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Peaceful Bones
"Be inspired by this book to do the right thing, to be kind, and to see the beautiful soul that is inside all people. Even those we call our 'enemy'."
From the Introduction by book co-author Chris Axelrad
This is the true story of the friendship between North Vietnamese Army Squadron Leader Hung Nguyen - who was seriously wounded during an ambush by US troops in 1967 - and Samuel Axelrad, surgeon and captain of a Forward Medical Command who saved Hung's life.
Dr. Axelrad's policy was simple. ANYBODY who was brought to the medical tent was to be treated as a first class patient. No matter whether they were civilian, US soldier or - as in this case - "enemy".
"We are here as healers first." That was the motto Dr. Axelrad and his company lived by.
As a way to remember their commander's kindness in saving Hung's life, the medics gave Dr. Axelrad Hung's arm bones, which the doctor hastily stashed away in his trunk, which remained sealed until 2011, when Dr. Axelrad's grandson wanted to see what was in it.
Upon opening the trunk, Dr. Axelrad discovered the bones and realized he must go back to find his friend's family to return them. He was sure Hung, aka "Charlie", had not survived the war. There had been no contact between the two men since Dr. Axelrad left Vietnam in 1968.
After a tour of the entire country of Vietnam in 2012 with his two sons and grandson, Dr. Axelrad had a fateful meeting with a journalist, Quynh Hoa, while taking a historic tour in Hanoi. Hoa kindly offered to help Dr. Axelrad try and locate his old friend or his family by seeing if her editors would publish the story in the biggest Vietnamese newspaper.
The story was published several weeks later, and within days Hung, aka "Charlie" was located. Alive and well in the village of An Khe, where Dr. Axelrad had left him over 40 years before.
The story in this book will move you and inspire you. To this day, Dr. Axelrad feels that meeting Hung was one of the great blessings in his life. And, after reading the book, you'll see why.
Chris Axelrad, son of Captain Samuel Axelrad and book co-author writes:
"The way my father cared for Hung aka “Charlie” may seem unbelievable, but anyone who knows Sam Axelrad knows that he takes care of his patients with all his effort. And that’s the beauty of this whole story.
"As soon as Hung was brought in, they laid that stretcher out on the ground with him on it, and my dad looked at him in his broken state. Even though there are no pictures of this in the book, I can attest to the fact that Charlie was in really, really bad shape.
"In that moment he wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t the enemy. He was a patient – a human being in need of healing.
"And heal, Charlie did. As you will read in this book, Charlie went on to assist many, many people as both a medic and as a helpful companion, during a war that was as misguided and pointless as it was brutal.
"This is an uplifting story of love, kindness and survival in very difficult times. It’s a story the world needs now more than ever. May it be a blessing to all who read it and may it inspire you and people the world over to stop seeing each other as enemies, and to realize that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all from a common source."
From the Introduction by book co-author Chris Axelrad
This is the true story of the friendship between North Vietnamese Army Squadron Leader Hung Nguyen - who was seriously wounded during an ambush by US troops in 1967 - and Samuel Axelrad, surgeon and captain of a Forward Medical Command who saved Hung's life.
Dr. Axelrad's policy was simple. ANYBODY who was brought to the medical tent was to be treated as a first class patient. No matter whether they were civilian, US soldier or - as in this case - "enemy".
"We are here as healers first." That was the motto Dr. Axelrad and his company lived by.
As a way to remember their commander's kindness in saving Hung's life, the medics gave Dr. Axelrad Hung's arm bones, which the doctor hastily stashed away in his trunk, which remained sealed until 2011, when Dr. Axelrad's grandson wanted to see what was in it.
Upon opening the trunk, Dr. Axelrad discovered the bones and realized he must go back to find his friend's family to return them. He was sure Hung, aka "Charlie", had not survived the war. There had been no contact between the two men since Dr. Axelrad left Vietnam in 1968.
After a tour of the entire country of Vietnam in 2012 with his two sons and grandson, Dr. Axelrad had a fateful meeting with a journalist, Quynh Hoa, while taking a historic tour in Hanoi. Hoa kindly offered to help Dr. Axelrad try and locate his old friend or his family by seeing if her editors would publish the story in the biggest Vietnamese newspaper.
