Vet has major love for military

WEST VALLEY CITY — A tradition of serving in the armed forces continues for a Utah family as one brother, a Vietnam and Deseret Storm veteran, heads off to Germany on Wednesday for a second tour with an Army Reserve hospital unit in support of the war in Iraq.

Maj. Lynn Birrell comes from a family of 10 boys and six girls, of which nine boys and five girls lived into adulthood and the men served in the military from World War II to the present.

The family of James and Nelma Birrell spread out from the first child born in 1921 to the last in 1947. Of the 10 boys and six girls, one boy and one girl died in infancy. James, the father, was too young for World War I and exempt from World War II because of age and his large family, but sons James Jr., Bob, Don and Joe all served in the Navy during World War II.

A younger son, Frank, was killed in Korea while fighting with the Marines. Son David served in the Navy and son Phillip served in the Marines after the Korean War. The two youngest sons, Lynn and Larry, served in the Army during the Vietnam War, and Lynn has remained in the Army Reserve. Lynn and Larry, who served two tours in Vietnam, crossed paths in 1969 during their tours.

Lynn, starting his 39th year of military service, was an enlisted man in Vietnam serving as a medic. He joined the Reserves and rose to the rank of first sergeant before becoming a commissioned officer — a 40-year-old second lieutenant, something of an oddity in the Army.

"I enjoyed being a first sergeant, I know it made me be a better officer," he said, adding it took a few years as an officer before he was earning the same pay he did as a first sergeant.

Lynn joined the Army in 1967 and had three choices for his specialty: printing, airplane mechanic and medic. "My dad was a printer and I was an apprentice to him and I thought about it, but I went for medic instead, and once I became a medic, I wanted nothing else in life except to work in medicine," he said.

"After I got out of the Army, I stayed in the Reserves and stayed enlisted through nursing school. I got a nursing commission in 1986 in a Reserve unit that had a lot of nursing slots."

For the past 20 years, Birrell has worked in dermatology and now is a physician's assistant in University Hospital's Department of Dermatology. He was activated for the 2002 Winter Olympics to treat soldiers and also called up during Operation Noble Eagle to work in the dermatology clinic at Fort Hood, Texas, after the Olympics.