—- Eyewitness account —-
“To see a World in a grain of sand And a Heaven in a wildflower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour”. –
Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
–
1945 2 million died of famine per WWII upheaval
1954 Partitioning at Ben Hai River per Geneva Accord
1968 US embassy breached
1969 540,000 US service men, some more than one tour
1970 Kent State massacre – Cambodia bombing protest
1973 Paris Peace agreement – Nobel Peace Prize to 2 sides
1974 Watergate and war aid (3.25 billion) denied
March 29, 1975, Da Nang – Convoy of Tears
April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh fell
April 22, 1975, President Thieu resigned
April 22, 1975, Martin ignored evacuation order
April 23, 1975, Ford at Tulane University: “Game over!” (reversing Johnson’s statement in 4/1965 at John Hopkins)
April 25, 1975, President Thieu left for Taiwan (w/ a Scotch hang-over while Martin pulled his flight stairways out and away- as if to unhook SVN life support)
April 26, 1975planes took offto Utapon to salvage
April 27-28, 1975, bombs and rockets fell on Tan Son Nhut
April 29, 1975, Big Minh regime-change expert (63 and 75) – with P.M. Vu Van Mau calling on the US embassy for a evacuation within 24 hours.
In all, 4.6 million tons of bomb dropped, 150 billion dollars spent and 3.4 million dead. 58.220 US service personnel with last 2 kill.
________________________________________
Monday night April 28 – 1975
Living by the airport, my sister, her husband and their four young children saw smoke rising. as the ammunition depot had been hit by artilleries and air bombardment. All packed up “to grandma” to stay away from bomb and fire. My brother, a pharmacist Captain was also back living with us. At 4 AM a barrage of bombs (dropped from stolen aircrafts) destroyed all available runways. Casualties: 2 US marines at Gate 4 – and 8 of my sister’s neighbors.
Air traffic circulation and control ceased. Hundreds more dead. DAO hangar was littered with hard-earned embarkation paper and possession – even burnt dollars.
The climatic event was precipitated by previous weeks’ clandestine World Airways C-141s with a total of 50,000 passengers over Saigon sky to Clark then Guam. During Operation Babylift one of the two US Air Force Galaxy’s crashed. Lower-deck deaths: 206 orphans, orphan-wannabes and their tag-along e.g. expat wife dressed up as a nun. Marcos, US ally, took issue with Vietnamese “illegal” dumping.
A month earlier, Da Nang and Nha Trang Airport saw unruly mob got punched or plunged from mid-air. Worried about overload, one of my classmates, in Air-Force overall, jumped out on take-off. That split second costs him 44 years from Saigon to San Diego.
His “sliding doors” (a movie with two opposing versions: missing the metro run versus barely slipping through its sliding door to live an entirely different life). Now my turn with nine hurdles to jump over from the University of Saigon to Penn State University.
Noon on Tuesday April 29 – 1975, corner of Ban Co – Phan Dinh Phung (renamed Nguyen Dinh Chieu St.) District 3, Ho Chi Minh city.
After a restless and sleepless night on the floor of our living room, my sister and her youngest anxiously watched and waited for the return of her husband and brother. Both left early on a recon mission around our besieged city. A stranger approached her, the only person standing at that intersection:
” Do you know the way to the river?”
It dawned on her the US was leaving for good (“decent interval” from 1973 to 1975, from 3.2 billion down to 722 million supplemental aids, with Operation Homecoming in between).
This central-region curfew-violator had a strong urge and momentum to flee – ignoring Prime Minister Vu Van Mau plea for reconciliation (Ambassador Martin – himself was in deep denial, playing God with his wishful back-door negotiation, partly to honor his adopted-son’s sacrifice in Vietnam.)
Meanwhile, my brother and brother-in-law – both with job training in Denver and D.C. – frantically knocked on doors, any door. Former DOS colleagues, all worked under Ambassador Bui Diem, just shrugged:” Je ne sais quoi”! (Diem himself went off-script – like everyone – Ford included – after VN 722-million supplemental aid got voted down). The situation was further muddled by counter propaganda asking for Saudi 1 billion investment into fertile region of the south. Our country seemed to shrink then vanish. But I am ahead of the story.
