After 47 years, US doctor returns Vietnamese soldier's bones from amputated arm

An Khe/Hanoi, July 3: An American doctor has returned the bones of an arm he amputated in 1966 to their original owner - an enemy soldier he treated during the Vietnam War.Dr. Sam Axelrad worked as a U.S. military doctor in central Binh Dinh province in what was then South Vietnam.Nguyen Quang Hung was a North Vietnamese soldier.He was shot in the arm by American troops in October 1966 during an ambush.After floating down a stream to escape a fire fight and then sheltering in a rice warehouse for three days, he was evacuated by a U.S. helicopter to the military hospital where Axelrad worked.To keep an infection from killing his patient, Axelrad amputated the arm above the elbow.Axelrad's medic colleagues boiled off the flesh, reconstructed the arm bones and gave them to him. He brought the skeletal keepsake home to Texas after the war as a reminder of a good deed performed.The bones sat in a closet for decades, and when the Axelrad finally pulled them out two years ago, he wondered about their true owner.The men were reunited on Monday at Hung's home in An Khe, central Vietnam.They met each other's children, and grandchildren, and joked about which of them had been better looking back when war had made them enemies.Hung was stunned that someone had kept his bones for so long, but happy that when the time comes, they will be buried with him."We are from two different countries and we were on the opposite sides during the war, but this is the sentiment between people," Hung said on Monday.Axelrad said he was pleased to learn where and how Hung had been living for so many years, and to meet his family.He added that returning the arm was certainly important but that "the event of him being with me and me be with him really overshadowed what the arm meant".After the surgery, Hung spent eight months recovering and another six assisting American military doctors.He spent the rest of the war offering private medical services in the town, and later served in local government for a decade before retiring on his rice farm.It took a little luck for Axelrad to reunite Hung with his amputated arm. He travelled to Vietnam last summer - partly for a holiday, but also to try to find the man.He said he wasn't sure Hung was still alive, or where to begin looking for him.By chance, Axelrad toured the old Vietnam War bunker at the Metropole Hotel in downtown Hanoi.His tour guide was Tran Quynh Hoa, a Vietnamese journalist who took a keen interest in his war stories.Hoa later wrote an article in a widely read Vietnamese newspaper about Axelrad's quest to return the bones to their owner.Hung's brother-in-law read the article and contacted the newspaper's editors.Hoa arranged Monday's reunion in An Khe and served as an interpreter for the veterans.