The story was published several weeks later, and within days Hung, aka "Charlie" was located. Alive and well in the village of An Khe, where Dr. Axelrad had left him over 40 years before.
The story in this book will move you and inspire you. To this day, Dr. Axelrad feels that meeting Hung was one of the great blessings in his life. And, after reading the book, you'll see why.
Chris Axelrad, son of Captain Samuel Axelrad and book co-author writes:
"The way my father cared for Hung aka “Charlie” may seem unbelievable, but anyone who knows Sam Axelrad knows that he takes care of his patients with all his effort. And that’s the beauty of this whole story.
"As soon as Hung was brought in, they laid that stretcher out on the ground with him on it, and my dad looked at him in his broken state. Even though there are no pictures of this in the book, I can attest to the fact that Charlie was in really, really bad shape.
"In that moment he wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t the enemy. He was a patient – a human being in need of healing.
"And heal, Charlie did. As you will read in this book, Charlie went on to assist many, many people as both a medic and as a helpful companion, during a war that was as misguided and pointless as it was brutal.
"This is an uplifting story of love, kindness and survival in very difficult times. It’s a story the world needs now more than ever. May it be a blessing to all who read it and may it inspire you and people the world over to stop seeing each other as enemies, and to realize that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all from a common source."
210 pages, Paperback
Published October 10, 2016
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 2, 2021
The true story of an American army doctor who saves the life of a North Vietnamese soldier. Amputation of the soldier's right arm is necessary for the soldier to survive. The doctor brings home those bones and then we find out what happens after forty-seven years.
August 14, 2022
I believe I am a distant cousin – 5th, to be precise – of Samuel Axelrad. I never had the chance to meet him, and I don’t think he had any idea that I, or any of our shared ancestors, existed. Still, as part of an ambitious project to trace the 2000+ descendants of my 4th great-grandparents, I came across this book and thought it might be an unintrusive way to get a sense of his life.
I confess that I paid most attention to what he had to say about his parents and grandparents who, like my own grandmother, came from the Bukovina region of modern-day Romania. I appreciate that he understood his own impulse to heal – not just as a surgeon but, as his rabbi friend/afterword author puts it, as a citizen practicing Tikkun ha-olam – as rooted in his European past.
In the genealogical work I’ve been doing (to what eventual end, I don’t always know), I come across a lot of names detached from context. In that light, it’s a pleasure really to “meet” one of those names.
The heart of this story – the part that comes after a sweet description of his childhood and family – comes as Samuel recounts his experience trying to return the bones of an amputated arm to the North Vietnamese soldier whose life he saved during the war.
It’s a powerful story, one that Samuel handles with surprising sensitivity. He’s thoughtful about how he wound up with the bones, bringing them back to the U.S. where they lay in a seldom-opened chest of his war-time memories.
They were not, as I’d have been troubled by, a war-time trophy. Instead, as he explains it, they were preserved by his colleagues as a tribute to the fact that they had managed to save a life in a time when so many were being killed. There was something modestly subversive in exercising such skill to save a North Vietnamese soldier; there was something distinctly subversive in training him to become a hospital assistant and then giving him free rein to help in the field hospital. A subsequent superior officer angrily ordered him to move “Charlie” out, and so he did.
Samuel left Vietnam in a hurry, and it took most of a lifetime to reconcile his experiences. When he did, he visited Vietnam in an effort to return the bones, not even certain that his old friend/patient was still alive. Through a lucky encounter with a Vietnamese journalist, he got the story out, and they reconnected.
This is a slim book, and I’d have wanted to see more eventual reflection on how it felt, man to man, to reconnect. Still, there’s a clear humanity, and a clear voice.
I can’t be neutral given that I feel a literal kinship with this man I never met, but I can admire this. Though my connection is so distant as to be effectively non-existent, I’m proud to have him as part of the “family.”
