Jim Gartner Vietnam vet still seeks man who saved his life

Vietnam vet still seeks man who saved his life
Posted: November 5, 2011
By Carolyn Kaberline
SPECIAL TO THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Although it's been more than 40 years since he served in Vietnam, Topeka resident Jim Gartner remembers well getting wounded in the Southeast Asia country and searching for the man who saved his life.

“We were running, and they were firing at us,” Gartner said. “I heard a pop sound before I felt anything. Then I knew I was hit. I could feel a burning sensation in my foot. Everyone started yelling for corps men as they were down taking cover. I thought they were proceeding to me, but it was for a platoon sergeant. A bullet had gone through him. I think it was the same one that hit me.”

Gartner's foot was wrapped, and a Medivac chopper was called to get him and the sergeant out. The sergeant was lifted into the helicopter on a poncho, but the gunfire grew more intense and the chopper began to lift off with Gartner dangling from its open door.

“I stayed on as long as I could, but then I just dropped to the ground,” he said. “The commanding officer had a Marine cut a crutch from a tree limb for me but hopping didn’t work.”

The forward artillery observer — about 6-foot-3 or 6-foot-4 and 200-plus pounds — threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and carried him the rest of the day.

“Even when others asked if they could help carry me, he just said it was his duty,” he said, describing how the man carried him across a rice paddy under sniper fire, threw him to safety at the end of the paddy and then apologized for throwing him.

Later, the man carried Gartner until “we finally got somewhere we could get a chopper in. ... I thanked him as much as I could verbally.”

Gartner said he knew Grounds was the man's last name and he went by the name Artie.

Gartner was sent to a hospital in Da Nang and eventually put on planes to Japan and later Kansas City. After six months in the hospital, he was sent back to Camp Lejeune and eventually to the Philippines. He received a Purple Heart for his service in Vietnam.
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