Don Parish was born and raised in Brimley, Michigan on a Native American reservation. When he came of age, he joined the Navy and was trained as an x-ray technician. After his enlistment was up, he worked at a hospital for a while, but then joined the Navy again in 1967, asking for field medical service school, knowing he would be sent to Vietnam as a corpsman with the Marines. He deployed in October 1967, arrived in Da Nang, and was assigned to Hotel Company, 2d Battalion, 4th Marines at Dong Ha. He saw his first action at Con Thien, three days after reaching the Marines. In March 1968, Parish was wounded, medevacked to Guam to recover, and then chose to return to Vietnam to finish his tour. He was assigned to 1st Hospital Company. Parish remembers losing his best friend Bull, who died protecting him. He recalls being given a backpack (“so good and light”) by an Army guy to carry extra medical supplies, such as serum albumin (a blood volume expander), lots of dressings, and morphine. He describes hitching rides on trucks, heat pads (“I drank a lot of coffee”), wrapping his .45 in plastic, getting shot, and then getting dragged to safety in a bomb crater by the same Marine he was trying to help (“this guy with a broken leg, and a broken arm, and a belly wound”). Parish had "a good homecoming."