Petty Officer 2nd Class, Neil Gervais, United States Navy

Middletown, CT

1951-1954

In 1951, 27-year-old Neil Gervais was at a crossroads in his life. He wanted to go to college and wasn’t sure how to make that happen. He knew that if he enlisted in the Navy for four years he would be put on the G.I. Bill and get to go to college, so that is what he did.

He spent a lot of his service in training and medical school. First he went to Newport, Rhode Island for 11 weeks of bootcamp. Then he was sent to Portsmouth, Virginia for nursing training. This entailed a course for medications and dosages and several basic nursing courses, including one that taught him general patient care.

After that he was sent to Jacksonville, Florida’s Naval Hospital. He applied to work as an instrument nurse in the operating room and worked as one for two years. His role in the operating room was to supply the doctors with surgical instruments and assist in the actual surgery; many times he got to close up the patient. He was then assigned to “B School” for surgery training and was sent to Memphis, Tennessee for six months of training. This training included surgical courses, anatomy and physiology, and pharmacology.

In Aug. 1952, 21 days after the Korean War ended, he married his wife Jean. Jean worked as an X-ray technician in the Navy. They were married for 56 years.

He got sent to Charleston, South Carolina’s Naval Hospital for six months. After that he was sent to the Marines to work in their medical division because “their medical division is supplied by the Navy.” There, he worked as the head Corpsman, a medical specialist that is essentially second to a doctor. Ordinarily, Corpsmen would go out onto the front lines of war with the Marines and treat the wounded or work to prevent diseases. The Korean War had ended while he was in medical training, so he was not on the front lines of war.

Gervais has many fond memories of his work, but one case in particular is very meaningful to him. “I was taking care of a young married man who had a wife with a newborn baby in another section of the same hospital. The man was gravely ill; he kept having terribly high temperatures, and I kept having to give him alcohol baths to get rid of the fever. It worked, but then he would start shaking because he was freezing. All night I worked on him, and he ended up pulling through. The young man credited me with saving his life, and I figured I would never see him again, but a few years ago I received a phone call from a young woman who turned out to be his daughter. She invited me and my wife to her father’s 50th wedding anniversary. We gladly accepted, and they wined and dined us all night. It was very nice to know he remembered me after all these years.”

Gervais was technically discharged as a Marine since he was working with them when his term of service ended. After serving in the Navy, he went to college and graduated in three-and-a-half years and went on to become a teacher. He worked as an English teacher at Middletown High for many years, eventually becoming head of the department. He and his wife had six children, one of which is my father, Joel Gervais. My grandfather is now 90 years old and has lived a fulfilling life. He spends his days reading and watching Red Sox games and occasionally plays in Wii Bowling Tournaments with his friends.