Oz medics in Vietnam 'were run by military' GOVERNMENT claims that civilian Australian doctors and nurses who served in Vietnam are not entitled to veterans' healthcare have been challenged in a document leaked to The Weekend Australian. The document purports to be an order of battle that describes the chain of command applying to the operations of the provincial hospital at Bien Hoa, 30km east of what was then Saigon but is now Ho Chi Minh City, where hundreds of Australian doctors and nurses worked between 1964 and 1972.