“…Assigned to the 1st Division, Quaely – against the advice of senior officers at field headquarters in Dau Tieng – insisted on boarding a helicopter of medics and troop reinforcements flying to the relief of the Big Red One’s 1st Battalion, under attack in War Zone C, northwest of Saigon. Landing at the battle site, Father Quealy hurriedly gave last rites to dying soldiers from a platoon of B Company. Just then, a Viet Cong soldier stepped out from the brush, fired at the chaplain with a machine gun…Within moments, Quealy was dead. From his pocket fell his diary: the last entry was a passage copied out from the Gospel according to Matthew: “So will my heavenly Father treat you unless each of you forgives his brother with all his heart.”…

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