Bobbi Hovis and the Diem Coup

Bobbi Hovis in Saigon, 1963, posing in front of a WWII-era ambulance

Courtesy of Bobbi Hovis

Immediately after landing in Saigon, Bobbi and the other nurses who had flown with her were escorted into a staff room where they were told in a brief meeting that "anti-American feelings were running high." Bobbi felt a tinge of excitement. It was dangerous, yes, but history was unfolding here. And she would witness it.

The nurses, supporting a larger medical team, were in Saigon to start a combat casualty hospital which would serve US forces in the area, as well as Vietnamese civilians and military personal from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea...

After an uneventful morning, the senior corpsman, returning from lunch some distance away, had shocking news. "There's all kinds of barbed wire strung across the street," he said. "There are gun emplacements set up with .50-caliber machine guns and they're all pointed right up the street at us."

By the time she returned to the hospital, Bobbi could hear gunfire. She saw "tree limbs snapping and flying in all directions. Lead was ricocheting of building walls." Planes were dive-bombing the presidential palace. She saw one plane hit by anti-aircraft fire. It went into a dive and disappeared.

The long-rumored coup to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam's highly unpopular president, had begun.

From "Bobbi Hovis: Witness to History" from Courageous Women of the Vietnam War. 

The author with Bobbi Hovis, July, 2018.