Page 50 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2024 - Online Magazine

Lt. General Dr. Bernhard
T. Mittemeyer A Lifetime of Service to

His Adopted Country

ernhard was born Oct. 30, 1930 and graduated in 1952. Afterwards, he a brand new American citizen,
in Paramaribo, Surinam, South earned his M.D. degree from Temple Bernie accepted an Army Urological
BAmerica. His parents Jan and University School in 1956. residency which he completed in1965.
Hanna were there as missionaries He was then assigned as Assistant
from Holland. They arrived in 1926 Soon after medical school and Chief of Urology at Walter Reed
and served internship, he was drafted into the Army Medical Center in Bethesda,
there for Army and did his basic training at Maryland.
42 years. Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. Although
However, the young man was already a In April 1968, he was deployed to
during WWII, medical doctor, he volunteered for Vietnam. But as a volunteer who had
his father the airborne services, because the completed his obligatory military
went to be a 101st and 82nd had liberated his
chaplain for home country of the Netherlands at
the Dutch the end of WWII. Of the 23 airborne
Army in volunteers, he was one of two to
Indonesia from be assigned to the 101st Airborne
1942 to 1945. Division. He was sent to Ft. Campbell,
Bernie, his two Kentucky and served first as the Battle
brothers and Group Surgeon and Clearing Platoon
his mom came Commander. He was then assigned
to the United
States in 1944
and lived in “
Nazareth, ...he volunteered
PA where for the airborne
Bernie and his
two brothers services, because
learned English. the 101st and 82nd
In early 1946, had liberated his
their father came
to the U.S., and he and his wife home country of the
planned to return to their Moravian Netherlands at the
mission work in Surinam. The plan end of WWII.
was for Bernie and his brothers to
go to Holland and live with family as Division Surgeon at the request “
members there to insure appropriate
further education. However, a church
family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania of General William Westmoreland.
volunteered to “adopt” the three boys At the end of his two year tour,
so they could remain in the United Bernie was going to leave the Army. service, he went with a promise
States, which they very much wanted When General Westmoreland asked from the Army Surgeon General
to do. So Bernie was able to graduate him why, Mittemeyer pointed out Office that he would be assigned to
from high school there in 1948. He that he “was not a U.S. citizen”. an Army Field Hospital. However,
then went to Moravian College in Westmoreland immediately arranged after arriving at Bien Hua, he was
Bethlehem, PA as a pre-med student for him to get his citizenship so he immediately assigned (once again)
could become a part of the to the 101st Airborne Division as
regular Army. (Bernie’s the Division Surgeon and Medical
older brother who had just Battalion Commander which was
This article (from 2017) is the fourth completed his sophomore heavily involved in combat in the
of ten articles we are reprinting to year at Leigh University northern most part of South Vietnam.
celebrate Senior Link's decade of was drafted out of college Bernie noted that “it was a year of
and received his citizenship
continuous warfare and action where
honoring area veterans. on the battlefield during movement was almost always by
the Korean War.) As air ambulance and evacuation of the

50 Lubbock Senior Link