When Jack Enwright returned in the early 1990s to visit the hospital in Qui Nhon where he had spent much of what they call the American War, the Vietnamese surgeon in charge greeted him as an old friend.
"I never met you, but I feel as if I know you," he said.
It turned out the local surgeon had spent much of Mr Enwright's nine-year-tour of duty there working in a Vietcong bush hospital nearby. He always sent his worst cases down to the New Zealand Surgical Team - and made sure they arrived on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Jack Enwright was the admitting surgeon.
"Jack never knew," recalls one who worked with him, "that he was getting referrals from the communist surgeon over the hill."
It's no mean feat to command the respect of the enemy, but Jack Enwright, the mainstay of the New Zealand team, commanded the respect of all who met him. He spent nine years in Qui Nhon - six of them as the team's leader.
He mastered the difficult, tonal language and pioneered numerous techniques for the emergency treatment of serious, especially intestinal, injury, which were well ahead of their time.
Mr Enwright, a graduate of Otago Medical School who carried out postgraduate study in tropical medicine in Edinburgh, worked for three years in Zululand in South Africa in the early 60s.
But Vietnam was his special love. He left Qui Nhon, grudgingly, the day before the North Vietnamese Army arrived, but "hung around Saigon" itching to return and was among the last to leave, plucked from the roof of the American Embassy at the end of April, 1975.
And when he came back to New Zealand he maintained his connection, sponsoring several families to immigrate to New Zealand and, latterly, arranging the collection and shipment of medical supplies to Vietnamese hospitals.
He was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976.
He is survived by his brother Eugene.
* Peter Calder's late father served as a physician alongside Mr Enwright in Qui Nhon in 1967.
Obituary: Jack Enwright
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