Mới đây, chúng tôi rất xúc động đọc lời tâm t́nh của BS. Lê Đ́nh Thương, khóa 1 Bô Lăo, Chủ Tịch Hội YKH Hải Ngoại chúng ta, viết về cảnh toàn thể các thương phế binh VNCH đang được chữa trị tại Tổng Y Viện Cộng Ḥa trong ngày 30 tháng Tư, 1975, với nhiều người mới cứu chửa và giải phẫu trong đêm hay ngay trong buổi sáng cùng ngày, đă bị VC tàn nhẫn đuổi ra khỏi bệnh viện, dưới họng súng, mà không cần biết đến t́nh trạng sức khỏe của họ và bất chấp lời cầu xin từ các bác sĩ quân y VNCH đang điều trị họ. Bấy giờ, BS. Lê Đ́nh Thương đang là Y Sĩ Đại Úy, ứng trực trong khoa Ngọai Thương của Tổng Y Viện Cộng Ḥa, và là người chứng nhân cho những hành động man rợ, vô nhân đạo – chẳng một chút anh hùng, thượng vơ nào, đi ngược công ước quốc tế. Dù đó là phía thắng cuộc.
"...Ngày 29 hết phiên trực chưa kịp ra về th́ tướng Phạm hà Thanh vào yêu cầu chúng tôi ai có thể ở lại giúp v́ phiên trực mới chỉ có 5 mạng ! V́ nhà tôi ở gần nên tôi và 1 bạn khác t́nh nguyện. Số thương binh càng nhiều thêm, liên tục không rời pḥng mổ cho đến trưa 30 đang giữa ca mổ th́ y tá hớt hải vào báo tin " Tướng Dương văn Minh đă đầu hàng !"
Chiều 30 tôi bị chủ mới đuổi về, thú thật lúc ấy tôi cũng đă kiệt sức, thêm cái buồn thua trận, về thay đồ tắm rửa mà ḷng tê tái.
Sáng hôm sau 1/5 vào thăm bệnh th́ được lệnh: Các anh phải di tản hết bệnh nhân ra ! Thật như tin sét đánh. TYV/CH có trên 2,000 giường và lúc ấy c̣n thêm thương binh nằm trên cáng giữa 2 giường, tổng số e cũng trên 2,500 thương bệnh binh ! Hiệp định Geneva đâu ?
Chúng tôi năn nỉ, thiếu đường lạy lục : Thôi, hôm nay ngày lễ 1/5, cho các anh ngày mai ! Tôi vội vàng thăm các thương binh tôi mỗ cần thêm giai đoạn tiếp, bảo họ đến BV Sùng Chính nơi tôi vẫn đi làm thêm ngoài giờ.
Thật ngây thơ, đâu ngờ 7 ngày sau nhận giấy đi học tập cải tạo!
Nhưng kỷ niệm đau thương nhất vẫn là ngày tôi đứng trước cổng TYV/CH chứng kiến hàng trăm thương binh ra khỏi cổng, bệnh nặng được người nhà khiêng ra, nhẹ hơn th́ chống nạng.. Tôi đă khóc, khóc thật nhiều không cần ngăn nước mắt, cho đến nhiều năm sau nhớ lại ngày ấy vẫn c̣n khóc!
Đó là kỷ niệm đau thương nhất của tôi trong suốt 8 năm quân ngũ phục vụ trong ngành quân y Quân Lực VNCH oai hùng và nhân bản. Tôi nói nhân bản v́ đă săn sóc cho thương binh Việt cộng được quân y VNCH đưa về cùng..."
BBT chọn đăng 2 chương " My Life In The Military" và "The Fall Of Saigon" lấy từ cuốn sách A LIFE CHANGED của BS. Lê Đ́nh Thương gồm có 20 chương và dài 242 trang- đầu đề tiếng Mỹ này đă từng được cố BS Nguyễn Văn Thuận, khóa 1 (RIP, ngày 27 tháng Giêng, 2020, Houston) chuyển dịch "Đổi Đời", nghe thật chính xác. Như một vinh danh gởi đến đàn anh Lê Đ́nh Thương nhân lễ Father's Day vào Chủ Nhật ngày 16 tháng 6, 2024 và lễ kỷ niệm Ngày Quân Lực VNCH vào thứ Tư ngày 19 tháng 6, 2024.
