If we put aside the extreme views (such as the accusation of a staged chaos by the hospital, or the alleged armed invasion), the contending accounts from both sides can be both correct. That is, the hospital personnel were extremely frightened. They were afraid of the Reds, and had to work with fear that bullets could fly into the hospital, and so on. Either rumors or truth, or exaggeration of facts, they reacted by moving patients frantically. Their fear was real, even though the UDD did not storm the hospital with arms or with a huge number. Even if all the facts could be pieced together, we might not get to the gist of the incident because the root of fear is not in those facts.
A very important note of fact: perhaps the most distinguished patient at the Chula Hospital at the moment is the Supreme Patriarch, who has been there for the past few years. He refused to be moved. A day after the incident, Princess Sirindhorn visited the hospital to request that he agree to move to a safer place, the Siriraj Hospital where the King currently resides.
The invasion of the hillbillies
To describe the incident as a hospital in the battle zone is not quite correct. It is more like an invasion by a cruel army; horrific invaders and the helpless victims. Yet such characterization of war still misses the point.
A Chula Hospital doctor wrote in his Facebook observing that the Red people walk in and out of the hospital to use toilets as if they were theirs at home, and on the day of the “invasion” (buk), he was frightened even by their faces and how they look. A journalist observed that the account of the incident in the media sounds like the bad guys in B-grade Thai films, usually the coarse, plebian, ugly and dirty males, who keep shooting with no reason but simply because they are bad guys.