He told his audience that 38 years ago, he was on the other side of the podium: as a Tripler internship graduate, listening to a guest give his speech.

"And I remember every word he said," Kushner said. "Blah, blah, blah."

When Kushner finished talking, pediatric interns Capt. Jennifer Keck-Wherley and Capt. Pete Vickerman said that they thought the class of 2005 will have better recall.

"That was a remarkable story," Vickerman said.

Floyd H. "Hal" Kushner was born at Tripler in June 1941, when it was a small Army hospital at Fort Shafter, just a few months before bullets pierced the roof of the family's military housing unit during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The family was evacuated and Kushner would not return to Hawai'i until June 1966.

Tripler had moved from Shafter to Moanalua Ridge 18 years before Kushner started his one-year internship at Tripler. By the time Kushner arrived, the building was awash in the same pink color it now wears.

Its contents were similar, too. By that autumn, Tripler was filled with young soldiers who had been injured in combat.

"Mostly orthopedic," Kushner said. "Arms, legs, chests. Hospital filled up with them."

Caring for them turned out to be good preparation for the next few years. Kushner had a military obligation to fulfill upon completion of his medical training, and when he decided to become a military flight surgeon instead of pursing a medical specialty, his destiny came sooner rather than later.

"I knew I'd be going to Vietnam as a flight surgeon," he said, "but I preferred not to wait. Also, I thought it was the right thing to do. I was 26 years old and I wanted to serve my country."

Ill-fated mission

Kushner was sent to Vietnam in August 1967, replacing a flight surgeon who was killed while flying with the 1st Cavalry Division's 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry.

Three months later, on the night of Nov. 30, Kushner was on a mission when his helicopter was shot down.

The pilot was killed outright. Kushner was shot through the shoulder by ammunition ignited in the fiery crash. His collarbone was cracked and his teeth were knocked out. The co-pilot was even more seriously injured.

"His ankle bones were broken," Kushner said. "Sticking out through his flight boots."

Kushner splinted the co-pilot, treated his own wounds and asked the crew chief, who was uninjured, to go for help. Six years later, Kushner would learn that the chief was interrupted in his mission, shot dead, his body later found partially submerged in a rice paddy.

Kushner and the co-pilot sat beneath the door of the ruined helicopter, rain pouring down around them. On the morning of the third day, the co-pilot died.

Kushner, arm splinted to his side with his belt to protect his injured shoulder, started walking. His glasses were broken, but he stumbled up a hillside, hoping he was headed toward American troops.

Five hours later a Vietnamese farmer found him and agreed to feed him. While Kushner was eating, a squad of North Vietnamese soldiers came and took Kushner captive.

"The leader was trying to get me to put my arms in the air but I couldn't move my left arm," Kushner said. "I think that scared him, so he shot me in the neck."

Long trek in Jungle

Despite his injuries Kushner was marched through the jungle for 30 days. At one point he was taken to a medical camp where his wounds were treated without anesthesia.

A North Vietnamese officer who spoke English asked Kushner to give a statement denouncing his country. In exchange, the officer promised Kushner, a message would be sent to his family, telling them that his life had been spared.

"I'd rather die," Kushner said.

The officer turned off the tape recorder and began packing up his equipment.

"You will find," the Vietnamese officer said, "that dying is very easy. Living? Living is the difficult thing."

Eventually, Kushner reached the first of several prisons, this one a grouping of bamboo huts with holes dug in the center for latrines.

He would spend 3 1/2 years in similar jungle encampments in South Vietnam before being moved to more formal prison in the North. The food in the jungle — when he and his fellow prisoners were fed — was rotting rice. Beatings and other punishments were severe.

11 died in his arms

Kushner was not treated like a doctor, not allowed to practice medicine. He was given no equipment and no drugs. He did the best he could.

"I had the knowledge, the training," he said. "But no equipment. My main job was to hold the others in my arms when they died. See them through to the other side."

Nine American soldiers and two West German nurses — a man and woman who were captured while on a humanitarian mission — would die in Kushner's arms.

"They died of starvation, beriberi, maltreatment, neglect," Kushner said.

In February 1971, Kushner and the few survivors were marched out of the jungle and into Hanoi — making the first 900 kilometers, about 560 miles, by foot — and imprisoned in a former French prison called the Citadel. Conditions were deplorable, but they were better than the jungle.

"It was hard, boring, difficult jail time," Kushner said. "But nobody died."

After Hanoi was bombed in December 1972, the North Vietnamese moved the Citadel prisoner to the "Hanoi Hilton." Kushner got his first Red Cross package in January 1973.

"Aftershave, soap, a ballpoint pen and a book," he said. "I read the book about 500 times."

Freed at last

In March 1973, Kushner was part of the fourth group of bone-thin American prisoners of war to be released by their North Vietnamese captors.

"There was an American brigadier general there to meet us at the airport, and I remember thinking the man had breadth, he had thickness, he had hair that was shiny and not like straw, like ours," he said.

Kushner drank a Coke with crushed ice and chewed gum on the flight. At Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, a military buddy sneaked liquor into Kushner's hospital room, and it was wonderful.

But the reality of his changed situation took a while to settle in. It hit Kushner when his plane touched down at Hickam Air Force Base, where he was to be taken to Tripler for an emergency root canal.

He was returning to the place of his birth. He'd come home.

"I'd promised myself, when I was in the jungle, that when I got to U.S. soil I'd sing 'America the Beautiful'," Kushner said.

He did. At 2 a.m., on March 19, 1973, the former Tripler intern stood in front of a microphone, news cameras flashing against his new, black-framed eyeglasses. He cocked his head back, opened his aching mouth wide and led a group of 26 bone-thin Americans in song.