“I felt like I had to take what I had been through and do something positive with it.” (Video interview, 45:18)

Michael Patrick Felker

Michael Felker in Vietnam [1970] War: Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Branch: Navy Unit: 1st Marine Division Service Location: Great Lakes, Illinois; Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Vietnam; San Francisco, California Rank: Hospital Corpsman Third Class Place of Birth: PA

Like many during the era, Michael Patrick Felker enlisted in the Navy to avoid being drafted into the infantry. Hoping for an assignment as a journalist, he instead became a hospital corpsman, going out in the field on patrols and night ambushes with Marine infantry platoons. A pacifist as well as a noncombatant, he was deeply affected by the patients he treated and the casualties he witnessed. Settling in San Francisco after the war, he confronted what he terms another “baptism by fire”: integrating into a largely antiwar community after having served in the military. Little by little, he came to terms with his experience, and made his voice heard, through work on campaigns to end gun violence and ban land mines.