Lest we forget

In 1975, Frances Palmer was in Vietnam dealing with the fallout of war. Fifty years on, she asks why the lessons of war have still not been learnt.

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In December 1974, aged 24, I flew to Saigon, armed only with David Morley's Paediatric Priorities in the Developing World to work with an international Save the Children team. I was sent to Huế, the old imperial city. Our team drove daily to resettlement villages in Quảng Tri, on the border of North and South Vietnam. American bombs had razed ancient Quảng Tri city to the ground. Bridges were often bombed, village roads turned to mud in the misty monsoon, health clinics and a school built of packing cases had only earth floors; a platoon of South Vietnamese soldiers might be sheltering there on arrival.