BBT
MY LIFE IN THE MILITARY
The war between the North Communists and the South Republic had been
cooking relentlessly since I started high school, building up gradually when I got to
medical school, with more Northern troops infiltrating the South via the Ho-chi-Minh
Trail.
In fact, the only period when it was safe enough to venture out of the city was
between 1960 and 1965, although occasional sabotages and a few assassinations occurred
in the countryside during that time as well.
Travel by train or road was considered risky, especially after 1965 when the
Communists seemed to control the distant sections of road and rail. In fact, people were
more scared of a VC (Viet Cong) encounter than of a robbery. Nevertheless, in 1964, my
mom and I decided to take a trip with a friend in our new car from Hue to Saigon and
back.
We must have been lucky; we encountered no VC on the road.
This brings me to say that I never saw a real VC soldier in uniform, even after all
of those years in the Army, until they came and took over Saigon on April 30, 1975.
I did see some wounded VC’s who were brought in to our military hospital, wearing only
shorts, and they were treated like any other wounded. That was it.
In retrospect, when I received the call for enlistment upon graduation, I never got
the feeling I was fighting a war. The Army needed all the doctors available, so it was like
doing your military service.
Since my father had retired at the end of 1967, and I had to be in Saigon on the
first day of 1968 to start my military training, both of my parents accompanied me to
Saigon, leaving our home to the care of a maid. It was a blessing for us.
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On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the traditional, sacred TET celebration
for all Vietnamese, the Communists took advantage of our lowered guard to attack on
many fronts, taking the city of Hue and some other cities on the highlands by surprise.
What happened next was a shameful episode in our history. Instead of “liberating” the
people, as they claimed, they terrorized all of the residents with mass executions,
confiscation of wealth, reprisals, and a chance to revenge personal hatreds. Many
innocent people died, but the brutal execution of three of my German professors, along
with several other local doctors, was beyond imagination. Was it war? Or plain murder?
Prof. R. Discher, Prof. Alterkoster, and Prof. H.G. Krainick, and his wife, who
were all volunteering from Freiburg University to teach in Hue medical school, were
taken hostage and were later shot in the head with their hands bound. Their bodies were
found in a mass grave after the US and South VN forces reclaimed the city, following a
fierce battle that left Hue in ruins. So, was our home, the maid having left, unharmed?
In the meantime, my family and I were safe in Saigon. We never returned to Hue.
And we would never realize the full amplitude of the tragedy for Hue and its people.
I started military training at the famous military school of Dalat for cadets, the
Vietnamese equivalent of the US West Point, together with about 200 young physicians,
dentists and pharmacists, as Reserve Class#10. Altogether we had eight weeks of basic
training, although we would be holding scalpels rather than rifles.
When I first became a physician, I was flattered to be called doctor. Likewise,
when I started wearing the uniform, with the rank of captain, I preferred to be saluted as
captain.
These were childish things, considering the suffering around the country then.
But before tackling the real world, I was given a treat by Dr. Alain Richard and
his wife, then living in Dalat, who were both French volunteers at the Hue medical
school. During my week off after military training, my wife and I were invited to stay in
their beautiful chalet, and they even let us use their red MGB sports car. We roamed
around the charming mountain roads among forests of pine trees, enjoying the aroma,
taking plenty of pictures of the romantic lakes and waterfalls, at the wheel of the only
convertible in town. It was like a second honeymoon. I pushed the MG to its limit: 100
mph. There was no speed limit then in VN, and the back roads were empty, a dream for a
car lover with the love of his life by his side.
My first assignment in the army was to run a dispensary in a training school for
infantry, twenty-five miles west of Nha-Trang. There was so little work that I spent most
of the day hunting with my new M16, and spent my weekends on Nha-Trang’s beaches.
Our first son, Jo Tuyen, was born on March 19, 1968, so I tried to catch a military plane
as often as I could to see my wife and son in Saigon. Conditions at the Duc-My camp
were not appropriate to bring them there. I had the chance to ride all kinds of airplanes,
from helicopters to transport freighters, like the C130 and the C123, to reconnaissance
planes, and even fighter planes.
Soon, I was transferred to Pleiku, on the highlands, to oversee medical logistics. I
was given a Jeep, and an apartment for married officers, and thus was able to bring my
family along.
By then, we had another son, Thuy, born in Saigon on September 2, 1969. My
parents also came with us, and I managed to open a private practice in town to
supplement the meager military pay. The weather on the highlands is better than in
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Saigon, which helped to compensate for the less opulent living conditions. It was a
relatively quiet episode, with the sounds of war somewhat distant. Pleiku has a beautiful
glacier lake called Bien Ho.
Still, with the boys nearing school age, I grabbed the chance to move back to
Saigon by signing up for two years of training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the
Barsky Center, in the complex of the Cho-Ray Hospital. There, I met another friend, Dr.
Nguyen-hưu-Tuan, and our two families got along well. At that same time, my father-inlaw
was asked to run a newly constructed private hospital in the Cho-Lon area, the Sung-
Chinh.
We were moonlighting as much as we could, my military MD friends and I. We
took most of the night shifts working in the ER, and assumed surgical cases whenever we
could. Sometimes we wished a day had thirty hours instead of twenty-four.
It was there that I started focusing on cleft lip and cleft palate repairs, suddenly
aware of how many cases there were. I had the best training from the author of the
procedure himself, from Finland. Soon, people from the remote countryside were
bringing their children in numbers, more than I could handle due to my divided time. I
was willing to operate at nighttime if only the anesthesiologist would cooperate. It was
sad to know that these poor villagers had exhausted their resources staying in town for
weeks, waiting for their turn. Since Sung-Chinh was a private hospital, they still had to
pay for everything, and my father-in-law was trying his best to undercut the cost, much to
the anger of the Chinese governing board. When it came to paying the doctor or surgeon,
me, I would gladly accept a dozen eggs and a grateful look, more precious than any fee.
One of the members of the hospital board, always faithful to my father-in-law,
used to tease us, saying, “Luckily you two are doctors and not businessmen; otherwise
you would be bankrupted a thousand times.”
In a time of war, we were lucky to have a decent life in Saigon. My children
attended good private schools. Our daughter came on June 12, 1972. By then, I had
already been assigned to Cong-Hoa, the main military hospital in Saigon. The workload
was heavy, and included on-call shifts to handle emergencies in surgery and in casualties.
Since we were the last bus stop, all of the difficult cases ended up in our laps.
It was hard work, yet it was also educational. Luckily, we were a big team of over
100 surgeons, plus another 100 or so internists, ophthalmologists, ENT’s,
anesthesiologists, cardiologists, dentists, pharmacists, and a huge staff of nurses to serve
2,000 beds.
At times, we had to add more improvised beds on top of that number.
In the daytime, each one of us was assigned a special ward; I was in charge of
reconstructive surgery for the head and neck; my friends Bao and Vien were in
neurosurgery, etc. But all of us also took part in the on-call team, usually with fifteen
staying overnight- with two-thirds of this number made up by surgeons, and the rest
internists and anesthesiologists. So we were practically on call every five days. The oncall
team had to handle all emergencies, and if we needed a specialist for a difficult case,
we could send a Jeep to get him.
The sound that we dreaded the most at night was the double rotor whirling of the
Chinouk helicopter landing, since it could carry as many as thirty severely wounded. An
abdominal wound could be a two or three hour operation. It was not unusual to have all
ten operating rooms running all night, not counting the other ten rooms for minor surgery.
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At least we had the residents in surgery helping out. In one month over there, you could
learn more than you could in one year spent at a regular US hospital. We were in
cooperation with the US surgical team at the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon, and we
surprised them with the number of major surgeries we handled. To this day, I’m still
amazed that we could do it, both the workload of Cong-Hoa military hospital and the
Sung-Chinh private hospital. True, we were young, but still it was a huge amount of
work.
Moreover, we managed to catch a few moments of laughter together. I was
responsible for the monthly party organized at Cong-Hoa, mainly an exotic dinner with
an unusual meal like snake or eel or something rare. The chaplain provided the cook for
us. At the Sung-Chinh, the board of trustees often invited us for a fancy dinner in a
Chinese restaurant. On top of that, the countless get-togethers between friends made life
bearable.
Tuy was giving piano lessons at home and teaching music at a popular school; my
parents were helping with the kids. They drove them to school since Tuy wasn’t driving
then; she rode a moped, which was much more practical in Saigon’s heavy traffic. We
bought a house near the Cong-Hoa Hospital, in the district of Go-Vap. I was shuffling
between the two hospitals on my motorbike, which was stolen twice. My car was a small
station wagon, called Renault 4, which I still see now circulating in Paris. Compared to
American cars, it’s a midget. Yet we were able to carry the whole family, four adults and
three kids.