I confess that I paid most attention to what he had to say about his parents and grandparents who, like my own grandmother, came from the Bukovina region of modern-day Romania. I appreciate that he understood his own impulse to heal – not just as a surgeon but, as his rabbi friend/afterword author puts it, as a citizen practicing Tikkun ha-olam – as rooted in his European past.
In the genealogical work I’ve been doing (to what eventual end, I don’t always know), I come across a lot of names detached from context. In that light, it’s a pleasure really to “meet” one of those names.
The heart of this story – the part that comes after a sweet description of his childhood and family – comes as Samuel recounts his experience trying to return the bones of an amputated arm to the North Vietnamese soldier whose life he saved during the war.
It’s a powerful story, one that Samuel handles with surprising sensitivity. He’s thoughtful about how he wound up with the bones, bringing them back to the U.S. where they lay in a seldom-opened chest of his war-time memories.
They were not, as I’d have been troubled by, a war-time trophy. Instead, as he explains it, they were preserved by his colleagues as a tribute to the fact that they had managed to save a life in a time when so many were being killed. There was something modestly subversive in exercising such skill to save a North Vietnamese soldier; there was something distinctly subversive in training him to become a hospital assistant and then giving him free rein to help in the field hospital. A subsequent superior officer angrily ordered him to move “Charlie” out, and so he did.
Samuel left Vietnam in a hurry, and it took most of a lifetime to reconcile his experiences. When he did, he visited Vietnam in an effort to return the bones, not even certain that his old friend/patient was still alive. Through a lucky encounter with a Vietnamese journalist, he got the story out, and they reconnected.
This is a slim book, and I’d have wanted to see more eventual reflection on how it felt, man to man, to reconnect. Still, there’s a clear humanity, and a clear voice.
I can’t be neutral given that I feel a literal kinship with this man I never met, but I can admire this. Though my connection is so distant as to be effectively non-existent, I’m proud to have him as part of the “family.”
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April 25, 2018MWSA Review
Author Samuel Axelrad tells a fascinating story in his book, Peaceful Bones. It's not enough to tell you that his story made it into Ripley's Believe It or Not; you should read the book and learn more about this interesting man's life in Viet Nam.
As a doctor assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in 1966, Sam Axelrad became the Company Commander for Company A 15th Medical Battalion and witnessed all the horror war can throw at you. He and his troops treated the war wounded and the sick on a daily basis. These patients included not only U.S. military wounded, but also local Vietnamese civilians as well as enemy combatants. One such enemy soldier arrived in his operating room with an arm that had been shot and left untreated in the jungle for days. The arm had become severely infected, and Dr. Axelrad had no choice but to amputate. In the harsh killing environment that was Viet Nam, Dr. Axelrad not only saved the soldier's life but helped him stay at the clinic and trained him to do light duties at the clinic. When it came time to move him back into the local environment, he made sure to find him a job at a civilian clinic.
The book tells this story and goes on to focus on their reunion fifty years later, when Dr. Axelrad returned the bones from the amputated arm to their rightful owner. An interesting read!
MWSA Reviewer: Bob Doerr (April 2018)
Author Samuel Axelrad tells a fascinating story in his book, Peaceful Bones. It's not enough to tell you that his story made it into Ripley's Believe It or Not; you should read the book and learn more about this interesting man's life in Viet Nam.
As a doctor assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in 1966, Sam Axelrad became the Company Commander for Company A 15th Medical Battalion and witnessed all the horror war can throw at you. He and his troops treated the war wounded and the sick on a daily basis. These patients included not only U.S. military wounded, but also local Vietnamese civilians as well as enemy combatants. One such enemy soldier arrived in his operating room with an arm that had been shot and left untreated in the jungle for days. The arm had become severely infected, and Dr. Axelrad had no choice but to amputate. In the harsh killing environment that was Viet Nam, Dr. Axelrad not only saved the soldier's life but helped him stay at the clinic and trained him to do light duties at the clinic. When it came time to move him back into the local environment, he made sure to find him a job at a civilian clinic.
The book tells this story and goes on to focus on their reunion fifty years later, when Dr. Axelrad returned the bones from the amputated arm to their rightful owner. An interesting read!
MWSA Reviewer: Bob Doerr (April 2018)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews