[Peace-discuss] Viet Cong diary tells poignant tale of war

[David Green]

Viet Cong diary tells poignant tale of war
The simple prose of a 27-year-old doctor who died
treating guerrillas in a South Vietnam hot zone
resurfaces in U.S. and grips her homeland

By Richard C. Paddock
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published August 5, 2006

HANOI -- As a young doctor in a country at war, Dang
Thuy Tram chose a life of sacrifice. She spent three
years at the front lines in South Vietnam treating
wounded Viet Cong guerrillas, battling sorrow and
self-doubt, until she was killed by American forces.
She was 27.

Now, more than 35 years later, she has come to life
again with the publication of her diary. Written in
the field hospitals and foxholes of the Vietnam War,
its portrayal of a young woman seeking love while
eluding American troops has made it a runaway
best-seller in Vietnam.

A kind of North Vietnamese version of "The Diary of
Anne Frank," Tram's journal has the same kind of
personal insights and observations on the hardships of
daily life, overlaid with a sense of impending doom.
At times, she comes across as a romantic schoolgirl
seeking love from the boys around her, at others like
a battle-hardened veteran who wants vengeance against
the foreign invaders.

"Sadness soaks into my heart just like the long days
of rain soak into the earth," she writes in April 1968
after treating several seriously wounded Viet Cong
fighters. "Oh! Why was I born a girl so rich with
dreams, love, and asking so much from life?"

The diary vanished from Vietnam soon after Tram's
death in 1970 and didn't resurface until last year,
when a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Frederic
Whitehurst, gave it to the Vietnam Center at Texas
Tech University in Lubbock.

In 1969 and 1970, his job was to burn captured
documents that had no intelligence value. He kept two
volumes of the diary at the urging of his translator,
who said the handmade notebooks already had "fire" in
them. The center tracked down the doctor's mother,
Doan Ngoc Tram of Hanoi, last year and gave her a
copy.

An emotional account of sacrifice, love and bloodshed,
the diary humanizes an American enemy. The young
doctor, sometimes addressing herself by name, confides
her hopes, ambitions and fears. At times, she is
overwhelmed by the death of so many people she knows
and the destruction wrought by U.S. firepower.

"Why do they [American forces] enjoy shooting and
killing a good people like us?" she asks. "How can
they have the heart to kill all those youngsters who
love life, who are struggling and living for so many
hopes?"

Best-selling postwar book

The 322-page diary, published last year, has become
Vietnam's best-selling postwar book, with 400,000
copies sold, said its editor, Vuong Tri Nhan.
Typically, a book is successful in Vietnam if it sells
2,000 copies.

An English-language version is scheduled for release
in the United States next year.

In a society increasingly consumed by economic growth
and material goods, the book has revived a sense of
idealism. Written in a simple but powerful style, it
reminds war veterans of their sacrifices and educates
a new generation about the hardships their elders
faced.

"I will perish for the country, tomorrow's victory
song will not include me," Tram writes after surviving
an artillery attack that killed five others. "I am one
of those people who give their blood and bones in
order to take back the country. But what is so special
about that? Millions and millions of people like me
have fallen already yet have never enjoyed one happy
day, so I am never sorry."

Sympathy for her family

Since the publication of the Vietnamese edition, the
family has received thousands of emotional phone calls
and letters from readers moved by Tram's account.
Visitors to her grave in Hanoi have nearly filled four
large notebooks for her family with outpourings of
sympathy and compassion.

"Many of them are young people," said Tram's sister,
Dang Kim Tram. "They say that before reading the book,
they didn't believe their parents' stories about the
war."

She says she typed the diary for publication and wept
with every page.

"I typed it while I cried," she said.

Today, Tram might not recognize her country or her
beloved Hanoi. Vietnam's population has more than
doubled, to 84 million, since 1970. Hanoi has become a
crowded, frenetic city.

Like other North Vietnamese students of her
generation, Tram was taught the ideals of communism
and Vietnamese nationalism and was prepared to make
sacrifices for the war.

After graduating from medical school at 24, she
volunteered to leave the North and work in Duc Pho in
central Vietnam, then part of U.S.-backed South
Vietnam, where she was assigned to care for Viet Cong
guerrillas and villagers. It was one of the most
dangerous combat zones of the war.

"The way I travel is so very hard, the way of a girl
student becoming a leader," she writes. "Something
causes me to be different from others. Is it my way of
life, a life of love, a life of too much thinking with
my heart?"

Bitter taste of death

At other times, she seems consumed with the desire for
revenge.

"With those pirates robbing our country, every time I
think about you [dying] my heart is so filled with
hate I cannot breathe," she writes after losing a
friend in combat. "We must force them to pay for their
crimes."

She spent much of her three years in Duc Pho fleeing
and hiding from the Americans. At times the troops
attack and destroy her field hospitals, which she and
her comrades work to rebuild. More than once, she says
goodbye to friends only to have them brought back to
the clinic soon after, badly injured or dying.

In June 1970, the situation becomes desperate.
American troops are closing in, and able-bodied
guerrillas evacuate. With her clinic destroyed, she is
left behind with five wounded fighters who can't be
moved. Two young women stay behind to help her.

"The situation with the enemy is tense . . . if they
come here, how can I leave the wounded soldiers?" she
writes on June 14.

Food supplies, never plentiful, run short. In her
final entry, June 20, she reports that there is only
enough rice left for one meal. She had thought help
would arrive by now. Her two assistants leave, and she
wants to cry as she watches them wade across the
river.

The Americans attacked on June 22. One GI reported
later to Whitehurst that the doctor tried to fight off
the heavily armed soldiers with a single-shot rifle.

- - -

Final diary entry of Dr. Dang Thuy Tram

"No, I am not a child. I am grown up and already
strong in the face of hardships, but at this minute
why do I want so much a mother's hand to care for me?
... Please come to me and hold my hand when I am so
lonely, love me and give me strength to travel all the
hard sections of the road ahead." 

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