Fool’s errand they attempted, both were about to doze off in exhaustion. The weight of war (all male adults in my family were at one time or another drafted. I myself received the civil service notice – “you’re up next! unless med school as draft deferral”.
“After all, what could possibly happen!” my father assured no one but himself: “One was with custom enforcement then DOS, the other, a medic Captain – both non-combatants. Re-education camp, if it came to that, would be lenient. Besides, don’t you all know there is an enforced curfew?”.
“If people could roam, so can we”.
“There must be a way out!”,
And “out” she acted. That stranger/seeker ignited my sister’s protective instincts and intuition not to mention her tactless dogmatic core, very rare for a Vietnamese woman.
Unrehearsed and unprepared, the nine of us sardine-packed into a Simca. My mom’s teacher salary and saving – soon-worthless – had been quickly and equally divided on days leading to that escape (should we be separated – not unusual given their 1954 North-South evacuation).
Now that I have had some distance from the event, I could appreciate her precaution: a cousin of mine never got news of her MIA husband after the collapse of central VN – photo on the altar or not. Quite an agony.
Uprooted in 1954 at least they were given 300 days not 2 minutes.
P.S. As I re-read my mom’s hand-written last testament, in her 80’s in US assisted living, apparently, with dementia, she could not tell facts from fiction. The house we left behind that day, later and long ago confiscated, first the upstairs where I used to sleep – security blanket and all – then the entire downstairs completely occupied – in exchange for my dad’s passage and papers to America. In deep dementia, she instructed my sister to split the sales?
My father wished us luck: “I am too old to worry about what/ifs”. He, my part-time dad, French Artillery Army discharged (and his two brothers also fought in previous war), worked for Air Vietnam corporate account. His other family (monogamy was written into law per Diem’s sister-in-law after the fact) lived a few blocks away. A man of two-minds, like LBJ, he was to spend his next decade stoically bogged down with two residences and my half-sister.
His sliding door!
Ban Co, where we lived, was a northern-refugee enclave. Walls got eyes. One would not look for or find tranquility there, except during siesta. Moving about in a serpentine and narrow alley, residents tolerated one another. Often times in my teen years, they turned captive audience of our live music and loud quarrel.
For fear of rousing up and rattling neighbors (per Ken Burns, 1/3 of Saigon residents were indifferent to the nation’s change of the guards), we tiptoed and avoided eye contact and “Where are you going! “..
Over Tet 68, urban combat happened in front of our eyes. Plainclothes police hunt down and shot clandestine VC in rubber sandals and black pajamas. Our apprehension wasn’t baseless (not to mention dire prediction about 1 million to be slaughtered just like next door neighbor Cambodia, printed in Stars and Stripes which way qualified us as “with well-founded fear”).
For reinforcement, I called in a few markers. Mysteriously at the ready, with a Carbine N-1 in black (pajamas), our next-door “homeboy” escorted us out then stood by our side as I carefully pulled the barbed wires for our car to back out. His silent “wink” – an emoticon – concealed our tacit understanding – “we’re even!” (On that day, I cashed out my social “deposits” e.g. hey, let me light that cigarette, just as my mom did her three-decades savings.)
First hurdle!
TAN SON NHUT AIRPORT
The airport was airtight secured. We learned later 5,000 evacuees trapped inside. We drove pass a human cordon of airborne troopers. M16s fired “pop pop pop” incessantly and indiscriminately in the air (my hot-war childhood soundtrack consisted of flares, choppers, F-15’s, B-52’s, AK-47’s, M-16’s and Colt-45’s. Carbine N1s and of late C-141’s cargo planes).
“Stay out!”
The airport property was condemned – per Ambassador Martin’s in-person assessment. Northern spies stole A-37’s to destroy the runways and rendered Freedom Birds rescue helpless.
Like Chevy Chase’s European Vacation, we circled the roundabout with steely-looking perimeter guards before heading diagonally for the center of town, passing by my friend’s residence.
Second hurdle
Fear of approaching a dead end, I signaled for a time-out. Not all my social deposit was cashed out just yet. I still had an ace in the hole. My pre-text? we needed extra fuel should our aimless ride lead us down the Mekong region. Actually, it’s for me to say goodbye. Emptying his jerry can, my type-C personality friend, hardly chit chat, but this time, made small talks: “Where are you heading!”
