West of the Dateline

They were surgeons on a warship who didn't much care about Navy regulations -- and that made all the difference.

When Commander P. M. McGuigan, MD, arrived aboard the USS REPOSE in December 1968, he stepped into one of the busiest, most irreverent, and most remarkable floating hospitals in the history of American military medicine. Operating west of the dateline during the deadliest year of the Vietnam War, the medical staff of the REPOSE treated thousands of combat casualties -- and found w...