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But at the Army's biggest facility, the 85th Evacuation Hospital at Qui Nhon in the Central Highlands, the restrictions are being quietly ignored. Colonel Harold C. Murphree, a neurosurgeon who commands the 85th, smiles and says: "Everyone else is taking chances over here, so I don't know why we shouldn't." Though casualties are increasing at the 85th, there are still some widely spaced beds available for children; for women patients, a simple isolating screen is sufficient. Last week Orthopedist William E. Burkhalter had almost completed a long series of operations, including tendon transplants, to give the use of fingers to a boy whose hand had been fused into a shapeless mass in a fire. Even among infants there are battle casualties: Dr. Murphree has removed a mortar fragment from deep in the brain of a three-day-old child. Dr. Robert Filler has taken a Chinese .25-cal. bullet from inside the heart of a three-year-old montagnard girl.
Friend or Foe? When the hospitals are flooded with military casualties, even the most humanitarian commanders must turn civilians away. And some doctors and corpsmen dislike giving any aid to a population that they distrust. Even at Danang East, after a recent mortar attack, corpsmen grumbled at admitting patients from a local aid hospital. "How do we know," one asked, "that these aren't the people who were shooting at us last night?"
But the majority are determined to give what help they can. Two Navy doctors have opened a 32-crib children's hospital near Danang, tackled such cases as that of a three-year-old girl so malnourished that she weighed in at only 12 lbs. After six weeks of treatment, she was up to 21 lbs. Marine Corps commanders now encourage other battalion medics to open similar facilities. Doctors in the Danang area have formed the I Corps Medical Society to promote and coordinate civic action. Its first meeting this month was such a success that one doctor declared: "Pretty soon we'll be having A.M.A. conventions."
Meanwhile, across the Danang compound, Hoi Pham Tri still lay in a frame brace with her head in tongs. She would be immobilized that way for weeks to come. But for the first time in months, her neck was straight, and she could move her frail limbs freely, and she smiled her gratitude to the medics.