VIENNA – To this day, Bob Bean finds it difficult to talk about his experiences as a combat medic in the Korean War.

In 1952, a 20-year-old Bean was working at a Farmington dowel mill to support his wife, Leona, who was pregnant with their first child, and himself, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

Bean went to Japan as part of the infantry but ended up being trained as a combat medic.

During his four weeks of medical training he learned three things.

“Stop the bleeding, protect the wound and treat for shock,” Bean, 75, said Tuesday sitting in the living room of his Vienna home. After training, he went to Korea to serve on the front line in the Rifle Co. 45th Infantry Division.

“My first patient was a self-inflicted wound,” Bean said. “He had gotten a Dear John letter from his wife and he shot himself in the chest. I patched him up and got him off the line. I don’t know whether he lived or died. I never saw him again. I hope he lived.”

Bean was the only medic in his platoon and went on patrol nearly every night. He was stationed in Yang Gu, a mountainous area, and combat was constant.

“On patrol, I carried my litter, a medical kit and a few grenades in my pockets,” Bean said. “I didn’t have to carry a weapon, but I did carry a rifle.”

He wanted to make sure he could protect his boys and himself, if needed.

“I didn’t want the enemy sneaking up on us,” Bean said. “I was scared to death to be quite honest with you. Anybody not scared wasn’t quite right.”

He often wondered on patrol what would happen if he got wounded.

“They were my boys,” he said. “I watched over them. They’d holler, `Medic’ and away I’d go. It was my duty to help them.”

He dealt with a lot of casualties and wounds.

“Even to this day, it isn’t pleasant,” he said, as his fingers began to tap quickly on the cane he is using to steady himself while recovering from back surgery.

“It is getting difficult to talk about,” he said.

He wasn’t wounded physically, he said, but he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder.

“I have flashbacks on occasion. I kept my emotions buried for a long time. Then they eventually came out. I figured I needed some help,” he said. “It was over 50 years ago, and the memories are fading but the memories that affected me the most are still vivid. I still have bad dreams. Usually they’re the same dream.”

The hardest thing was losing one of his own.

“That’s why you really don’t want to get too close to anyone, but you can’t help it when you’re thrown together like that,” he said. “One in particular threw me. We were on a point system rotation to go home. This guy had all his points, but his paperwork hadn’t come. He was killed.”

Technically the Korean War is still going on, he said.

“It hasn’t officially ended,” he said. “It was an armistice – a cease fire.”

He remembers the agreement being signed at 10 a.m. on July 27, 1953 to go into effect 12 hours later.

“That was it,” Bean said, snapping his fingers. “It was over.”

Everyone fired off ammunition to get rid of it and at 10 that night, it all went quiet, he said.

Hours before that it was business as usual.

Twenty-five boys in his Farmington High School class were just the right age for Korea, he said.

“One of my classmates was wounded twice, one was killed and one classmate was captured and died in captivity, and his body never recovered. Technically, he’s still missing,” Bean said. In all, more than 8,000 are still missing in Korea, he said.

“I was extremely lucky. I came home with no physical wounds. I came home with baggage,” he said. “I wasn’t a hero. I’m just a guy who did his duty and came home.”