An Interview with Dr. Nguyễn Văn Quý
21 Questions from Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh
The republication of Dr. Nguyễn Văn Quý’s An Lộc Diary in 2026, twenty-four years after its first appearance in 2002, opens the way to a broader undertaking: an English-language edition intended for submission to a university press.
This interview is a preparatory step in developing the master plan for that edition.
Proposed Title
AN LỘC DIARY / NHẬT KÝ AN LỘC
A South Vietnamese Military Physician’s Eyewitness Account of the 1972 Siege
Author: Dr. Nguyễn Văn Quý
Editor: Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh
Translator: To be selected
Historical Introduction: To be commissioned
Proposed format: An annotated scholarly English-language edition
Fields: Vietnam War Studies; Southeast Asian Studies; Military Medicine; Medical Humanities; War and Society; Memoir and Primary Sources
Dr. Nguyễn Văn Quý and his wife, Quách Thị Minh, who transcribed the interview. [Family photograph, September 2026]
VISION AND PURPOSE
The project extends beyond translating An Lộc Diary into English. Its broader aim is to present Nguyễn Văn Quý’s wartime diary as a carefully documented primary source and bring this Vietnamese eyewitness account into international scholarship on the Vietnam War.
The following interview presents Dr. Nguyễn Văn Quý’s recollections in his own voice, with the English text edited for clarity and fluency.
Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh
September 2026
THE INTERVIEW PROJECT
In preparation for an annotated English-language edition of An Lộc Diary
Interviewer: Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh
Purpose: To gather oral testimony, clarify the historical record, trace the provenance and custody of the manuscript, and document medical conditions during the siege.
THE INTERVIEW
I. THE MANUSCRIPT AND THE HISTORICAL RECORD
Questions 1–8
1. When and where did you begin keeping the diary, and why? At the outset, did you intend it primarily as a record for your family, or did you already think of it as a historical document?
From the first days of the battle, I sensed that it would be a major engagement. I decided to record what was happening so that, if I did not survive to return home, my family would know what I had experienced and what I had done.
2. What was the physical form of the original 1972 manuscript? Was it written in a notebook or on loose sheets? What kind of pen did you use, and where did you usually write? Was the manuscript ever damaged?
I wrote in an ordinary school notebook with a Bic ballpoint pen, usually at night beneath my bed in the sleeping quarters, where I took shelter from the shelling. Fortunately, my room did not sustain a direct hit during that early period. Whenever I had to move, I took the notebook with me.
You might say that, because the shells somehow “spared” me, the manuscript survived intact as well.
3. Does the original handwritten manuscript from 1972 still exist? Who has custody of it? What is the earliest surviving copy that could serve as the base text?
After leaving An Lộc and returning to Saigon, I typed the entire diary, revising it as needed to make it easier to follow. The handwritten version consisted largely of hurried notes and hastily scribbled observations, often in incomplete sentences. Once I had finished typing it, I no longer felt a need to keep the handwritten draft.
When I escaped Vietnam by boat in 1979, I left with virtually nothing. Fortunately, when my younger sister came to the United States through family reunification in 1991, she brought the typed manuscript and the photographic slides with her.
4. Could you trace the journey of the manuscript and photographs through 1975, your departure from Vietnam in 1979, and their eventual return to you?
After the events of 1975, and even after I escaped Vietnam by boat in 1979, the typed manuscript and the photographic slides remained at our family home in Vietnam, in the care of my mother and younger sister.
In 1991, when my sister came to California through family sponsorship, she returned them to me.
5. To what extent were names, dates, personal reflections, or political observations revised, added, or removed when the diary was published in California in 2002?
In 1972, I recorded what I saw as events unfolded, along with the personal memories and thoughts that came to me. I wrote naturally, without trying to impose a particular form.
Years later, when Microsoft Word became available, I retyped the text. I reorganized some passages, removed repetitions, and added details where readers might need clarification.
The Preface and Introduction include passages about events before I went to An Lộc and about my later return to the battlefield. The final chapter, describing my leave and eventual departure from Bình Long, is also memoir. These passages were written later on a computer; they were not part of the original 1972 diary.
6. What editorial role did Văn Nghệ Publishing House and Từ Mẫn Võ Thắng Tiết play in the 2002 edition? Do any editorial papers or revised manuscripts from that process survive?
When I submitted the manuscript to Văn Nghệ Publishing House, the only change I requested, on Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh’s suggestion, was to retitle it An Lộc Diary: 86 Days of a Surgeon at the Front rather than Bình Long Provincial Hospital.
Dr. Vinh had introduced me to the publisher, whom I trusted. I was also extremely busy with my medical practice and did not subsequently review the manuscript to see whether it had been edited or altered.
It was only when I received the printed books in preparation for the book launch that I discovered my name had been changed from “Quý” to “Quí.” When I objected, Mr. Võ Thắng Tiết explained that the writer Nguyễn Hiến Lê had always followed that orthographic convention. The books had already been printed, so there was nothing I could do about it. Only recently, when the digital text was retyped, was my name restored to “Quý.”
