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Viet Cong Bomb Officers' Quarters in Saigon

December 24, 1964

1964-12-24__Brinks_Hotel_bombing
1964-12-24__Brinks_Hotel_bombing
The aftermath of a Viet Cong mortar attack on Bien Hoa Air Base, November 1964. (National Museum of the U.S. Air Force)

Viet Cong agents detonate a vehicle filled with explosives at Saigon's Brink Hotel, which is being used as officers’ quarters. The bomb destroys part of the building, killing two U.S. servicemen and injuring more than 100 people, including Americans, Australians, and Vietnamese. Four U.S. Navy nurses are wounded in the attack. At least one of them insists on treating victims at the scene and helping with disaster relief before accepting treatment for her injuries. All four wounded nurses receive the Purple Heart. They are the only Navy nurses to receive that award during the war.1

1Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 324; Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967, United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2006), 172; Jan K. Herman, The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War: Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Passage to Freedom to the Fall of Saigon (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2010), 7; Edward J. Marolda, The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War: The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2009), 75.