A Bloody Battle,
Albeit None Wounded
by Dr Xuan Dung TRAN, M.D Major
The Geneva Convention 1949
General Protection of Prisoners of War
Article 3 (2): The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
Article 13: Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated.
Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited…
In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation…
Prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation…
Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.
Upon graduating from medical school in 1965, I was called up for military service the following year. I was one of the many doctors, dentists and pharmacists who were called up in the 7th round of conscription for health professionals. My first unit was the 4th Marine Battalion, based at Vung Tau.
One morning, sometime in August, I arrived at the Battalion’s base camp, situated on Le Loi Street in Vung Tau. As I passed through the entry gates, I caught sight of the name Hoang Hoa Tham. It was the name of a war hero whom I greatly admired. Leafing through history books as a child, I was thoroughly in awe of this figure of bravery, whom the people fondly referred to as “The Tiger of Yen-The”. In the innocent mind of a child, the nom-de-guerre conjured up images of swamps and reeds, towering mountains, sheer cliff faces and heroic deeds. I grinned at the puerile remembrance and entered the camp, somewhat buoyed by my brief sojourn back to childhood.
The sergeant at the duty post accompanied me to the office of the commander of the camp, Lieutenant Dang Van Hoc. The commander had a jovial visage, and hair which had been cut rudely short. After polite pleasantries, he informed me that the battalion to which I had been attached was presently on duty in the centre of Vietnam, and that it would return to the base camp the following week. I now had an explanation for the deserted appearance of the camp. Untroubled, I prepared to settle down in my new lodgings.
I had been allocated a room in one of the houses in the officer’s quarters, on the other side of the road from the base camp. After dining with Lieutenant Hoc and his family, I wandered along Bai Truoc beach until nightfall. In the darkness, the deserted camp looked even more desolate than in the daylight hours. I headed towards my room. It was in an old two-storey house, built in the French style, in which there was a large wooden staircase. Finding no light switch, I made my way up the stairs. My footsteps rang out conspicuously, reverberating through the silent empty house; their stubborn echoes in the dark gave me the unnerving impression that someone was walking there beside me up the stairs.
Earlier in the day, Lieutenant Hoc had explained that the houses in the officer’s quarters were reserved for the Battalion Executive Officer, the heads of each Company, and the Chief Medical Officer of the battalion. Indeed, a colleague – two years my senior at medical school, had lived in this very house. This colleague – Dr Truong Ba Han, had he himself been the Chief Medical Officer of the 4th Battalion – to which I was now posted. I recalled how a year previously, around December of 1964, the 4th Battalion had been involved in the Battle of Binh Gia. The fighting had been vicious, and the end of the day saw the Battalion Commander, the Executive Officer, and the Chief Medical Officer – Dr Han, killed in battle. A total of 119 marines had died on the battlefield that day. As I walked up that staircase to my room, I wondered how often Dr Han and the Executive Officer would have mounted these very steps. How many pairs of smartly-oiled leather boots would have gone down this huge staircase, out the door and never come back up again? The grand old house was a mausoleum, albeit with no cadavers. I mounted the staircase, no longer fearful, but infinitely sadder.
A week elapsed and the Battalion returned to Vung Tau. The base camp came alive with their presence. I presented myself to the Battalion Commander, Major Nguyen Thanh Tri, the man appointed to replace Battalion Commander Nguyen Van Nho who had been killed at Binh Gia. A few days later, the 4th Battalion left for a tour of duty in Ba Hom, a district to the west of Saigon. And this time, I went with them.
At a pre-operational briefing, Commander Tri announced that a regiment of Viet Cong had been seen in the area. The day after, the entire unit was flown out to Vinh Loc. The helicopters hovered about 2 metres from the ground, ready to fly off in case of VC attack, as the troops leapt to the ground. Following the marines, I also leapt out of the belly of the helicopter, and landed in a rice paddy, inundated with water.
The unit advanced deep into the territory suspected of being occupied by the Viet Cong. Every so often, in the far off distance, we would hear the sound of gun fire. After a morning without incident, the Battalion returned to Ba Hom in the afternoon. Upon our arrival, we heard the sudden sound of gun fire from the direction of Kinh Sang and Kinh Ba Ta. That morning, whilst we had been in Vinh Loc, a battalion of Rangers patrolled these regions. They had encountered the enemy as the afternoon waned. We received orders to help them, a directive which was all the more difficult to fulfil as we could not leave Ba Hom unprotected. The only option was to help them from afar, by hauling out the heavy artillery unit of the marine battalion. When the artillery unit was done, the planes moved in. As night fell, we could make out the bursts of light and fire which erupted where the bombs fell. The sound of heavy artillery thundered on throughout the night. At midnight it suddenly ceased. Commander Tri immediately called a meeting to discuss the next day’s operation: the battalion was to leave at four o’clock the following morning.
