Letters Home: Vietnam 1964 is framed around an Army Corpsman’s letters home from the nascent Vietnam War. Little has been written about Army Medics doing MEDCAP work in Vietnam. This story of medical teams in the Delta region is told through photos, vignettes, and recollections.
LETTERS HOME’s story unfolds a couple years before the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Specialist Green, part of an Army Medical Civic Action Program team (MEDCAP), delivered medical services to scores of villages and hamlets south of Saigon. Medical Corpsman and French Interpreter, Chris Newlon Green, narrates what the war, at the beginning of America’s involvement, was like for him.
“With stethoscopes hanging around our necks and with jars of pills and ointments in our portable drug store, we diagnosed, treated and dispensed medicines to rural folks, families, children, even VC. To villagers, we were the Bac si Mỹ, the American Doctors.”