From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [SOC] THE TWO WARS OF DUONG NGUYEN (II)
Date: 13 Nov 92 00:04:07 GMT
Reply-To: "Mike T. Do" <mdo@socrates.umd.edu>
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FROM WASHINGTON POST (11/11/92)
ALL TYPOS ARE MINE
POST WITHOUT PERMISSION



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A SUPERB SOLDIER

    Duonng was born in Hanoi in 1943, the ninth of 13 children of a civil
servant in the French administration.  In 1954, before the partition of the
country under the Geneva accords, his father took him to Saigon.  The rest
of the familty came later, along with nearly a million refugees fleeing the
communists in the north.  He was educated in a French-style lyc'ee and at
the medical school of the University of Saigon.  In 1969, he was assigned
to the ARVN 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta.  When the allies -
America and South Vietnam-invaded Cambodia in the spring of 1970, he was
manning a front line aid station-"sometimes terrible, sometimes scary."  It
happened that I was in the same invasion, courtesy of my sergeancy in the
U.S. Army.
    Duong had met Pham Bach Huong at a dance in the early '60s, and they
married in '68.  Lucky for him.  She became a hostess for Air Vietnam, and
was able to get past the gate guard at Tan Son Nhut that last day because of
her airline identity card.  "Duong told me to leave before him with the kids,
and not worry," she recalls, "because there'd be a period of neutrality
before the whole country collasped.  But I dind't see it that way.  I'd been
up to Da Nang, and saw the whole thing collapse up there with my own eyes."
She was right, and with the full ferocity of the Pham women, insisted her
husband's name go on the list.
    Duong was in the Vietnamese airforce by then.  At one point he'd been
assigned to study psychology for a year, and thus became the chief of
psychiatric medicine for the airforce-indeed, its only shrink.  "Even the
general had to be cleared by me to carry a weapon," he recalls.  "I had to
manage drug addicts.  People would try to bribe me to say they were crazy so
they could escape military service.  I said, "No way!" It was "Catch-22" all
over again.
    Much later, when he was in the U.S. Army and aboard a big military
transport flyingf toward Saudi, Duong "felt safe, but one soldier was
complaining of a headache ane want to be treated, even though all I had was
my stethoscope and blood pressure cuff.  I saw people very withdrawn, not
talking.  Others laughed inappropriately.  Some were so afraid, when they got
off the plane they claimed different diseases.  But I knew these things would
happen.  Even on the ground, that soldier with a headache still tried to get
out of duty-complained and complained."
    His first memory of the Persian Gulf: the haunting call to prayer from
the minarets.
    Duong inadvertently missed the ground invasion when the 1st Armored
Division, "Old Ironsides," thundered to the attack earlier than planned.
He'd choppered to the rear to pick up a batch of laser-protective goggles,
then on the way to the front, one of the choppers broke down and Duong spent
a day to standing around the desert with a couple other guys waiting for a
repair crew and hoping the enemy wouldn't show up first.  Sounds easy, but
you can still get killed that way.
    "He was a superb soldier," says Lt. Gen. Ronald Griffith, who commanded
the 1st in Germany when Duong was named division surgeon in 1989 and who later
took his 23,000 troops to the gulf, "a skilled physician, and a caring leader
- the qualities you would want in the very best surgeon...  When we deployed
to Southwest Asia, he was responsible for coordinating all the medical
support to include the evacuation of wounded and dead from the battlefield,
which we thought would be considerable."  Duong had prepared for casualities
of 5 to 7 percent-up to 1,600-but as it happened, the division suffered four
killed and 57 wounded.
    A few weeks ago, in a small auditorium at the DeWitt Army Community
Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Duong was promoted to colonel.  A ful bird.  In his
current assignment, he's in charge of preventive medicine for much of the
Military Districe of Washington.
    Huong was there with the girls, though Phi was at work and couldn't make
it.  It was a real nice ceremony.  There were a lot of Duong's friends and
associates, a huge roast beef and a chef to carve it.
    Griffith spoke first, remembering how it was in Vietnam-the "bitter
conflict" and "the bittersweet experience" and "the great yearning that seems
to be with all of us who experienced that part of the world to return there
someday."
    A colonel read the promotion order-"patriotism...valor..."
    Griffith and Huong pinned the silver eagles on Duong's shoulders.
    Duong kissed his wife.
    He spoke last, thanking his comrades-in-arms, Huong, "who endured a lot
of stress during the gulf war...and my beloved parents, who passed away
during the difficult period of the fall of Saigon.
   "Thanks, Mom and Dad.  I wish you were here."
                                     (to be continue)


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WHEN FATE RULES


    They lieved in Oklahoma, Maryland, Washington state, Germany-16 years of
peripatetic Army life.  The kids didn't want to move overseas at first, but
of course ended up loving it.  Duong had just checked into a Holiday Inn in
Dayton, Ohio, for a medical seminar when he learned via TV that his division
was being deployed to the gulf.  Huong was alone in Germany, the kids
scattered at different colleges.
    "I received the order from CNN," he quips.
    As a draftee myself, I have a small, nagging question.  Having survived
the Indochina wars and the fall of his country, and having arrived safely on
these shores, Why di he join the Army?  He's a doctor, this is America, he
could make millions!
    At first, he says his wife wanted to be near her family in Washington,
and the Army offered Aberdeen.  Then he says he wanted to "see the world."
    Then it comes out:  Making millions doesn't matter to him.  He's Buddhist,
believes fate rules, you try to live right, that's all.  "I wanted to maintain
my integrity," he says quietly.  "In the Army, I'm treating patients, and I
don't have to worry about how much they can pay...I like the discipline of it
too."
    It's been a hard discipline at times.  In the Saudi desert, when
ordinarily he'd have been celebrating Tet, the lunar new year, with his
family, "I drove my Humvee to a lonely hill and stared at the sky.
Vietnamese friends in the States said I was stupid to join the Army.  They're
drinking and dancing, and here I am lost in the desert, suffering a harsh
environment-no altar, no incense, no special feast."
    In our reminiscing, it transpires that Duong has a small, nagging
question for me too.
    "By the way," he says, "I've been meaning to ask you all these years-what
did you do with my car?  Remember? I gave you the keys at Tan Son Nhut."
    Man, I don't remember.  There was a lot going on.

                                 THE END

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