Qui Nhon, October 1967 – December 1968. Joining Save the Children in October 1967 catapulted me into what became my first exposure to the random brutality of armed conflict.
Nothing can prepare for looking into the face of war and what it does to people.
One of five British and Vietnamese RNs plus 20 young trainee Vietnamese widows and girls caring for up to 50 war wounded children. Lines of cots, napalm burns, amputees, shattered limbs, hidden trauma, new names, no mums, no dads, just us—then came, care, hugs, giggles, play, fun, love and hope! Over the months our rehabilitation centre expanded to take 100 children plus.
The 67th evac US army field hospital consisted of a cluster of Quonset huts huddled together at one end of the airstrip, just over the back wall of our children’s rehabilitation centre. These huts housed the broken young men of America, wounded in body and spirit. The choppers arrived with sickening regularity to disgorge their bloodied payloads. I stood in awe of the courageous Huey dust off pilots, often plucking the wounded when under heavy fire.
Nothing can prepare you for the horrific scale of damage and the waste of human potential during armed conflict.
