The Ranch Hand's Babies, Part 1 of 3

(In Tudu Hospital in the former Saigon, several hundred dead babies have been preserved in formaldehyde. They are hideously deformed as a result of their mothers having been contaminated by Agent Orange, a chemical diffused in Vietnam as part of the American military offensive, Operation Ranch Hand.) Things To Do Everything's sterile. The quiet reek of formaldehyde seeps from neat shelves. Tall glass jars, the size of mega-buckets of Colonel's chicken, line the walls floor to ceiling. Let's take a look, friend. Downtown Hanoi, at a loose end, we'll see the sights. But they won't see us. These fetuses and newborn babes gaze out uncomprehending, the faintest hint of surprise darkening their big bug eyes. Here, a head is elongated like squash. There, a tongue cascades from a mouth to fuse with a sternum. Tiny heads hone to a point, like someone tried to put them through a pencil-sharpener. Faces that will never blink look out and seem to ask, rhetorically, if this was really meant to be. By what rule of law or war, by what technological advance could it have served somebody's end to make us monsters, before we even had the chance to be born?