El Dorado News-Times from El Dorado, Arkansas • Page 26

24 El Dorado (Ark.) Ntws-Times Sunday, May 4,1975 Doctor worked for seven cents in SV By DANIEL DE LUCE Associated Press Writer Copyright (c) 1975 The Associated Press, All Rights Reserved. DA NANG, South Vietnam (AP) American Quaker pediatrician Thomas R. Hoskins, recalls that he was working in the Da Nang emergency ward when the South Vietnamese government army gave up the city. His official salary was 100 piasters a day, worth less than seven U.S. cents, and two milk cans of rice.

"I personally dealt with 75 persons, many with bullet Dr. Hoskins said. "The street fighting in Da Nang had not involved the two sides in the civil war. It was between looting ARVN troops and ARVN soldiers robbing ARVN is the Army of ihe Republic of Vietnam. Hoskins, whose father, biochemist Walter Hoskins, and mother reside in Morristown, N.J., and who got his medical naming at the University of Rochester and in Lexington, came to South Vietnam in 1973 for the American Friends Service Committee.

He worked ihen in Quang Ngai, where the Quakers had established a center for making artifical limbs tor maimed South Vietnamese. Now he has an application on me with the Revolutionary Government for permission to return to Quang Ngai. One day after the old imperial city of Hue was lost by the ARVN and the fall of Da Nang seemed increasingly imminent, Hoskins bought an air ticket in Saigon from a scalper and boarded an Air Vietnam airliner at Tan Son Nhul airfield Ixuind for this northern city, South second largest. That was March 27. was almost the only he said.

Hoskins, a slight, slender man with dark hair, a dark mustache, and gold-rimmed glasses, dressed it. a light sport shirt, blue slacks and sandals, recounts his Da Nang experiences in a matter-of-fact voice. Two passengers who were British journalists went back to Saigon in an hour, I Hoskins said. climbed into an Air Vietnam bus for the ride into Da Nang. I was alone with the driver.

I stopped at the city hospital and found great confusion. the Vietnamese German Hospital which adjoins the city hospital and functions as an annex, two German medical people, the director and another physician, were ordered by iheir embassy to leave Da Nang for Saigon. "They wanted to stay but their embassy was responding io the U.S. Embassy that they had -io leave. They left on March 27.

27th and 28th were frightening days in Da Nang. I went to the main Buddhist pagoda and was given shelter. Those two days were, as one Vietnamese friend described them to me, the Wild The last of the ARVN soldiers were engaged in looting and "I heard them shooting at one another before I entered the pagoda coumpound. It contains administrative offices, classrooms and hotel rooms besides the Buddhist temple it- many as 1,000 people took-refuge Unknown to Dr. Hoskins at the time, three other American citizens, a French Canadian priest and most of the traditional French community in Da Nang were living through the last hours of the rule by the Thieu government.

They were: John Tabor, a Red i i Catholic missionary. George Knowles, 64, born in Buffalo, N.Y., a retired missionary of the Christian Missionary Alliance with headquarters in Nyack, N.Y., whose son is a physician, James A. Knowles of St. Joseph Hospital, Yonkers, Y. Judson, about 67, who is a retired engineer and resides here with his Vietnamese wife.

Camille Dube, 65, of La Pocatiere, Quebec, Canada, who heads the Redemptionist Catholic welfare center and church caring for 14 orphans and 12 crippled adults. Father orphanage is at Hoa Cuong on the outskirts of Da Nang. He told The Associated Press that marines brought the only danger to my orphanage. They surrounded it and began filtering into our compound on March 29. Twenty were already inside when I ordered their commander to leave immediately.

said the marines were there to protect us. But in my opinion they had come for their own safety, not ours, and I told him he could best us by leaving at once. Before anybody moved, a column of the liberation army came up the road and was fired on from our compound. There was firing in return and five bullets struck our buildings, two in the church. But nobody was Father Tabor, Pastor Knowles, engineer Judson, Father Dube and Dr.

Hoskins came unscathed through their experiences. Like the members of the French community, their impression of the Revolutionary Government troops who came into Da Nang was favorable. The disorders ceased when the ARVN forces faded away. Father Dube was asked by The Associated Press about a Saigon report that some orphans of mixed Vietnamese- American parentage were harmed by the Revolutionary Government forces who took Da Nang. would have to be pure imagination.