At the appointed hour, all the Companies of marines previously stationed in the vicinity of Ba Hom, assembled at the Battalion headquarters, ready to be mobilised again. It was still dark outside, and from a distance, it was next to impossible to see the troops all standing there in readiness. As we waited for the helicopters, a figure emerged from the darkness and approached me. I started, for as he approached, I recognised him to be Vinh, a colleague one year my senior from medical school. Although we were not close friends, we knew each other by dint of being in the same faculty and from rounds in the various hospitals. I knew that he had graduated the previous year, and had been appointed Chief Medical Officer of the 5th Airborne Battalion. I also knew that he was dead: on the last day of March in 1965, at the Battle of Thang Binh (Quang Tin), whilst ministering to wounded troops he had been killed by a mortar. I felt my skin crawl and tingle, before breaking out in goose bumps. I struggled to keep my voice steady, as I raised my hand in greeting and said “Hello Vinh”.
“Hello Doctor” he replied.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. This was definitely Vinh’s voice. And yet, I could see that the person did not recognise me. For a moment I was unsure as to how to proceed. The man must have read my mind, for he said “I’m Do Ky. I’m the head of G3 of the Marine Brigade. My twin brother was Vinh.”
I admitted that his appearance and the tone of his voice had thrown me, and that I had honestly mistaken him for my late colleague Vinh.
At dawn the helicopters finished transporting the troops. Upon arrival at the area where the fighting had been the previous night, the Battalion was deployed into strategic positions. Commander Tri called me over.
“Take the medics and try to find any wounded Rangers who may be still alive.” he said, indicating the rice paddies around him.
With six medics, I walked along the edges of each of the rice paddies submerged in water. As I scanned the area, I went over in my mind some of the emergency procedures I had learnt at medical school: wounds to the thorax, lungs, broken bones, burst arteries… We methodically searched the entire area, but found neither hide nor hair of a single Ranger. And yet, last night’s fighting had been drawn out and fierce. Greatly puzzled, we pressed on, searching anxiously. Rice paddies stared vacantly back at us.
“Doctor! I’ve found one!”
My heart leapt and I ran towards the voice. I helped the medic retrieve the body from the murky waters of the rice paddy. It was the body of a Ranger; he had died from a wound to the neck. The wound was so deep, it gaped all the way down to the man’s lungs. We carried the body back to dry land, and then continued searching. In the next few minutes, we recovered a dozen other bodies. As we retrieved the cadavers of the Rangers, a figure emerged from the middle of a field of paddies and ran towards us. He wore only the camouflage trousers of his fatigues; shirtless and unarmed he waved his arms and cried “Doctor! Hello Doctor.”
On the uniform of a military doctor is the symbol of Asclepius. The universal symbol of medicine is positioned on the right breast of the uniform, above where the name is marked. Because of the distinctive marking, any soldier, from any unit, can recognise us.
“I’m Second Lieutenant X from this Ranger Battalion.” he said.
“Where are the wounded?” I asked him urgently.
He waved his arm and indicated the rice paddies around us. “They’re all in amongst these fields… but I don’t think there are any wounded left.” he said.
“Were all the wounded troops evacuated last night?” I asked.
“Oh no. Not at all.” he said. “At about six o’clock last night, our Battalion approached a village and were going to pass the night there. Whilst traversing this field, we were surrounded by Viet Cong from every direction. Despite their element of surprise, we still fought back. Our planes arrived to back us up with aerial fire. But about half an hour later, it was dark and the aerial attack was no longer efficacious. The Artillery Unit tried to help us out, but because there was no clear demarcation between our position and where the Viet Cong were, the artillery fire was of minimal help. You see Doctor, we were surrounded on all fronts and they outnumbered us three to one. By eleven o’clock we were in pretty bad shape; we were out of ammunition, and we were fighting man to man with bayonets and grenades. It was pretty futile. The Rangers who were still standing had to retreat. Thank goodness it was dark, so they could hide. I am one of the three platoon leaders of the 3rd Company: my own unit suffered very heavy losses.”
“Are you the only survivor?” I asked him.
