He amputated an enemy’s arm, then returned bones 47 years later
In book, Houston doctor shares story of mercy and friendship in Vietnam
The story — so strange and beautiful that Sam Axelrad decided to write a book about it — began in 1966, when he was a 27-year-old Army surgeon in Vietnam. A helicopter delivered a North Vietnamese soldier to Axelrad’s base on a stretcher. The enemy’s right arm was rotting away from a bullet wound. The flesh was black, and pieces of fractured bone peeked through where the tissue was missing.
There was clearly no saving the arm. But Axelrad decided to try saving the man.
“He was a patient in need of healing,” said Axelrad, now a retired urologist in Houston. “And my rule was that whoever came off the helicopters was going to get the best care. I don’t care where they came from.”
With a one-year medical residency behind him, Axelrad had been in Vietnam only two months and
had never before attempted an amputation.
But the procedure worked: The man, Nguyen Quang Hung, healed, then stayed on base and began to learn a few medical skills himself.
Axelrad’s fellow soldiers saved Hung’s arm bones. They boiled off the rotten flesh, reconstructed the arm and hand, and presented them to Axelrad as a gift. They intended it as a celebration of the surgeon’s act of kindness.
After he returned home, the bones spent the next 45 years tucked away in a military trunk. Then Axelrad decided to return them to their rightful owner. ‘Charlie’
Nguyen Quang Hung was the man’s name. But to the Americans, Vietnamese names were hard to remember. They nicknamed him “Charlie.”
Hung was a North Vietnamese Army soldier who’d been shot in an ambush and escaped by floating down a river. He hid in a rice warehouse for at least two months while his wound festered. Finally, desperate and starving to death, he flagged down a U.S. helicopter.
In the months after his amputation, as his arm healed, Hung stayed in the U.S. camp, taking care of the Vietnamese children brought in with injuries or malaria. He learned to give the kids medical treatments and he kept them entertained. The U.S. soldiers were fond of “Charlie.” But eventually a new division commander arrived and insisted that the men get rid of him.
Hung ended up in An Khe, where U.S. troops had set up a medical clinic to treat the locals, and Axelrad persuaded the chief medic there to give him a job. That could easily have been the last time they ever saw each other. The bones
Fast forward nearly 45 years to an afternoon in Houston, when Axelrad’s grandson Owen asked what was inside the old military trunk in his grandfather’s study. Axelrad hadn’t opened the redwhite-and-blue box in 40 years. “I think I was trying to avoid it,” he said.
He’d never talked much about Vietnam to his family. But it had been four decades, so he indulged his grandson and let him open the trunk.
Inside — amid hundreds of color slides and every document the military had issued — was a gray plastic bag. In the bag: the bones of an arm and hand.
Seeing those bones “shocked me,” Axelrad said. He had spent decades trying to move on. But here were a man’s bones — a man he knew and had cared for.
Suddenly, he knew he needed to return them. Not a trophy
Axelrad is clear: The bones weren’t a trophy or a souvenir.
“I considered myself a custodian — just a custodian,” he said. “I wasn’t going to throw them away.” He’d mentioned “Charlie” to his family, said his son, Chris Axelrad, but he’d never pulled out the bones to show anybody.
For all Axelrad knew, Hung could have died in the war. After all, he was a North Vietnamese soldier with one arm, known to be working with the Americans; what were his chances?
But the next year, Axelrad, two of his children and Owen traveled to Vietnam.
In Hanoi they talked to a woman named Tran Quynh Hoa, a journalist who moonlighted as a weekend tour guide at the Sofitel Metropole Hotel. Axelrad told her about his quest — and as a reporter, she recognized a good story when she heard one. The same day, she emailed Axelrad that she’d like to write about his search. Maybe Hung’s family would read the story and come forward.
In November 2012, Hoa’s story was published on the front page of Thanh Nien, one of Vietnam’s biggest newspapers, complete with a photograph.
Hoa waited eagerly for her phone to ring, hoping she’d hear from someone. After five days, “I almost gave up hope altogether,” she writes in a foreword to Axelrad’s book. But then, on a chilly Saturday, she got a text message: “Call me, he’s found.”
Hung’s son-in-law had seen the story and contacted the newspaper, recognizing his father-in-law in the 45-year-old photograph.
The next summer, Axelrad and his family headed back to Vietnam. A lesson about love
Against all odds, Hung had survived the war. After Axelrad dropped him off in An Khe, he got training to be a medical assistant. When American troops pulled out, he was the only one in the village with medical training, so for almost a decade he practiced medicine.
In Axelrad’s book, Hung contributes a chapter to explain his own story. As a young man he’d wanted to be a teacher, but in 1964 the war escalated and he felt obligated to join the army. “Stories of heroes sacrificing themselves for the cause of independence were passing from people to people, calling on you to do something for the country,” he wrote.
So he became a soldier. Soon after, his team was ambushed and he was shot in the arm.
When his amputated arm healed, he assumed he’d be taken straight to prison — but the American troops were merciful and took him to An Khe instead.
After the war, Hung married, had seven children, worked for the government and moved his family into a nice home not far from where Axelrad last saw him.
“The way (Axelrad) treated me was full of love and sympathy,” Hung writes. “If I had been in his position, I would not have done the same thing. Now in my seventies, I have been taught a new lesson about love of mankind.” ‘A close relative’
Axelrad’s son Chris captured their reunion on video — the way the men started to shake hands, then embraced instead, kissing each other like family.
“We sat there and drank beer and enjoyed a good meal,” Axelrad said. “He was — a good friend. He remained to me like a brother.” He pauses, searching for the word to describe Hung. “He’s a close relative. That’s how I categorize him.”
Axelrad spent two years working on his book; he wrote down what he remembered, and Chris Axelrad and a rabbi, Ranon Teller, formed it into a narrative.
Some of the proceeds are donated to Texas for Heroes, an organization that helps veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, and to Hoa Binh Peace Village, which aids those born with birth defects due to exposure to Agent Orange.
Hung and Axelrad, both in their 70s, stay in touch through Hoa, the journalist.
Hung has told everyone that he has plans for the bones he’s recovered, Axelrad said: “He said, ‘Now I can be buried whole.’ ”