Nothing of that sort he said. are Catholic sisters in a number of orphanages. No harm has come to any of their Dr. Hoskins said he stayed within the walls of the Buddhist compound throughout March 28 two fears uppermost in my mind. fear was of a protracted battle.

The second was that there would be devastating bombing by the Saigon air force. If there fears were shared with every one. Buddhist organization was the only organization which continued to function in the midst of the chaos. On the morning of the 29th, Buddhist students were assigned to teams to bring in wounded to the city hospitals. They formed bandaging crews.

The Buddhist leaders invited me to take up work at the Vietnamese German Hospital emergency ward. We took off in a jeep. I held a pith helmet over my nose and mustache because I feared an ARVN ripoff and want to be easily recognized as a Dr. Hoskins continued: were going off. People were running every which way in the streets.

I saw a jeep loaded with a Vietnamese family that crashed into a ditch. city general hospital was a sorry sight indeed. It had been extensively looted and vandalized in the last 48 hours. Medicine supplies had been broken open, strewn about, smashed, stolen. Catholic sisters were still on duty in three wards, but most of the patients had fled.

was told ARVN soldiers were responsible for most of the damage. The Vietnamese German Hospital, which was built by the West German government to replace the hospital ship Helgoland has higher gates than the general hospital and in fact it was much less damaged maybe due to that reason. At any rate, more staff was still on duly. two Vietnamese tors and myself, the emergency ward got going again. I still had visions of ARVN soldiers coming in for a last ripoff, but about noon the sounds of shooting tapered off.

The Buddhists had been trying to arrange to have Da Nang treated as an open city and I thought perhaps at last they had been success- tul. The flow of patients coming in increased as the shooting pause Pere Claude Char mot, the French vicar general of Da Nang cathedral, left the city general hospital about 1 p.m. after noting about 30 dead and 60 wounded there from the ARVN rampage and soon saw PRG forces taking over the city, with order restored within one hour. But Dr. Hoskins, working in the emergency ward, finally look off his white gown and washed up about 8 p.m.

decided I needed a walk and went Hoskins said. were back on the streets. I could hear no shooting All the Saigon government flags were gone from the store fronts and houses. But I noticed multicolored Buddhist flags were being displayed. They have a variety of soft pastel colors.

I saw a huge American-made ARVN tank. School children were clinging all over it, waving Buddhist flags. Suddenly it dawned on me: The city is liberated. the foot of a flagpole I saw Vietnamese throwing their weapons on the ground. The mound of weapons grew rapidly carbines, rocket launchers.

Then I saw 10 liberation cadres emerge from the shadows and lay arms on this pile. It was an awesome moment to see finally men laying down the tools of war in a country where no family has been spared from sacrifice, to see Vietnamese working to put together what had been torn Dr. Hoskins said his daily salary of two milk cans full of rice and 100 piasters was not being drawn. "I asked that I be allowed to take my meals at the hospital in lieu of salary because the meals are quite good. For me us a better What will he do for funds for other necessities and to go on to Quang Ngai if permission is granted? I need something, I will ask for it no problem, he said.

Dr. Hoskins expresses disbelief at atrocity stories spread in Saigon. Da Nang and other cities that fell to the PRG forces in the northern provinces of South Vietnam. bloodbath in this region? Not in the Hoskins said. speak some Vietnamese and I go to the market frequently and I would have heard people who were afraid of liberation and would have spoken their tears.

My impression is that people are getting along quite well with the new regime. In the first days there was an obvious relaxation of tension Security has been restored. There were no shootings, no Dr. Hoskins said prices of food and other necessities have been stable in recent weeks although the prices of luxury goods skyrocketed. the liberation, people felt insecureas to what the change might mean for them.

The change has been one in the economy. So much of Da Nang had lived off American military spending. When you change that, it really frightens the people involved. But in terms of reality, of food to eat, places to sleep, medical care, the change has worked out very well. There are people who are pleased to fall back to a simpler way of life.

"Da Nang grew to be the second largest city in South Vietnam after American military intervention in the war. It has more problems to be resolved than smaller communities Da Nang and Saigon face more problems from returning to an agricultural Dr. Hoskins said the Provisional Revolutionary Government has very strict and very highly thought of for the rehabilitation of professional criminals and prostitutes. "They hold the strong conviction that they should deal with such classes not by physical torture or deprivations but by trying to change them through an understanding of what role they can play in society in the future. They are told they are needed individuals a society which is going to be an agrarian society.

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