I read the whole thing and that jumped off the page at me. That's such a error it makes me wonder. Was he in USMC and they just made him a medical type guy because they had a shortage. James Bradley's (Flags of Our Fathers) dad was a Navy Corpsman.
No, they don’t do that. All medical personnel serving the USMC are in the Navy. Corpsmen, nurses, technicians, orderlies, physicians and everyone else are Navy.