Failure to Atone: The True Story of a Jungle Surgeon in Vietnam

Failure to Atone: The True Story of a Jungle Surgeon in Vietnam by Allen Hassan. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780977604906.

As a young medical doctor, Allen Hassan volunteered to treat Vietnamese civilians injured near the front lines of war-torn Vietnam. A humanitarian mission sponsored by the American Medical Association to save the lives of Vietnamese civilians turned into a life-changing experience for Dr. Hassan. The atrocities and brutality he saw and experienced left the former U.S. Marine forever opposed to the horror and tragedy of war. As a doctor treating the civilians of South Vietnam, Dr. Hassan battled tropical diseases, primitive sanitary conditions, and all varieties of war wounds from an endless stream of civilians wounded by the war. Performing emergency surgeries deep into the night, in unspeakably primitive conditions in a hospital in the jungles of South Vietnam, he worked night and day to save lives, only to see many slip away. Failure to Atone is Dr. Hassan’s graphic memoir of the trials and tribulations of a medical doctor on the front lines of a no-holds-barred war, and of a courageous people’s battle to survive. Also contains 45 B&W pictures, maps of Vietnam, the written testimony of more than two dozen other volunteers physicians who ministered to civilians in Vietnam, and the only available complete listing of all 774 US-licensed medical doctors who participated in the Volunteer Physicians for Vietnam program.