Doc Dougherty signed up with the Marine Corps while he was still in high school in 1964. After basic training at Parris Island and advanced infantry training at Camp Geiger in Camp Lejeune, he was sent to a guard station in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1966, then Lance Corporal Dougherty volunteered to join the newly reactivated 26th Marine Regiment in California, was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, and deployed by ship to Vietnam. He recalls the embarrassment of his first Purple Heart medal: “I was showing a new point man how to detect the booby traps, and I tripped one." He was wounded and sent to Da Nang, then Yokosuka Naval Hospital in Japan, and finally home to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital because his hand was not healing as expected, and his unit would not receive a replacement for him while he was still in the Pacific theater. In 1967 as a Sergeant, Dougherty returned to Vietnam and was assigned as a platoon sergeant with B Company, 1/5 Marines, with which he participated in several major operations, including SWIFT, during which he was wounded a second time, though it was “just shrapnel from a mortar … not much of a big deal.” Finally, after his fourth Purple Heart injury, which he sustained at the Troui Bridge during the Tet Offensive, where his heroism earned him a Silver Star medal, Sergeant Dougherty was sent home and medically retired.