Word: bac
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...scene is far more grim than anything portrayed in the decrepit U.S. veterans hospital in Born on the Fourth of July. In a forgotten corner of Ha Bac province, about 40 miles from Hanoi, 200 Vietnamese army veterans, many paralyzed from the waist down, eke out their lives in a primitive government shelter. Tucked away from the nation's gaze, they are among more than 10,000 severely wounded veterans from the four wars Vietnam has fought since 1945. An additional 300,000 disabled soldiers are scattered throughout Vietnam, doing the best they can without the help of the government...
Like their American counterparts, the patients at Ha Bac are both proud and reticent, resigned to their wounds, sometimes angry, often confused. Says Vu Trung Hien, 43, paralyzed since 1968 by a shrapnel wound in the back sustained in Phuoc Long province: "I did my duty. But after I was wounded, I wondered if the war was right or wrong. It cost so much. I still wonder." His roommate, Hoang Dinh Trung, 39, was similarly disabled in 1972 in Quang Tri province during a B-52 raid. "I was only 18 when I was mobilized," he says. "Looking back...