'WAR CHILD Diary"; Vietnamese Anne Frank (3-box Kleenex warning!)

[LynnTheDem]

A MUST-READ.

And the man who held onto the diaries for all those years wonders how much the world has changed since. "I know that an Iraqi mother will one day be in the same position as Mother Dang. Why are we in Iraq? I don't know. You can't know the vulgarity of war until you've been there, until you've been splattered with your friend's blood."
-October 4, 2005 By David McNeill, Japan Focus

Over 35 years since returning home from the Vietnam War, a former US soldier has returned a poignant diary he recovered from a young Vietcong military doctor. The diary has sparked a patriotic revival in Vietnam, turning the two former enemies into national heroes.

"I had to do an appendix operation without enough medicine. Only a few tubes of Novocain, but the wounded young soldier never cried out or yelled. He continued to smile to encourage me. Looking at the forced smile on his dry lips, knowing his fatigue, I felt so sorry for him...I lightly stroked his hair. I would like to say to him: Patients like you who I cannot cure cause me the most sorrow, and their memory will not fade.'"

So begins the diary of Dang Thuy Tram, an army doctor who fought Americans in the Vietnam War and died defending her hospital from a US attack.



#3C78 at http://www.militaryproject.org