The Foreign Service Journal, September 2018

10 SEPTEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTERS Remembering the East Africa Bombings The July-August FSJ stirred memories. Reading about these bombings reminded me of the bombing of our embassy in Saigon in 1965. I was typing in the Commu- nications Center and recall being surprised at how long the BOOM went on. When we hear bombings in movies, it’s just “boom” and it’s over. I put my head on my typewriter as did Miki Lovett, a co-worker. As I did so, I looked back and saw a flimsy wall between our distribution center and the file room coming down, with tons of debris behind it. We were lucky that a woman working in the file room had heard the shooting and raised the window of frosted glass to look out. Because of this we just had bits of glass flying around, not the big shards other offices had. Our supervisor had been standing in the door of the distribution room just before the blast, and I’d been talking to him. He made a dive for the “back room,” and the door was pitted with bits of glass. He was not hurt. The two women in the file room had some nasty scratches, and the one who’d looked out the window had some permanent damage to her eye. Other than a few miscellaneous scratches on the rest of us, we were unscathed. We immediately began cleaning up because we knew there’d be a lot of telegrams in and out for the rest of the day. Within just a few minutes another agency, USAID, called to tell us they had some missing telegrams. I told them I would appreciate it if they’d call later because the embassy was just bombed, and they laughed and said, “Oh, Judy, that’s funny—but here are the numbers.” I finally got them to realize it wasn’t a joke. It had been a long time since anyone had attacked a U.S. embassy. When Miki and I finally went for lunch, we automati- cally walked down the stairs. We could tell everyone else had, too, from the bloody handprints on the wall. I found out later that the eleva- tor never stopped—in fact there was an employee in it when the bomb went off. It turned out that our building, very old, didn’t have steel beams but was put up using pressure. We had virtually no structural damage. Meanwhile, nearby stores and dwell- ings were demolished. I hate to think how many Vietnamese were killed. One young embassy employee was killed, Barbara Rollins, and a Merchant Marine walking outside the Consular section also died. So many of our staff had serious wounds, and some were flown to the Philippines for care. We considered ourselves lucky. After the bombing we were told that if we were in the building at the time of the bombing, we would have five days R&R, and if we were wounded, seven days. That was our therapy. Judy Chidester FSS, retired Las Cruces, NewMexico Keeping Up with Health Care I applaud AFSA State VP Ken Kero- Mentz for his column, “Deferred Main- tenance,” in the July-August Journal . Scheduling those routine physical exams is good for your health, your pocketbook (because many health insurance plans already cover those visits), your family and your colleagues. Routine check-ups can identify an area of concern before it becomes a costly, emotionally taxing and possibly life- threatening emergency. I’ve always appreciated it when my managers have encouraged their team- mates to allocate the time for routine check-ups, because those signals create an environment for employees to do affordable preventive maintenance and take steps to heal themselves quickly when they do fall ill. It’s good for morale and it’s even better for productivity, because healthy employees are more likely to be effec- tive. Scheduling routine check-ups at home and abroad is an important ele- ment of preventive health care. Kero- Mentz’s encouragement to tap into MED’s network of English-speaking doctors for preventive physical and mental health check-ups abroad is an excellent recommendation. It’s also important to consider designating a person who can advocate for your health care in case you fall ill or are injured. For most of us that is our spouse, but what if our spouse is not present at post when we are ill or injured? Moreover, what if one is single and does not have a spouse? Maintaining updated living wills, designating power of attorney and mak- ing these documents readily available during a health care emergency are important steps to ensure our personal health is maintained when we are unable to do it ourselves. To that end, I hope medical units will consider talking to newly arrived employees and their family members about the status and availability of their living wills and health care power of