Edited to provide a non-subscriber link:
http://www.ezilon.com/information/article_11104.shtmlDang Thuy Tram was only 27 when she died fighting US troops at a field hospital in Quang Ngai province during the Vietnam war. Now, four decades later, her diary has become a publishing sensation both in America and in her homeland. By David McNeill"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, a North Vietnamese army doctor who fought Americans in the Vietnam war and died defending her hospital from US attack. Since the diary's re-emergence this year after 35 years in the hands of a US veteran, it has become a phenomenon, selling more than 300,000 copies, generating numerous translations and a television show and causing a wave of patriotic nostalgia among young Vietnamese.
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And the man who held on to the diaries all those years wonders how much the world has changed. "An Iraqi mother will one day be in the same position as Mother Dang. Why are we in Iraq? I don't know. When you commit men to war, it has to be based on truth; to enrich yourself off other men's blood is wrong. I'm a Republican, dyed in the wool, but our President didn't have the courage to go to Vietnam. He let his Daddy get him out. You can't know the vulgarity of war until you've been there, until you've been splattered with your friend's blood."
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