(6 of 11)
The raid is over, and we return to the X-ray machine--only to be interrupted a second time by the sirens. Perhaps an hour goes by before the doctors are finally able to get the X-ray of my foot. Sure enough, there is a slight fracture across the arch. As they are removing the Soviet-made cast, they begin to laugh and chatter to each other. Madame Chi, who has remained by my side throughout, tells me they are laughing at the poor job the Soviets have done: they had neglected to put gauze between my skin and the plaster, and because it was mixed improperly, the plaster hasn't hardened on the inside ... thank God! Had it hardened, my skin would have come off with the cast.
The doctors explain that they are going to strap a poultice made from chrysanthemum roots onto my foot and ankle. They tell me that it is so full of healing and strengthening elements that pregnant women in Vietnam drink tea brewed from the same roots. "Because of the war," one doctor says, "we have to rely on whatever we have, simple things, to meet our medical needs."
The stuff is truly foul smelling, but the doctors tell me they are certain that within days my swelling will go away and the fracture will mend. Anything that smells this bad is bound to work! The irony of this whole episode is not lost on me: here is this besieged, agrarian country accused by the United States of being a Soviet pawn when in mind, spirit and medicine, at least, its people seem remarkably independent and to be "making do" just fine ...
We travel at night because of the danger of strafing by U.S. planes. Yesterday 20 foreign correspondents who had come to examine the damage done to the dikes three days earlier were witness to a second attack. Twelve Phantom jets and A-7s dove at the dike the journalists were standing on and released several bombs and rockets. The reporter from Agence France-Presse wrote on July 11 that they "all felt the attack was clearly against the dike system."
This is what the United States is denying. This is what I have come to document.
The sky is beginning to lighten as we enter the province. Many people are already in the fields working. I am told they do a lot of work at night, when there is less danger of bombing. The whole area is protected from flooding by a complicated system of crisscrossing dikes. The particular spot that has been attacked for the second time just the previous morning is the most strategic, for here the dike must hold back the waters of six converging rivers. These rivers will be raging down the mountains in about two weeks. I am told that Nam Sach has been attacked by U.S. planes eight times since May 10 and the dikes have been hit four times. Although the planes are expected back, there are people all around, knee- and elbow-deep in mud, planting their rice and carrying huge baskets of earth to repair the dikes.