“Yes.” he replied. “When the remaining Rangers were retreating, I wasn’t with them. I lay down in one of the rice paddies and feigned death. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong had fanned out across the field, seeking to pick up weapons and their wounded. As I lay there, I heard the head of the VC unit yell out an order to his men. ‘Find all the enemy’s wounded troops and see to them.’ he said in his heavily-accented voice from the North. At the time, I didn’t understand the significance of his order. But a few moments later, the Viet Cong combed through the field with their torches. When they found a wounded Ranger, they pumped their bullets into him. The sound of their AK47s drowned out the cries of the wounded. Half an hour later there was silence: there were no more moans of pain since they had killed all our wounded.”
“How in the world did you escape them?” I asked, aghast.
“I don’t know, Doctor. It must have been fate. I just lay there, deep in the paddy; I lay there like I was dead. One of the Viet Cong came and fired on one of our boys who was two metres from where I lay, but by some sleight of fate, he didn’t see me.”
The Second-Lieutenant joined my group to find and retrieve the bodies of the wounded Rangers who had been massacred by the Viet Cong. I kept hoping that we would come across some who had somehow been missed. But the Communists had been thorough; we retrieved over fifty bodies from the watery paddies. All the corpses were riddled with so many bullets – fired at such close range, that the bodies were shattered beyond belief. The Second-Lieutenant drew my attention to a corpse which was slightly larger than average.
“That was Corporal Tö,” he said, pointing to the body. “He was the machine-gunner in my platoon. His wife just gave birth last week. I think she lost a lot of blood during the delivery. Fortunately, Tö was there. He and his wife shared the same blood group. They were able to take blood from Tö and transfuse it into his wife and new-born. At the meeting to plan the military operation yesterday, I requested that Tö be left at the base camp to recover. The head of our Company backed my request. But Tö wouldn’t have it. He kept saying ‘I’m married to my gun. It’s a part of me. I appreciate your kindness, but my replacement hasn’t used the gun often enough to be able to replace me on this mission. Please let me come with you.’ And you know Doctor, it’s true. You should have seen how Tö was with the machine gun. It was as if the gun was merely an extension of himself. The way he handled it… it was virtuosity itself. He made it into an artform. He was economical with ammunition, and just so precise. It’s partially thanks to his skill that we managed to hold out for so long last night.”
At that moment, I noticed that – along with his dog-tags, the machine-gunner wore a wooden cross around his neck.
The Second-Lieutenant continued.
“Tö was lying about thirty metres from me. As the Viet Cong approached, firing on those of us still alive, I heard one of them cry out: “What? You’re still clinging on to the machine gun? Let go.” It transpired that in spite of being wounded, Tö refused to let go of his gun. I heard the Viet Cong say “You’ve got a cross around your neck, huh? Well I’m going to send you up to your Catholic god with a brand new one.” And after that Doctor, I heard him empty two rounds of his AK47 into Tö.”
I approached Tö’s body. Turning him, I was able to witness the Communist’s handywork. He was as good as his word: he had fired his bullets into Tö, in the shape of a cross: there was a row of bullets from the left shoulder to the right, and a verticle line of bullets from Tö’s face to his abdomen. Sickened, I turned away, to see that the Second-Lieutenant had also seen the butchery, for two rivulets were running down his face jaggedly.
Two H34 helicopters made their way towards us noisily. With the help of the Second-Lieutenant, the medics and I helped carry all the bodies into the choppers to be flown home. By the time that we had loaded both helicopters, the number of corpses totalled 89. It was a macabre sight: there were so many cadavers that the top row of bodies was pressed up against the roof of the helicopters; they were so numerous, that we could not shut the doors to the helicopters completely. As they ascended with their heavy load, one of the helicopter doors gaped open a little more, and the leg of the 89th body jutted out reproachfully.
After each battle, we had to compile the statistics. The ratio usually works out to be for every dead, there are three wounded. Here, in this case, there were 89 cadavers. Around twenty of those would have been killed in combat. The remaining 69 would have been injured, but still alive… that is, until they were systematically executed at close range by the Viet Cong. The bodies of these men were quite different to those who had been killed in combat. The bodies of those who had been killed after the battle were a shattered heap of blood and bones since they had been fired upon at such close quarters.
Having seen that all the dead had been retrieved and flown home, we joined the rest of the Battalion, which then proceeded to operations in the villages of Tan Qui and Tan Nhut in the area of Kinh Sang. I followed my unit. My fatigues were drenched with the murky putrid waters of the the paddies and the blood from the dead bodies. I must have left a muddy, bloody trail in my wake… leading all the way back to the rice fields where a battalion of brave men who fought to preserve freedom for South Vietnam were slaughtered as they lay wounded.
Dr Xuan Dung TRAN, M.D, Major
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