Vietnam Struggles to Care for Disabled Veterans : Major Problem Is Finding Jobs for 500,000 Injured in Country’s Five Wars

Dao Duc Dai limps on a wooden left leg toward machines spinning and screeching to turn out spools of thread in a factory the government reserves for people like him.

He is one of an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese military veterans disabled in five conflicts--against the Japanese in World War II, the French in the early 1950s, the Americans in South Vietnam and, more recently, the Chinese along the northern border and guerrilla forces in neighboring Cambodia.

Dai, now 42, watches over 12 old machines at his job. He said he lost his leg during the Communists’ Tet offensive at Hue in South Vietnam in 1968.

“I remember the difficulties of the war, the long way I had to go from north to south,” he said. “It was a hard life. But I don’t feel any hatred for the Americans, because what happened is in the past and you cannot do anything about it now.”

No Exact Count

The government knows roughly how many disabled veterans it has to care for. But it doesn’t know how many war veterans it has overall, except to say they number in the millions.

“We have three generations of war invalids and veterans,” said Le Binh, an official in the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Welfare, who lost a leg fighting the French. “The veterans of war in Vietnam have a strong will to return to normal life.”

Vietnam maintains the world’s third-largest standing army and acknowledges it has major problems in finding jobs for the most recent veterans, particularly for those who have fought the Chinese and the Cambodian resistance since 1979.

The Communist Party newspaper Nan Dhan recently assailed veteran policies as being out of date. “Many violations of social justice are still prevalent,” it said.

‘Unfair’ Hiring

The army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan said that former soldiers face “unfair and irrational” hiring practices at enterprises and state agencies.

But veterans interviewed here say they had few problems in rejoining society because, unlike the Americans they fought, Vietnamese returned home as heroes who had won national independence.

Binh said that some veterans were recuperating in provincial sanitariums from psychological scars from the 1960-75 conflict in South Vietnam. But he added that such cases were rare because the soldiers fought for a cause they supported and the people and government welcomed them back with “love and respect.”

“I fought for my people, and that’s why they treated me well,” said Hoang Chien Viet, a factory guard partially paralyzed from an American air strike. “The Americans, I don’t know whom they fought for, and perhaps they don’t know themselves.”

Amnesties Announced

A red-yellow Wounded Soldier medal was pinned to his breast pocket.

The Communists have dealt harshly with those who fought for the South Vietnam government, however. Some officers were executed. And 12 years after the war ended, thousands remain in political “re-education” camps despite international protests. On Aug. 17, Hanoi announced amnesties and reductions in sentences for some prisoners.

Vietnamese military officials say that about 2 million Vietnamese servicemen and civilians died in the war in the south. Half of them remain unaccounted for, contrasted with some 58,000 Americans killed and 1,800 missing.

Binh said that despite limited funds, the government subsidizes veterans’ living costs, provides training and work in state-run enterprises, and it runs nursing homes for invalids.

Shortages a Problem

He added that problems include shortages of artificial limbs, wheelchairs, eyeglasses and hearing aids. The newspaper Nan Dhan said that upgrading convalescent homes and health services should be a top priority.

In articles marking the 40th War Invalids Day on July 27, the Vietnam News Agency said that campaigns to help veterans date back to 1951, when those disabled fighting the French colonialists received land and homes in Vietnamese-captured areas.

It said that local administrations, with some public donations, build “houses of gratitude” for disabled veterans or families of the war dead. In a campaign called “Coming Back to the Source,” local party and state officials visit old Viet Cong strongholds in the south, giving disabled former guerrillas money and food, it said.

Agricultural cooperatives favor veterans’ groups when allocating land, and women and youth groups take care of war orphans, it added.

Vets Work at Factory

All 300 employees at the 27th of July factory, where Dao Duc Dai tends his machines and Hoang Chien Viet is a guard, are veterans or wives and children of ex-soldiers.

The factory’s director, Pham Quoc Khanh, said that 90% of the veterans were wounded and 30 are seriously handicapped. He was wounded in the historic rout of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Khanh said the factory’s output and its average monthly wage--the equivalent of about $45--are lower than those of factories with able-bodied staff. The workers live in a nearby hostel built with factory funds and equipped with a medical station.

“Running a factory staffed by war invalids is much more difficult than running other factories,” Khanh said. “If you have a health problem, it is very difficult to deal with. You get into a bad mood.”

Medical Emergencies

Some workers are asked to stay home on very hot days, “otherwise they would go mad,” he added. Medical emergencies at the plant include seizures among workers with brain or nerve damage.

At a veterans clothing factory in Gia Lam, just outside Hanoi, manager Le Tu Nghei said that two workers have died since the plant opened in 1975--one from head injuries, another from a liver ailment linked by the Vietnamese to Agent Orange, a defoliant used by U.S. forces.

The workshop supervisor at Gia Lam is Nguyen Quoc Tong, who said he was 18 when bombs from a U.S. B-52 blew off his right leg.

“Of course, those who took part in the war knew it was a very bad thing and we hated it,” he told a visiting reporter. “I was wounded and lost part of my body, and I don’t want the same thing to happen to anyone else.”