We experienced a few moments of suspense when the VC fired long-range
rockets randomly in town, so most people living in multilevel homes preferred to sleep
on the ground floor. Otherwise, life went on normally. I also accepted a job in a food
factory, the Vifon Fơod Inc., in Cholon, as company physician. It was an easy job that
paid well; I only went there once a week, or occasionally for a meeting. Later, a textile
company, the Lien-Phuong, hired me to do the same. Tuy teased me, saying, “You’re
holding 4 jobs, and yet you’re not rich.” True, I could have been rich if I charged high
fees like my colleagues did, or if I had gone into esthetic surgery, but the work I was
doing in the private hospital was much more helpful to the children born with defects.
Most of their parents were poor, and I didn’t have the heart to take their money when
they had to borrow funds for rides home. And guess whom they borrowed from, knowing
nobody in town? My father-in-law. In fact, he did better than I did; he just gave them
whatever he had in his pocket. That’s the reason my mother-in-law rarely let him carry
much money- not that she was less charitable, but she had to watch over the family
budget as my father-in-law never knew how much he was making. While not rich, we
were still bringing in more than we needed for a good living; my wife kept a reserve of
gold, which became quite useful later. Our children were spoiled with imported toys, and
I treated myself to the most expensive tennis racquet of the time, the Wilson T2000, the
one used by Jimmy Connors.
The only time the commotion of war was felt was when we were on-call at Cong-
Hoa, with all varieties of gunshot wounds, shrapnel wounds, burns, accidents, etc. One
night, I was called in as consulting specialist for the strange case of an unexploded device
lodged in the neck of a soldier. He was playing with a buddy who accidentally discharged
his M60, a grenade launcher, and the egg-size grenade went into his neck without
exploding. It had also spared the major body structures, so he was alert, but scared. We
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had a weapons specialist come in to assure us that, due to the short distance of firing, the
explosive head hadn’t had enough revolutions to trigger the detonation. Well, easy to say.
However, to be safe, our supervisor had a wall of sand bags set up, with holes big enough
to see through and to pass our hands through to remove the thing. It was a memorable
operation.
But the most dramatic incident that happened to me was in 1972, the night I was
on-call while heavy fighting surrounded the city. The triage room was filled with
casualties as I walked through giving orders to the nurses for each of the wounded that I
evaluated- quickly, I must say. Spotting a naked young man with a gaping abdominal
wound, with parts of his guts spilling out, I ordered IV fluids and an ASAP order to the
OR. As the poor guy was wheeled away, out of nowhere came in a colonel, furiously
yelling at me:
- “Doc, you cannot treat that guy before taking care of my men!”
- “Why not?” I was caught by surprise.
- “Because he’s a VC.”
- “That, I didn’t know. But all the wounded brought in here are treated according to their
severity; I’m just doing my job.”
- Hearing that, he suddenly pulled his revolver and pointed it at me: “I’m giving you an
order, as a higher rank officer. If you disobey, I’ll court-martial you!”
He was a colonel, and I was only a captain. Besides, he looked like he was in a
trance, with his eyes shot, fuming. For a second I feared for my life; he might shoot me. I
know he had no right to interfere, but this was wartime. Who knew? He might have been
right; he could say that I was helping the enemy. But I backed down, mainly because I
was afraid as one would be of a mad dog. A male nurse told me later on that I had done
the right thing. Never mind the court martial threat, the colonel had just come from the
battlefield, and was shaken up from losing his men or seeing them wounded; the whole
atmosphere was still electrified. So I ordered the nurse to take the waiting patient back,
but, after the colonel left, I rushed over, and I was able to operate on my “enemy.” I
saved his life, only to discharge him later as a POW, hand-cuffed, probably to be
interrogated and/or tortured. I don’t know what happened to him afterwards. But during
the time I treated his wounds, I had the chance to talk to him, and found that he was just a
kid, dragged into the fighting without much knowledge of what it was really about. I did
make a report complaining to my superiors about the incident. They sided with me, but
muffled it down because that colonel was considered a hero in the Special Forces. That
was the military logic. I guess when you were sitting in the air-conditioned compound of
the hospital, and not in the heat of the battle seeing your friends die in front of you, you
couldn’t understand it.
