A typical medical patrol:
On this
day, I took 15 Hre guerillas and another American
(my radio operator) to a village a mile and a half away in which
about 60 people lived in 15 or 16 huts.
The sides of the hill had been burned away and kept clear.
I set up my medical stuff on the front porch of a hut
and held about three hours of sick call.
Mostly women and children.
For lunch, I had three bananas, half a sugar cane, a jackfruit and
rice wine. Coming and going on this patrol,
we heard the usual single-shots at a distance.
Typical VC warning signs relaying a message of our location.
I noticed the Hre children weren’t in school today and asked why.
An old man said the teacher couldn’t come because he had to take
machine gun training.
The
Hre are more isolated now than when the French controlled Viet Nam.
The VC control all the roads in the mountains around us
Copyright 2007 © Loyd Little