Dr. James H. Chandler completed his residency at Columbia University,   then under one of a series of Vietnam-era physician recruitment   plans, reported for duty with the US Navy. He received orders to   the Marine Corps' Field   Medical Service School at Camp Pendleton . After graduating on
this date,   he was posted to "C" Medical Battalion of the 1st Marine Division   in one of  the field units around Da Nang , South Vietnam . Before that year  was out LCDR  Chandler was to earn inadvertent fame for which he continues to be  remembered today.
  Late in 1966 Chandler began what seemed to be another routine day   in the  field hospital's OR. His third case of that day was a 20-year-old Marine who  had received a neck wound while on patrol east of Dai Loc. Chandler was  working from a disadvantage on this case as the pre-op X-ray was obscured by a  large metal artifact apparently left on the stretcher under the patient's   neck. But as he explored the entrance wound, past the fractured   jaw to the  displaced larynx, Chandler 's instrument contacted a foreign body lodged under  the posterior tongue. The object proved too slippery to grasp on several attempts with forceps, but using his fingers, Chandler was able to   pop it loose.
  The proud surgeon held the strange cylindrical object up for all to see.   The words, "What's this?" were hardly out of his mouth when knowledgeable   corpsmen in the OR broke scrub and hit the deck. Chandler had delivered a live M-79 grenade!
  Reasoning it somewhat immoral to pass a live explosive to a corpsman,   Chandler tendered the grenade himself on a gingerly stroll out of the OR.
  Employing a surgeon's foresight that probably would have proven worthless,   Chandler cradled the grenade in his non-dominant hand. The   200-yard walk to the far side of the chopper pad must have seemed eternal. After gently placing the device in a ditch Chandler , "...took about four steps calmly, and then ran like Hell!" The Ordnance Platoon of the 1st MarDiv harmlessly destroyed the grenade. It had apparently flown only 10 feet prior to striking the Marine.
M-79 grenades arm after traveling 14 feet. Chandler re-scrubbed and returned for five more hours of surgery on   the same Marine. Surprisingly the neck wound proved less serious than a   second injury, a badly mangled leg. This case was the third to   date in Vietnam in which a military surgeon removed a live explosive from a patient. In one   of the most celebrated, on 1 October 1966 Navy CAPT Harry Dinsmore and EOD EN1 John J.
  Lyons jointly removed an intact mortar round from the chest of a South Vietnamese soldier at the Naval Hospital in Da Nang .