One time we had two North Vietnamese soldiers on our ward.
We had one guy. a sergeant, who had young kids. We had two little boys that were injured, no family members. And at night they would wake up crying and the sergeant would go over and calm them down and get them back to sleep.
The other was a young guy who had contracted malaria. He was NVA (North Vietnamese army) and he was left behind because he couldn’t keep up. So we had him in our hospital ward and he would go around and roll up the beds of the ARVNs (South Vietnamese army) so they could eat their food. I kept on thinking, you know, why can’t things be like this…like it should be?
I couldn’t attached to anybody after that.
Then one day it was time for the NVA soldiers to go to the prison camp. So two of our guards took them. We always had MPs on that ward. One if it was not many prisoners, two if there were many prisoners on the ward.
So they took these two guys out, the sergeant and the young guy that had malaria and they cover their faces, covered their eyes. And they hooked them up with chains and off they go.
And I’d actually given them hugs before they left. I really liked them.
And it normally would take probably an hour or more to get from the hospital to where the prison was, but the MPs were back very soon.
I looked at them and they said “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. A group of ARVN soldiers was riding the other direction. They saw us with the prisoners and turned around came back. Then they took the prisoners into a field and shot them, shot and killed them.”
And that was very hard for me. I couldn’t get attached to anybody after that.
Linda G.
Army nurse