First Lieutenant Oxnam’s 3rd Platoon spent at least 3-4 day tours on combat Outpost Vegas where the fighting was heavy during the Nevada Battles leading up to the Armistice agreement. Vegas was a small volcanic hill about the size of a mountain in Tucson, Arizona. On one combat action patrol the corpsman came to Oxnam and said, “We have two seriously wounded Marines who are dying without a blood transfusion because we are out of type (A) blood.”
Oxnam realized that they were boxed in 400 meters forward of the MLR and surrounded by Chinese. There was no chance that they could receive a re-supply of anything-- food, ammunition, water, or blood. 1st Lieutenant Oxnam told the corpsman, “God is with us. I have 12 pints of A blood in my body. We can make a direct transfusion arm to arm.”