It was a long time ago, as they say, and in another country. I had finished my first year of residency and, as scheduled, went into the Army. I was an OBV, an "obligated volunteer." If one did not volunteer for a commission in the service, he would be drafted at an inconvenient time; hence, most of us chose to go in when it worked out best for us.

In 1 month I went from a sheltered residency in Boston to Fort Sam Houston, where I learned to shoot, crawl under barbed wire, wear a uniform, and salute. I listened to endless, seemingly useless, lectures in the heat of a Texas July. Then briefly back East and off to Germany via a Military Air Transport Service plane. Then the train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart and staff car to my destination near the Black Forest, where the Army had an installation housing a group of schools dealing with clandestine activities having to do with the Cold War. I was to be the family doctor for the Army officers and enlisted men, Department of the Army Civilians, Foreign Service Officers, NATO personnel and all of their dependents who inhabited Watson Barracks.

My predecessor and I overlapped by a few days. Zach Callaway was a frenetic Southerner bursting to get back to his surgical residency in Atlanta and, at the same time, stocking up at the Post Exchange, German photography, and skiing equipment. He told me a million things I should know. Major Passarelli, the pathologist at the Army Hospital to which we were attached, would get special tests if you treated him right. Mr. Hayes, the warrant officer in charge of the pharmacy there, was helpful in getting scarce supplies. Specialist Sheridan was not to be trusted. Specialists Counter and Dooley were good old boys who were always reliable. Leave the paperwork to Sergeant Rice; he loved it. The Deputy Post Commander's wife, Mrs. Bostswick was schizophrenic. If you needed a doctor or a test that the Army didn't provide, Dr. Schmidt, a U.S.-trained neurologist who was on the staff of the Stuttgart Army Hospital, was helpful. Colonel Pennypacker's wife was 2 months pregnant, and Colonel Pennypacker had had a vasectomy with a subsequent zero sperm count. The Army didn't do vasectomies, so Dr. Schmidt had arranged for it at a German clinic. The best restaurant in town was the Adler, the best bar was the Alpenrose, the best Post Exchange was the Air Force one in Baden Baden, and you could buy a good, 2-year-old Mercedes for $3000. If you kept the dispensary open an extra half-hour on weekdays, you did not have to open it Saturday mornings. He showed me how to use the Army telephone lines, which did not work so well, to get on the German lines, which did.

In Berlin, refugees from the East Zone were streaming west and the Russians were gathering materials to build a wall. I was trying to find quarters for my wife and child to join me. It was a whirl.

Work in the dispensary began immediately. Well-baby visits, office gynecology, minor trauma, upper respiratory tract infections, physical exams; lots of things that 2 years of academic internal medicine had not prepared me for, but it was fun and a good learning experience, I thought, and still think. Watson Barracks was small, with a permanent party of about 600. Two thirds were dependents, with short-term students swelling the population to twice that at times. Rank was not that important to me; my commanding officer was 60 miles away in Stuttgart and I was regarded as the local general practitioner in a small town would have been. I was always "Doctor," never "Captain." Many of the higher-ranking officers were students and had no command function there anyway.

I was starting to learn my way around when one evening, after I had been there a month, I was called to the dispensary. Mrs. Pennypacker was bleeding. She was a small woman with close cut blond hair, pretty, with an engaging manner, even then. Sergeant Rice got the nurse, a German woman who lived in town. She came and I examined the patient. Her uterus was palpable, and when I inserted the speculum and wiped away the blood, there was the amniotic sac bulging from her dilated cervix. While the sergeant got the ambulance, I filled out a form and called the Army obstetrician at the hospital in Stuttgart, skirting the Army telephone lines to get through, and spoke to Colonel Pennypacker, who was waiting in my office. He was an amiable, smiling, nondescript man, a student at one of the schools. We had shared a few drinks at the Officers' Club. "I think she's going to lose it," I said. The colonel gave me a baffled look. I went back to the paperwork. About half a minute later, the light bulb in the balloon above my head went on. "Vasectomy, sperm count, you dummy," it said.

Well, Mrs. Pennypacker was taken to the hospital, lost the pregnancy, and came back a few days later. Neither the Colonel, Mrs. Pennypacker, nor I ever had occasion to discuss the matter, although I continued to see them medically and at the Officers' Club. The following spring, Colonel Pennypacker's tour was over. In those days, and maybe still, officers and their dependents carried their own medical records to their next assignment. Sometimes, of course, they looked at them.

I considered the matter briefly and buzzed Sergeant Rice. I him asked for Mrs. Pennypacker's chart. He brought it in, put it on my desk, and left. It was, after all, her private matter, I thought. I opened the metal prongs that held the papers in place and removed the op note, pathology report, and discharge summary; balled up the onionskin sheets, and tossed them in the wastebasket to the right of my desk.

There were some things I didn't think Colonel Pennypacker had to see.