. Walker, after a career in the Navy, has worked in San Bernardino, Calif., for eight years as a juvenile court judge.

He says he was just doing his job patching up other men that day; Fletcher, however, will meet the man he says saved his life at a company reunion Wednesday in San Antonio. It’ll be their first meeting since their days in Vietnam. …..

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