Đặng Thùy Trâm

Đặng Thùy Trâm (1942 to 1970) was a Vietnamese doctor who served as a battlefield surgeon with the People's Army of Vietnam and the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. She was born in Huế and grew up in Hanoi in a family of doctors spanning three generations, her father a surgeon and her mother a pharmacist, and she studied at Hanoi Medical University. In December 1966 she travelled to Quảng Bình Province and began work as a surgeon in the field. She was killed in June 1970 by a United States patrol while travelling on a jungle trail in Quảng Ngãi Province, aged twenty seven. Her handwritten wartime diaries were taken by American soldiers and kept for decades before being returned to her family. Published in Vietnam in 2005, they sold over 300,000 copies in under a year and were translated into at least sixteen languages, drawing comparison with the diary of Anne Frank.