Columbia University Center for Veteran Transition and Integration
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This seminar session centers on Đặng Thùy Trâm—a North Vietnamese doctor whose wartime diary, later published as Last Night I Dreamed of Peace (2005), reveals the intimate, poetic, and brutally honest texture of life during the Vietnam War. We trace Trâm’s path from medical training (1966) to running a field hospital in South Vietnam, her death in 1970, and the remarkable journey of her diary—preserved by a U.S. intelligence officer and eventually returned to her family.
Beyond politics and propaganda, Trâm’s writing foregrounds love, duty, and longing (her letters to “M,” patients who write poems to her, and the persona she adopts for survival). The session asks how diaries, letters, and lyric fragments expand our understanding of war—adding emotional truths that conventional histories miss. Part of Columbia’s 2025 seminar series on Vietnam War literature, this talk situates Trâm alongside Mailer, O’Brien, and others to explore how intimate writing documents the human cost of conflict.
0:00 – Who is Đặng Thùy Trâm? — Doctor, wartime service, field hospital
0:36 – Death & the Diary’s Journey — 1970 ambush; U.S. officer preserves and returns diary; 2005 publication
1:07 – July 16, 1969 Entry — OV-10s, jets, napalm; civilian harm and witness to devastation
2:55 – Physician & Poet — Triage under scarcity; lyrical attention to beauty in the midst of war
3:48 – Community of Poets — Patients and comrades writing poems; tenderness amid conflict
4:31 – Politics & the Personal “M” — Love, memory, and the former lover who “devotes himself to the war”
5:56 – Love in Many Registers — Romantic love, filial love, care for patients; unexpected warmth in a war diary
7:26 – Letters as Poetry — Why wartime letters read like poems; sincerity and crafted expression
8:20 – Persona & Duty — “Someday I will let you know this woman of socialism”: public conviction vs. private self
9:52 – Duty, Sympathy, Resolve — Choosing commitment over pity; the emotional costs of staying the course
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Who is Đặng Thùy Trâm? — Doctor, wartime service, field hospital
Dian Toyram was born in 1942 to family
of doctors. Uh becomes a doctor herself.
She finishes her medical training in
1966.
Uh and her sort of first assignment
um is a tough one. She's sent south into
South Vietnam to operate uh a field
hospital for uh North Vietnamese
soldiers and for um partisans, right?
Vietkong rebels or depending on your
perspective uh uh serving and and
wounded during the war. Um I mentioned
Death & the Diary’s Journey — 1970 ambush; U.S. officer preserves and returns diary; 2005 publication
too that she the diary was found when
she was killed in an ambush by US
soldiers um in 1970 and was kept by an
American intelligence officer um who who
brought it home with him. uh after his
career in the FBI ended, uh he used his
former contacts in the US government to
contact uh folks in Vietnam and track
down way's family, returned the diary um
to her mother, and it became an instant
bestseller when it was published in
July 16, 1969 Entry — OV-10s, jets, napalm; civilian harm and witness to devastation
2005. This is page 135 in your handout,
the 16th of July, 1969.
Um and Tweed describes what we just saw.
in part. I don't know what people think
when they see the American bandits air
raids.
This afternoon, like other afternoons,
an OV10 plane circles several times
above the hamlets. Then launch it
launches a rocket down to Hamlet 13 in
Fon.
Immediately, two jets take turn diving
down. Where each bomb strikes, fire and
smoke flare up. The napong bomb flashes,
then explodes in a red ball of fire,
leaving dark sick smoke that climbs into
the sky. Still, the airplanes scream
overhead. A series of bombs raining down
with each pass and explosions deafening.
From a position nearby, I sit with
silent fury in my heart. Who is burned
in that fire and smoke in those
heaven-shaking explosions whose bodies
are annihilated in the bomb craters?
But the old lady sitting by me stares at
the hamlet and says, "That's where
Hung's mother-in-law lives."
