The Patient Was Vietcong: An American Doctor in the Vietnamese Health Service, 1966-1967

In 1965, drafted into the Army to serve in Vietnam, Lawrence Climo, a young physician just out of training, learned of a unique humanitarian mission with counter-insurgency objectives that was looking for doctors: MILPHAP (Military Provincial Hospital Augmentation Program). Because it seemed to be an honorable as well as a doable enterprise he volunteered and began keeping a journal. At the start he appreciated the varied interactions with people of different religious, social, racial and ...