Anyway, it was a strange situation, this war between your own people, while the
cards were played by foreign powers bigger than you. Frankly, I wasn’t that much
convinced of the necessity of this war based on ideology, and I felt that only the
experiences of the 1968 event, which exposed the brutality of the Communists, were
worth pondering. Why such hatred, I could never understand.
The real victims of this conflict were the peaceful villagers who just wanted to
work their land and be left alone. But then the night came, when, out of nowhere the VC
appeared, and took their food reserves, threatened them to force their cooperation, and
lured away their young and healthy. During the daytime, the National and US Forces
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arrived, to accuse them of helping the enemy, and sometimes they were beaten or tortured
or, worse, killed. The tragedy of My-Lai village gave an example of the dilemma of those
poor people.
A country rich in rice production, we ended up eating imported rice and became
increasingly dependent on American aid for everything else. President Ngo-dinh-Diem
was the only one who opposed that mounting dependency on the US, and he was
assassinated. The leaders who took his place were a bunch of uneducated and
incompetent generals, who were busy filling up their own pockets and couldn’t have
cared less for what was happening to the country.
In the mean time, the US was facing an anti-war movement at home, which led to
the negotiations of the Paris Summit. We were hoping for a peaceful resolution of this
war.
But what finally happened was a shock for all of us. Despite the warnings of
Tuy’s brothers and sisters living abroad, who saw things more clearly, we just couldn’t
believe it would end up this way, and so fast.
My father-in-law believed it would come to some kind of arrangement, and we
should be able to live in the new setting. I shared the same feeling, paying little attention
to my uniform and my recent promotion in rank. I paid more attention to the increasing
number of injuries, thinking I could contribute more help in healing the wounds of this
long war.
Was I ever wrong!
THE FALL OF SAIGON
Anyway, I didn’t have time to think much. In the last days of Saigon, with the
falling of city after city under the advances of the VC, all hospitals were overwhelmed by
the high load of patients, especially at Cong-Hoa, which was the last stop for all
casualties coming from around and from the North. To make things worse, a lot of
doctors were leaving, even, and especially, the military ones. The few who remained
wished that they had four hands. Since I had decided to stay, unable to see myself
abandoning my homeland, my parents, and my family, I spent most days and nights at the
hospitals, and Tuy had to bring me food and feed me while I was catching a few minutes
of rest.
Ironically, doomsday arrived on April 30, 1975, and I didn’t even know about it,
having spent three days and three nights in the hospital OR. In the middle of a surgery, a
male nurse came in and delivered the news: “We have surrendered! General Duong-van-
Minh has surrendered.”
I couldn’t believe it! A day earlier, the radio had been talking about a three-part
government.
The general commander of the hospital gathered all of us for a touching farewell:
“I’m no longer your commander; I just want to thank you all for staying back and
remaining on duty. From this moment on, we’re considered POWs. I have orders to hand
over the command of this unit to the new forces.” And we saluted for the last time.
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Months later, he and I bumped into each other, carrying rocks in a labor camp. We
exchanged a salute with a smile. It was the last time I saw him alive. I learned later that
he died in the camp.
And that was how my military life ended, after seven and one-half years in the
Medical Corps. I went home that day, still wondering who was going to take care of the
remaining patients, with mixed feelings- saddened by the defeat, but glad that the war
was over! I even took a bicycle ride with my wife downtown to see the VC tanks riding
in. It was the first time I saw the real VC soldiers in their uniforms. Some people were
cheering, and yet there was a certain inquietude in the air. It was true that the VC had had
many cells infiltrating the city, and now they came out into the open and were the loudest
celebrants.
I remember Tuy telling me at that moment: “Somehow I don’t like the look of it;
I’ve got the feeling something bad will happen after this jubilation.”
What a super female intuition! Of course, I wasn’t aware then of the past history
of re-education camps, or concentration/labor camps, or whatever you call them. I
naively thought that I would be able to continue working as a doctor, if only for less pay.
It would be nice to go back to civilian life. There was so much to be done. Despite being
on the defeated side, I even felt relieved. My wife’s remark brought me back to reality.
What was going to happen to us?
Trích trong “A Life Changed” book của BS. Lê Đ́nh Thương