US doctor returns arm to Vietnam soldier he saved 47 years ago
Source: Agencies |
July 2, 2013, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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AN American doctor arrived in Vietnam carrying an unlikely piece of luggage: the bones of an arm he amputated in 1966.
Dr Sam Axelrad brought the skeletal keepsake home to Texas as a reminder that when a badly injured North Vietnamese soldier was brought to him, he did the right thing and fixed him up. The bones sat in a closet for decades, and when the Houston urologist finally pulled them out two years ago, he wondered about their true owner, Nguyen Quang Hung.
They were reunited yesterday at Hung's home in central Vietnam. They met each other's children, and grandchildren, and joked about which of them had been better looking back when war had made them enemies. Hung was stunned that someone had kept his bones for so long, but happy that when the time comes, they will be buried with him.
"I'm very glad to see him again and have that part of my body back after nearly half a century," Hung said after meeting Axelrad. "I'm proud to have shed my blood for my country's reunification, and I consider myself very lucky compared with many of my comrades who were killed or remain unaccounted for."
Hung, 73, said American troops shot him in the arm in October 1966 during an ambush about 75 kilometers from An Khe, the town where he now lives. After floating down a stream to escape a firefight and then sheltering in a rice warehouse for three days, he was evacuated by a US helicopter to a no-frills military hospital.
When Hung got to Axelrad, then a 27-year-old military doctor, his right forearm was the color of an eggplant. To keep the infection from killing his patient, Axelrad amputated the arm above the elbow.
After the surgery, Hung spent eight months recovering and another six assisting American military doctors, Hung said. He spent the rest of the war offering private medical services in the town, and later served in local government for a decade before retiring on his rice farm.
Axelrad said his medic colleagues boiled off the flesh, reconstructed the arm bones and gave them to him. It was hardly common practice, but he said it was a reminder of a good deed performed.
It took a little luck for Axelrad to reunite Hung with his amputated arm. He traveled to Vietnam last summer, partly for vacation, but also to try to find the man.
His tour guide was Tran Quynh Hoa, a Vietnamese journalist. Hoa later wrote an article in a widely read Vietnamese newspaper about Axelrad's quest to return the bones to their owner. Hung's brother-in-law read the article and contacted the newspaper. Hoa arranged the reunion and served as an interpreter for the veterans.
Dr Sam Axelrad brought the skeletal keepsake home to Texas as a reminder that when a badly injured North Vietnamese soldier was brought to him, he did the right thing and fixed him up. The bones sat in a closet for decades, and when the Houston urologist finally pulled them out two years ago, he wondered about their true owner, Nguyen Quang Hung.
They were reunited yesterday at Hung's home in central Vietnam. They met each other's children, and grandchildren, and joked about which of them had been better looking back when war had made them enemies. Hung was stunned that someone had kept his bones for so long, but happy that when the time comes, they will be buried with him.
"I'm very glad to see him again and have that part of my body back after nearly half a century," Hung said after meeting Axelrad. "I'm proud to have shed my blood for my country's reunification, and I consider myself very lucky compared with many of my comrades who were killed or remain unaccounted for."
Hung, 73, said American troops shot him in the arm in October 1966 during an ambush about 75 kilometers from An Khe, the town where he now lives. After floating down a stream to escape a firefight and then sheltering in a rice warehouse for three days, he was evacuated by a US helicopter to a no-frills military hospital.
When Hung got to Axelrad, then a 27-year-old military doctor, his right forearm was the color of an eggplant. To keep the infection from killing his patient, Axelrad amputated the arm above the elbow.
After the surgery, Hung spent eight months recovering and another six assisting American military doctors, Hung said. He spent the rest of the war offering private medical services in the town, and later served in local government for a decade before retiring on his rice farm.
Axelrad said his medic colleagues boiled off the flesh, reconstructed the arm bones and gave them to him. It was hardly common practice, but he said it was a reminder of a good deed performed.
It took a little luck for Axelrad to reunite Hung with his amputated arm. He traveled to Vietnam last summer, partly for vacation, but also to try to find the man.
His tour guide was Tran Quynh Hoa, a Vietnamese journalist. Hoa later wrote an article in a widely read Vietnamese newspaper about Axelrad's quest to return the bones to their owner. Hung's brother-in-law read the article and contacted the newspaper. Hoa arranged the reunion and served as an interpreter for the veterans.
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