After nine months in Phnom Penh, I was transferred to Tourane (later called Da Nang), a port in Central Annam, where Ho Chi Minh had started a war against the French. Ho Chi Minh had been to Paris to sign an agreement with the French government stipulating no further troop movements, but Admiral Thierry d’Argenlieu, the chief of the Expeditionary Corps, had other ideas and sent troops to Tourane anyway. All hell broke loose, and they desperately needed French nurses to tend to the subsequent wounded. In January 1947, I was flown there and assigned to the military hospital to be part of a team
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