Oh, my heroic people, perhaps no one on
earth has suffered more than you,
citizens of this courageous self.
So, yeah. So, interesting, too. Um, a
number of the brothers that you'll meet
she means politically
uh in the in in in her context too. So
that it could be comrade
other uh uh f folks with whom she works
in her unit or or or patients she treats
even um it is very personal.
Yeah.
I think that uh in my estimation she's
Physician & Poet — Triage under scarcity; lyrical attention to beauty in the midst of war
an MD who's concerned about her patients
and her lack of supplies but also she's
a poe she takes the time to speak of the
beauty of the raindrop on the jungle
pole. So again, so back on the beautiful
the beautiful language of the of the
diary itself. Something about her mind
feels so poetic and and and so keen too.
We get we get everything in the diary
too. From the very pragmatic I simply
don't have the particular supplies I
need to do my job and more time to
wistful, lonely, imaginative.
It's it it's rich and full and I think
well okay I could keep talking but this
is great. What what other impressions
thoughts that Yep. Yeah.
In a bigger picture
she's letting us know that she is among
Community of Poets — Patients and comrades writing poems; tenderness amid conflict
people who are
poets.
So you're thinking on page seven here
the 14th of April a wounded soldier
under my care wrote me a poem. It lets
you know I mean it it's an added
dimension
to this these people
to to patients and not not only to Twe
right but but to the right to right to
her to her patients the folks in uh um
under under her care too. Yeah.
Absolutely. So so there's so she does
have strong political beliefs that do
come through. she is uh sincerely and
fiercely invested in her own country and
what she believes is right. She has that
strong sense. Um but then there's all
Politics & the Personal “M” — Love, memory, and the former lover who “devotes himself to the war”
kinds of other personal dimensions too
that fit in here like um again maybe I'm
on the same page on page seven. Uh she
addresses M and he reappears all
throughout this diary and M is her um
like former lover. they broke up uh when
he was sent south earlier in the war to
command a um a commando unit and he
tells her something like uh he needs to
devote himself entirely to the war. Um
and she never stops thinking of him um
and in different ways but he continually
reemerges. He survives the war uh
ultimately severely wounded um and
several times, but he does um he does
survive the war and uh uh but never
makes an effort according at least to
the the editors of this volume of of the
diary um never makes an effort to
reconnect with family because of course
she does not um she does not survive.
So, we don't really know kind of what
happened with their relationship, but it
he appears now just as M throughout and
throughout the diary these and in
unexpected moments too. Um, what else?
I real
Love in Many Registers — Romantic love, filial love, care for patients; unexpected warmth in a war diary
cage like six and seven.
Yeah.
When we see like, you know, return to
your lonely old mother. Uh then on Shaw
April 1968 Kumai miss that m people who
left
and also who can on 13 April 1968 she
says that why can everyone else love me
but a man whereas my faithful heart
cannot
that's the and then on and then the next
uh posting that she wrote she said that
scope of the PW was a good girl betrayed
by her lover
there's also like love or the lack of
love so It sells it feels like very it
doesn't feel like a war like Kiring. It
feels like a expression of love uh for
the various people. What is it? Romatic
love or like love from a parent to like
a child or like a child to parent.
Yeah.
That was like what I realiz
is that unexpected
a little.
Yeah. Right. I I think I mean
particularly when when when we contrast
it with where we're going to end in in
war memoir or texts that are that are
curated or designed to really focus on
an individual's wartime experience. This
is a little bit different. This is very
personal and these feelings just never
leave even during wartime. I'm sorry.
Yo, please adding on to that. I messed
up like please stop you. What are her
bic power
were soldiers?
So to me I felt like that was like a act
Letters as Poetry — Why wartime letters read like poems; sincerity and crafted expression
as like care or like act of like love.
Like I'm thinking in my heavy I don't
want to assume that this soldier you
know is a poet and consistently write
columns. Like maybe he did that for her
because he knows like she also like
write columns too, right? Um, and it
just got me thinking like, oh, I guess
like the way I say like writing poetry
isn't really that common. And so it got
me thinking like back then like writing
letters like like you know like cuz
everyone kind of become a poet back then
and I don't know like a form of po like
letters are to me often times like oh
with the form of poetry right but when
there's a lot of what longing involved
or you know you want to core in some of
the of the emotion so in my head I'm
thinking
like like does every letter like does it
I like that. And I I want to kind of key
Persona & Duty — “Someday I will let you know this woman of socialism”: public conviction vs. private self
in on the the first part of your
comment, too, right? It's unlikely that
every soldier is a poet that's out
there. So, most likely what it is is
that this is uh a a wounded soldier
who's working to express himself in a
sty stylistically sophisticated way. And
he's making he's making an effort. wants
to sh to share something complicated and
uh deeply emotional and very we we seem
to assume sincere, right? We don't know
the poem. The poem's unfortunately lost,
but it how could how could it be
anything but sincere? There's something
about just the way that it shows in
this, right? Reading his words, I'm
dismayed, she says, right? It's it's
moved her whether she likes it or not.
It's moved her in some uh in some way.
What can we what can we make of this
last line? And this is still on on page
eight here at that at the top paragraph
where she writes, "I promise someday I I
will let you know this this woman of
socialism." She was in a political heck.
Her head was in politics
and she was actually invading
the south.
Okay. So, so she's sincere in her
politics, right? that that this um
and maybe surprisingly so at least in
this particular to pivot in this way but
if we if we lean on the did you want to
follow
was also that the soldier wrote her
something so personal
broken heart and the bitter grief of a
Duty, Sympathy, Resolve — Choosing commitment over pity; the emotional costs of staying the course
girl betrayed and she I think it's a
contrast I'm a web enough socialist so
yes I have my own personal
right or or where her politics are I Is
there is this is this and this I don't
have a good answer for this. I'm I'm I
wrestle with it a bit. Is she is she
sort of putting up a wall here? Did she
get something really emotional from a
patient and say no I'm in this diary
she's emotional and free and personal
and outside she want she has another
persona. We do this all the time, right?
Is this is this a is are we looking at
that kind of a kind of a move? I think
at least that's how I tend to I think it
refracts through her what she might
think of as patriotism what we might
think of as you know an ideological
commitment what this means in socialism
in all all caps here I think needs the
context of coming in to this
conversation with the the the soldier
who's given her a poem
she makes the same I find it the same or
similar narrative move on page 134 I
don't know if that's in but where in the
first car she ends with nevertheless
less and the same is always my heart
heavy with longings, worries, and guts.
And then she she follows immediately
with this big paragraph about she's
willing to die for the
and invests the same move.
I I promise someday I will let you know
this woman of of socialism, right? I
promise someday I will let you know this
woman,
the the real me. It's this this this
statement of once this war is done
will you there'll be a chance you'll
have a chance to get to know me. Whether
or not that's true or she's just saying
this to this the wounded soldier again I
don't know. But there's something in
here in this brief brief line that Tw is
telling imagining that or she knows
rather that she's that she's presenting
a version of herself out. I I'm I'm I'm
fascinated. Uh
yeah,
I think if you look at the next sentence
where I said, "Oh, this is the saddest
part of my relationship with Den and he
left because of this duty." He rough the
sense of duty and that's kind of what it
seems like she is. I don't have time for
your pity or your, you know, or the
sadness. you know, someday I will let
you know this woman of socialism, but
right now that's kind of her duty and
that's the saddest part of her
relationship within because he left
following, you know, a sense of duty,
right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Abs. Yeah.
Absolutely. I mean, his sense of I think
that that feels very recognizable the
sense of regardless of the side that
you're on like that that I that that's
that see that feels very much a part of
um of of both this piece and what we
know of M. Um and then she continues in
that same paragraph too. She's just so
frustrated that everybody's showing
sympathy to her because M left and she
doesn't really she doesn't really want
that sympathy.
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