The Vietnamese Cholera Girl

My face dripped with sweat and ran down my back and neck in the oppressive heat. I carefully placed my feet on the recent barefoot footprints on the winding jungle path, one way to avoid or tripping an explosive booby trap. Sometime in the summer of 1968, a Vietnamese family asked me to come to their hamlet to check on their sick daughter. My interpreter Chinh and I drove North on highway one from Cam Rahn Bay and followed a off road until it faded into a small footpath. Following the winding unfamiliar dirt path, I reminded myself of how vulnerable I am the countryside, being subject to capture or killed by the Viet Cong or stepping into a spiked punji stick pit or an expertly concealed explosive device.

 I thought of the unfortunate American Archie Mitchell and his wife Elsie who was pregnant and five children from his Sunday school, who went to a picnic in the Gearhart Mountain near Bly, Oregon, in the spring of 1945. Inspecting the wilderness picnic site, Elsie and the five children found a high altitude balloon bomb launched by the Japanese during the second World War.

When one of the boys tugged on part of the balloon, a large explosion rocked the mountainside, killing Elsie, the unborn child and the five children. Within two years, Mitchell married again and moved to Vietnam as a missionary treating Lepers. In May 1962, the Viet Cong seized Mitchell, Dr. Ardel Vietti and Daniel Gerber and looted the Leper facilities of medicines and surgical instruments. The Viet Cong took the group into the jungle, disappearing forever. Vietnamese rumored they were put to work carrying for the Viet Cong but eventually died in a captivity. Mitchell's wife and four children only were spared because Mitchell and the two other captives agreed to cooperate fully.

There seemed to exist an unwritten agreement between the Vietnamese and me, sometimes being warned warned of impending Viet Cong attack  and cautioned not to go off the military base. Also, the white ambulance with red crosses would not be subject to attack. Indiscriminate fire, such as rocket attack's, road bombs or Viet Cong infiltrating the base was another matter, with no protection guaranteed. The RMK-BRJ construction company realized the public relation benefits and ignored me going off the military base to treat the Vietnamese in  their hamlets. Hopefully, goodwill would extend to American and third national workers building road and bridges along Highway one and would not be subject to attack.

Chinh and I arrived at the hamlet nestled among several hills with crisscrossing rice paddies. Vietnamese rice farmers in familiar black pajamas, their leggings pulled up above the knees, struggled in the rice paddy, urging their water buffalos to pull the wooden plow through the black water mud. Large crater holes pot marked the green fields and rice paddies from old and recent air and artillery attacks, which disturbed the peaceful scenery. 

Passing a small bamboo thatched hut,  an older woman carefully plucked head lice from a small child sitting in her lap. The woman bites the lice head off, spits it out into the child's hand, who flips it into her mouth while the woman searches through the child's hair and scalp for more lice. Walking further into the hamlet I observed a long Python snake draped across the steps and into the entrance and room of a thatched house. Seeing the surprised look on my face, my interpreter Chinh said: "We keep them; they eat rats." Then giggling, he said: "One snake ate a baby during the night last month." I grimaced at the thought of the snake wrapping its self around the baby, slowly squeezing it death than swallowing the baby whole, but kept silent.

Chinh led me into the semi-dark musky hut lite only by shades of grey sunlight leaking through the cracks in the straw walls and roof. Chinh introduced me to the Vietnamese herbologist, a mid-aged cragged face woman who seemed to resent my intrusion into her realm and appeared to guard her patient, a young girl

lying on homemade bamboo table. Along a wall was a well-made stack of pull out wooden box cabinets that were labeled with its contents. Expressing interest in her medical protocol, she with pride, showed me various herbs and barks from her pharmacy. Holding several brown bark pieces, she explained it was quinine bark, which is used to treat malaria. After small talk, she agreed to allow me to examine the little girl. A good start of cooperation between us, I thought.

The young Vietnamese girl looked at me with gentle apprehension and hope. Upon examination, she appeared dehydrated and some what lethargic with slightly sunken eyes. As I pinched up the skin on the back of her hand and abdomen, the skin did not return to its normal original state, a sigh of severe dehydration. Through my interpreter, the girl gave a history of three days of diarrhea with clear watery stools and vomiting. In conferring with the Vietnamese herbologist, we came to the same diagnostic conclusion. The girl was suffering from Cholera. This was jungle medicine of course, no laboratory test available out here.

I explained to the Vietnamese herbologist that the girl was going into medical crisis and she may die if not given intravenous fluids soon. I asked if we could work together to help the girl. I was  willing to start intravenous fluids and antibiotics with her consent. "No" she replied. It was her patient and she didn't want help. I understood that the hamlet  was her domain and she didn't want foreign interference. 

Chinh and I picked up our gear and left, and trekked back to our ambulance. I rocked the vehicle back and fourth, listening  for the sound of a grenade rolling back and fourth. I heard from veteran army guys that the Viet Cong would take a grenade, wrap a heavy rubber band around it and the release handle, pull the pin and drop the grenade into a vehicles gas tank. Days later, the gasoline would cause the rubber band to deteriorate. The result was the vehicles gas tank to exploding into a fireball. Was this army folklore or real? I didn't know, but I wasn't taking any chances.

Days later, back in my comfortable dispensary, a thought came to me. I asked Chinh what happened to the young girl we saw in the hamlet? "Oh she died." my interpreter said.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

I volunteered for the food, water and medicine missions to Africa in the nineties. I saw dead cities. We bury dead children, men and women for a month. You cannot forget the smell. A powerful story shared my friend. I put the memories aside. In Africa, we tried to help. I would purify the water and cook in the mornings for the starving and sick people. The medico teams worked day and night. I do believe, one day. I will write about. I loved your stories you write. You show the world. A true view of life and war. Outstanding work my friend.
Coyote

[Vic Hundahl]

I really appreciate your feedback. It appears we had parallel careers, both giving medical care and also feeling death, the smell of decaying bodies, and torn body parts. After nearly seven years in Vietnam, I worked in the Congo ( formally Republic Du Zaire, Africa) Got fed up with tribal warfare and dictators. Writing seems to release the demons within me. Again thank you for your comments. I will take the time to read some of your writings.

[Coyote Poetry]

Hello my friend. Men and women who saw war. They view life with different eyes. I tell people. I love the USA. I have seen worst places. You are welcome my friend.