Day to Day Among the Viet Cong

[Rose Siding]

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 honest portrayal of a young woman seeking love while eluding the American "pirates" has made it a runaway bestseller in Vietnam.

The diary vanished from Vietnam soon after Tram's death in 1970 and didn't resurface until last year, when 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........

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-diary4aug04,0,2581540.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Jim__]

1. The faceless enemy.

I doubt war is possible if we recognize the humanityof the people we are killing.