Major Gary P. Wratten

INTRODUCTION Major Gary P. Wratten Major Gary Wratten, MC, USA/Deceased, hailed from upper New York State and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine. He completed his internship at Brooke Army Medical Center in 1959 and surgical residency at Walter Reed in 1963, both with distinguished performance. He was then selected to extend his training in the fledgling specialty of Head and Neck Surgery with Dr. Robert Chambers in Baltimore, who was affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. He returned to Walter Reed to establish the Army’s First Head and Neck Surgical Program, which he accomplished with Major William Mahoney as his first Fellow. Major Mahoney ultimately continued the program with subsequent surgeons Paul Lenio, Darrell A. Jaques, and Juan d’Avis, who also previously held the Office of Chief of Surgery at Walter Reed. Aside from his exceptional talents, Dr. Wratten was immensely popular with his superiors, peers, and subordinate residents and interns alike, and was well known by then Surgeon General Leonard Heaton, who took great delight in assisting Gary with difficult surgical procedures on a regular basis. The resident staff always looked forward to operating with Gary as their teacher, and as a first-year resident, I clearly remember his patient instruction and cunning guidance as I dissected my first gallbladder from its berth in the liver. We last saw Gary the day before he was to depart for Vietnam. As his reward for excellence, Surgeon General Heaton had selected him to command the 45th MUST Hospital, an inflatable structure that was to undergo its first trial under combat conditions. Of course, we all joked about this venture with the “balloon” hospital, and admonished him to keep a low profile, and to stay clear of combat operations. We all silently envied his unusual opportunity. It seemed like days, but it might have been a week or more when we received the news that left a pall over Walter Reed. Gary had quickly found his way to Tay Ninh Province where the 45th was to be located. The exact nature of their activities is uncertain, but, allegedly, he was outside the new compound with a party of support personnel when a mortar attack ensued, and while rapidly moving towards shelter, he was struck in the chest with a fragment and silently exsanguinated in the arms of a fellow officer, sadly beyond the reach of a surgeon’s hand. It was early in November of 1966, a cold dark day with a threatening sky. Many of the activities at Walter Reed had

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fallen silent, and most of us in the surgical realm proceeded to the Presbyterian Church across town where Gary, Shirley, and their 5 children usually convened on Sundays. Following the memorial service, the congregation proceeded to the Arlington National Cemetery, so appropriately the conclusion to such tragic circumstances. We stood by the grave site, awaiting the arrival of the horse-drawn caisson, the platoon of stiffly marching young soldiers, so respectfully silent in their synchronized movement, and the hoofbeats that echoed in the quiet mist that surrounded us as they approached. The procession came to a halt and the coffin was lifted with great precision and respect; nowhere else is a deceased more elegantly and reverently carried and lowered to his final site of rest. There was softly spoken prayer and the grief seemed overwhelming— eyes filled and overflowed on the cheeks of his comrades who stood poised at attention with heads bowed. Then the crisp rifle volleys rang out; the lone bugler, standing on a rise at some distance from the assemblage, played the mournful conclusion to this most memorable life . . . and wife Shirley, who stood so alone holding the immaculately folded flag, all that was left of her Gary, her tears by now exhausted. Life went on for the rest of us, and ultimately would come our turn—Bob Benson, Paul Lenio, and Mike Zeigler. The following year, Sam Clark, Jim Oglesby, Paul Graham, and I departed for Vietnam on the same aircraft, and others had their turn for several successive years, all of whom fortunately safely returned. Finally the guns fell silent over a decimated land, now seeming so distant in time and place, but forever inscribed in our memories. And long will we remember our friend and mentor, Gary Wratten, his excellence, his dry but rich humor, and all that exemplified the ideal of a military medical officer. His soul, wherever it rests, must sense with satisfaction that the annual surgical symposium that bears his name and represents all that he stood for, will perpetuate the educational system that was part of his life’s ambition; it represents his gift to the young men of our Armed Forces, who selflessly, as he had, gave their lives in the hope of extending the gifts of freedom for those in less fortunate corners of the world. The exact events surrounding Major Wratten’s death were never well recorded, to my knowledge. I report them as best I can from conversations that took place many years ago, and more recently with Drs. Norm Rich, Bill Mahoney,

© 2000 by the Association of Program Directors in Surgery Published by Elsevier Science Inc.

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and Bob Watson. Please forgive any inaccuracies in this account; we would appreciate any further information or corrections regarding the events surrounding Major Wratten’s death to be forwarded to us at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, Department of Surgery.

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JOHN E. HUTTON, JR, MD, FACS, BG, MC (RET) Department of Surgery Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Bethesda, Maryland

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