I do not remember whether the publisher returned the manuscript. I kept a copy, but several years after publication it was either misplaced or discarded. It never occurred to me that anyone might one day want to examine these materials.
7. You have written that at times the fighting became so intense that you were unable to write for two or three weeks. Approximately when did those gaps occur?
In the Preface, “About This Diary,” I wrote:
“During the first days of the battle, I still had some time to write. Later, as the fighting grew more intense and dangerous, with life and death uncertain from one moment to the next, the hospital itself came to lie immediately beside the front line. Moreover, I was so occupied with caring for the wounded that I could no longer write every day. At times there were interruptions of two or three weeks.”
Looking back, however, I think the reference to interruptions of “two or three weeks” was probably not entirely accurate.
Happy days always seem to pass quickly. In the earthly hell of An Lộc, each day seemed much longer than twenty-four hours as we waited for “a light at the end of the tunnel.” A few days without writing could feel like an entire week.
There were practical reasons for the interruptions. We were overwhelmed by the number of wounded and the succession of operations. Eventually, shelling damaged the hospital so badly that we had to move the operating room into the underground command bunker.
There was also a psychological reason. At times, exhausted and tense, with life and death so close together, I simply could not find the presence of mind to write.
8. After such interruptions, how did you reconstruct the sequence of events? Did you rely on memory, brief notes, calendars, hospital records, or other sources?
I relied mainly on brief notes made at the time, supplemented by memory.
The surgical procedures were documented separately. A sergeant kept a daily register recording each patient’s name and military rank.
II. MEDICINE AT BÌNH LONG PROVINCIAL HOSPITAL
Questions 9–14
9. What was the capacity of Bình Long Provincial Hospital before the battle: number of beds, physicians, anesthesia equipment, X-ray facilities, medications, and blood supply?
Bình Long Provincial Hospital had approximately 103 beds, but only three physicians providing care. Lê Hữu Chí, a medical school classmate, was responsible for internal medicine. Nguyễn Phúc handled obstetrics and gynecology while also serving as chief of the Provincial Health Service. I was responsible for surgery.
An American military physician, Dr. David Risch of MILPHAP Team 10, also worked with me in surgery. He happened to be on leave when the battle began.
When the electricity failed, equipment such as the X-ray machine became useless. The nurses had to administer anesthesia manually, without mechanical assistance. Supplies of essential medications, including penicillin and painkillers, were barely adequate.
When we urgently needed blood, we called for volunteers to donate on the spot.
10. How did the hospital change once An Lộc was under siege? At the peak, how many wounded were arriving, where were patients placed, and what were conditions like under continuous shelling?
I can no longer remember the highest number of wounded we received in a single day.
Once every bed was occupied and the hospital was overwhelmed, wounded soldiers, other patients, and civilians had to lie wherever we could find space, including in the corridors.
The shelling was relentless. Although the operating room never took a direct hit, nearby explosions sometimes sent dust and plaster raining from the ceiling in the middle of an operation.
11. What is the source of the figure of 254 “major surgical operations,” and how was “major surgery” defined under battlefield conditions at the time?
The figure of 254 is the total number of recorded surgical procedures, both major and minor.
Under battlefield conditions at the time, “major surgery” referred to complex procedures requiring general anesthesia, including thoracic surgery, abdominal surgery, extensive wound debridement, and amputations.
12. Can the 254 operations be classified by type, such as abdominal, thoracic, extremity, or burn injuries? And after more than half a century, which case remains most vivid in your memory?
More than half a century has passed. I can no longer recall the precise numbers or categories of injuries—how many involved the abdomen, chest, head, or blood vessels, or how many were caused by shell fragments rather than bullets.
What I remember most vividly are the difficult operations in which we had to improvise to treat complex injuries, in an operating room that lacked almost everything, from adequate lighting to proper sterilization facilities.
The operation I remember most clearly was the first time I repaired a brachial artery in a young soldier.
I will never forget the pleading look in his eyes. With tears welling, he begged me:
“Doctor, please, please try to save my arm. Don’t cut it off... If you amputate my arm, I think I’ll die. I have six little children waiting for me at home...”
By then, there seemed to be little hope. Well over six hours had passed since the injury.
Fortunately, the operation succeeded.
Saving a life through abdominal surgery was deeply meaningful to me. Yet there was a different kind of joy in repairing an artery and saving a patient’s limb.
I could see the result before my eyes: a hand that had been pale, shriveled, and cold gradually turned pink and warm on the operating table.
That feeling was extraordinary.
13. How did you triage patients, and what were the most difficult medical and ethical decisions you had to make?
When personnel, blood, and oxygen were nearly exhausted, and operating time was limited, deciding whom to treat first became an agonizing matter of life and death.
At times, on that narrow boundary between survival and death, no textbook or established protocol could tell us what to do. We had to rely on clinical judgment and sometimes intuition.
14. You also treated wounded soldiers from the opposing side. How did medical ethics and the Hippocratic tradition shape your response?
Our principle was medical neutrality. Faced with a wounded person whose life was at risk, we saw only a patient. The distinction between friend and enemy ceased to matter.
