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In 1965-66 the American
National Red Cross had more than 6,000 trained specialists in South Vietnam. Working for a
pittance, Red Cross Field Directors were just that, civilians out in the field with fighting units.
Many were retired military officers who knew how important the services of the Red Cross
were to the troops.
Say, for instance, mom gets in a head-on collision in the states
and is in intensive care. How does her son find out about it and get home in time . . . or
get home at all? The Red Cross in its quasi-military charter for humanitarian services was
the way that kid got home; was the way the family even found where their son or daughter
were using a special communications network operated by the Red Cross.
Field Directors out with the troops cut through all the red
tape, made travel arrangements, got emergency leave approval in the middle of a
fire-fight, and loaned or gave money to the soldier. Many miracles were worked.
Service to Military Hospitals saw Red Cross nurses and patient aides
providing warm and nurturing care in a land where there was little kindness. SRAO girls
who still carried the WWII moniker, "Donut Dollies," flew and trucked across
horrible and dangerous country to bring entertainment to the troops. Troops who were
barely out of high school for the most part. It was a brief contact with life "back
in the world".
But another group of devoted Red Cross workers operated up in the
Northern part of the country in Quang Ngai Province. Headquartered in Quang Ngai City,
they lived in an old walled villa from French colonial days. The team traveled daily into
the jungle and up steep mountainous territory to work in some 20 refugee camps they
established with their South Vietnamese Red Cross counterparts. The team consisted of a
tough bunch of individuals. Eddie Koast, a registered nurse from the East Coast held
clinics in the camps. Filth disease was pervasive. The baby above is typical of children
whose heads had not been washed from birth. . . local belief was that you did not wash the
baby's soft spot on the skull until it hardened. The result was massive scabies with
parasites burrowing under the scalp. I often helped Eddie in the camps holding screaming,
terrified infants while Eddie abraded the skin and worked in strong soap and antibacterial
salve.
Ex-US Marine, Dale Petranech, was a natural clown and the kids loved
him. He was called "Ong Mop" or "big guy". And he was a big guy who
worked incredibly hard. He was wounded in the leg while rescuing injured townspeople
during an attack on Quang Ngai. The Red Cross house was used as a makeshift hospital. Dale
was med-evacuated for hospital treatment and recovered. No purple heart for civilians.
Red Cross sanitarian, Conrad VanEngle helped get water wells in the refugee
camps, taught mother baby care and basic hygiene classes and handed out 'ditty bags' of
soap, wash cloths, toothpaste and toothbrushes . . . all items as precious as gold to
those who received them. The ditty bags came from Red Cross chapters and Junior Red Cross
children across America.
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" He Came Rolling Out in a Ball of Flame! "
A story that was never told, and that I could not dispatch for obvious
reasons had to do with the covert operations of the CIA in the Quang Ngai area. Mixed in
with the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, were a group of aloof, crew-cut
guys casually dressed in non-regulation gear and usually carrying the lethal and
impressive Swedish-K sidearm. They were simply referred to as 'company men', or 'agency
guys'. The Red Cross refugee team operations office was in a detached cottage on the USAID
complex. I traveled frequently up to Quang Ngai and was to arrive in a couple of days for
a documentary shoot on the refugee operation. On previous trips monsoon weather forced us
to remain in the team quarters sometimes for days on end, but it was the end of January
and the weather was to be favorable. Just before I arrived, the Red Cross headquarters was
destroyed in a massive explosion. I got pictures but no official details.
Well, here is
what happened. . . Team Business Administrator and accountant, Robert Vessey, looked up
from his desk (seen below) just as he saw a blinding light and heard screaming. From a
what was supposed to be a tin bicycle shed just a few hundred feet away Bob saw a young
Vietnamese man being blown out the door of the shed. "He came rolling out in a ball
of flame!", Bob told me. Vessey was sharp and already had more or less figured that
the shed was being used for something other than bicycles. The CIA group was storing trip
flares, white phosphorus grenades and C-4 plastique explosive in there for use in their
clandestine assasination cadre training and raids.
Bob dashed into the large adjoining USAID building screaming for
everyone to bail out the windows on the opposite side. No one questioned why, they just
jumped. Moments later a stomach-rattling series of explosions rocked the whole area
knocking heavy roofing tiles off the two story buildings and caving in walls. Everyone
escaped serious injury, but it was later learned that a child a couple of blocks away was
killed as it slept in its crib after a roof tile from its house came crashing in, fatally
wounding him. The CIA trainee, who had gone into the shed to get gunpowder to make a few
firecrackers for the upcoming Tet celebration had set off a trip flare and was seriously
burned.
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