When a wounded soldier from the opposing side lay before us, our duty was to honor the Hippocratic tradition and save a human life.
III. CONTEXT, HUMAN EXPERIENCE, AND LEGACY
Questions 15–21
15. What sources of military information were available to you at the time: radio broadcasts, American advisers, patients, or others? How did what you knew then compare with what you learned afterward?
Once the hospital was isolated, I knew very little about the wider military situation.
We could listen to the BBC, but the 1972 Easter Offensive, known to us as Mùa Hè Đỏ Lửa, was unfolding on several major fronts across the country. Reports specifically about An Lộc were therefore limited.
16. Is there one moment or fragment of memory when you believed An Lộc might fall? What was your greatest fear?
My greatest fear was not death in itself.
It was the helplessness of watching our medical resources run out, knowing I might soon be unable to save the wounded.
I also feared being wounded myself, with no one able to treat me, because I was the hospital’s only surgeon.
17. What did your medical education in Saigon prepare you for, and what could it not possibly have prepared you for, in battlefield medicine?
No medical school or textbook could have prepared us for the brutal reality of war on that scale.
The Saigon Faculty of Medicine gave us a foundation in medical knowledge, but it could not fully prepare us for battlefield medicine at its most extreme. Ordinary first aid might mean little more than dressing a wound and evacuating the casualty—tasks a medic or nurse could perform.
The practical surgical skills and battlefield experience that prepared me came from a year of specialized training in field surgery at Cộng Hòa General Hospital.
18. Looking back, whom would you wish to acknowledge among the largely unseen people who kept the hospital functioning: nurses, stretcher-bearers, blood donors, clergy, and others?
The nurses, orderlies, anesthesia assistants, stretcher-bearers, and those who quietly cleaned the hospital, searched for water, found candles, or helped bury the dead.
They kept the hospital’s “heartbeat” going, though their names never appeared in military situation reports.
19. Regarding the photographic record and slides: who took the photographs, under what circumstances, and what original materials or related documentation still survive for a future archive?
All the documentary photographs in the diary were taken with my personal Canon camera on color transparency film. I took them all myself, except those in which I appear.
When I returned from An Lộc to Saigon in 1972, I had two rolls of slide film from the battlefield. Because I did not trust the quality of color-slide processing available in Saigon at the time, I asked my younger sister, who was working as an accountant for the U.S. Defense Attaché Office, to send the two rolls through the PX system to Hawaii for processing.
In 2002, while preparing the book for publication, I chose the clearest slides, removed duplicates, and had the selected images printed on glossy photographic paper. They were then reproduced on a color photocopier, with space beneath each image for typed captions.
The photographic prints and color photocopies are still preserved.
I no longer remember where the trays of original slides were stored.
20. You have mentioned several inaccuracies in the June 26, 1972 issue of TIME. What, specifically, did the article get wrong?
TIME wrote that “An Lộc had been virtually surrounded since the North Vietnamese offensive began on March 30.”
In fact, March 30, 1972 marked the official opening of the 1972 offensive across Vietnam. It was only after Lộc Ninh fell on April 7 that North Vietnamese forces began sustained heavy shelling, followed by infantry and armored attacks culminating in the first major assault and encirclement of the town on April 13.
The 1,000 deaths reported by TIME were a provisional estimate made under battlefield conditions. In my recollection, the number of civilians killed by shelling and combat in the An Lộc area over the entire campaign was considerably higher, in addition to the many wounded.
By the time the TIME reporters entered An Lộc, we had moved our field operating room into the underground bunker at command headquarters. The operating room they saw was therefore relatively protected.
They had not witnessed the preceding weeks of relentless shelling: the loss of electricity and water, the wounded and the dead everywhere, and the destruction of wards and operating facilities until they could no longer function.
21. If you could address readers of the future, particularly young readers in 2030, what would you want to tell them? If you were given one final page to add to the diary, what would you write?
Only after witnessing war firsthand did I understand the full extent of its destructive power.
War destroys more than buildings and streets. Its cruelest toll is the loss of childhoods, aspirations, and so many young lives. As weapons become more advanced, the scale of that loss grows.
That is why I believe peace must never be taken for granted. It requires our continuing care, understanding, and compassion.
Whatever differences you may have in outlook, language, or belief, do not be too quick to make enemies of one another. When disagreements arise, much can change if we sit down and listen before passing judgment. Do not let inflammatory words or prejudice close your heart.
Peace may seem immense and abstract, but I believe it begins in everyday life: consideration for others, restraint and civility in speech, a hand extended to someone vulnerable.
Together, those small acts of kindness can make the world less divided.
Those of you who are young in 2030 will hold the future in your hands. I hope you will use knowledge and technology to bring people closer together, and have the courage to defend life and human decency.
My generation has already borne the suffering of war.
I can only hope that it ends with us.
May those who come after us live in peace and freedom, with kindness toward one another.
Dr. Nguyễn Văn Quý
Transcribed by Quách Thị Minh
Diamond Bar, California
September 2026