I just shrugged. Our ambassadors didn’t even know.
The day before, one of our friends had flown the coop. Bewildered and betrayed, Phong and I helplessly watched people loot Thai’s house. Empathically, I did not want a repeat (just in case). His father, a local skipper, was well-positioned should they decide to set sail. (Years and gold bars later, he did get to S California.) His sliding door.
US EMBASSY
A few blocks out, where just two days earlier, Phong and I were in line for a Visa application (the adults of my family, per superior’s order, stayed home and send us kids out on errand). The authority wanted to avoid city-wide panic. Yet the atmosphere turned chaotic anyway. With a sudden influx of Central region refugees in makeshift tents, press and PR both prepared for the worst e.g. tamarin tree got chopped down to make helipad while generals were hospitalized for exhaustion, people paced back and forth like tigers in a cage.
Surrounding streets might obey curfew but not in front of the Embassy (Saigon always knew where to go, and when e.g. Christmas eve -Noel- gathering in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, with Catholics and non-Catholics alike). Thousands, mostly young, foreign and local were scaling and snaking through its newly re-enforced concertina wires atop its already high steel gate.
Marine sentries (170 in flak jackets, helmets and bayoneted M-16s, constantly scanned and cherry-picked press credentials and foreign passports, all in life-and-death urgency.)
According to “Paper Soldiers”, out of resentment, someone in the crowd aimed a Carbine at those guards. Luckily, both guns and camera were confiscated. No one wanted further panic and bad press. Press Attache Office just shrugged: case dismissed! Unlike across the ocean where White House Press Secretary Nessen was in long discussion about sending marines to rescue marines, an idea that was shoved.
We spotted a familiar face: my second uncle, a chauffeur for some agency. Like Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard, he backed out far enough for an imaginary runway before full throttled to scale over people. His Hail-Mary hop catapulted him over the 14-foot steel-and-flesh wall. We certainly would not dare a similar feat, not with 4 kids, a 60-years-old Mom and meager luggage.
Not that our luggage had anything worth showing: (giay to tuy than) with mere photocopies of an USAID form letter showing US Embassy logo & letterhead: “Any help that can be rendered to …. the bearer of this letter, will be appreciated” signed by Robert B. Brougham, Acting Training Officer, USAID with my name scribbled in – last of nine. (the way they often list surviving relatives in obituary). In fact, of late, I read an Obituary of South Vietnam on WSJ printed May 2, 1975.
What could we hope to bring in two minutes.!
Reality hit us like a brick. Cold-sweated in 105-degree weather.
Turned around? Not with barbed wires and checkpoints growing by the hour. Rumors of down-river options did not help. Per Tiziano Terzani (Giai Phong), Hwy 4 was blocked, Hwy-1 Newport Bridge saw hot battle and burnt tank like a scene from A Bridge Too Far.
Sheltered and buffered from the front (150 billion bought us some time), I was boxed in. The Mekong? A mystery. No power no connection. Between Northern evacuees in 1954, and Central ones recently, the city could no longer hold. Things seemed to bulge and bust from the seams.
Years of fighting at the front and propaganda over the air (farewell address by Thieu and subsequent tearful resignation by President Huong, or those Five-O-clock Follies the US press detested) reduced to credentials and currency of no use. Except for a one-hundred-dollar bill my brother-in-law had concealed inside his Larousse flap, we officially were homeless, stateless and penniless.
Dazed and dispirited, backs against the wall, a mini-car full of gas with no place to go. While we played spectator, waves after waves of sweat-slickered shirts took action, tirelessly kept at it, adrenalin-filled assault on the precinct. If someone who were with a portable transistor radio would hear:
” I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…and …children listened”. Operation Frequent Wind officially got underway in 105% heat.
At 3PM, one of the Embassy’s groundkeepers tied a long rope around his 30 relatives for a hush hush “mercy! -please” at the rear gate. Quite a tough call for those on post. Those reinforced marine sentries were also charged with burning a million dollars’ worth of cash.
Suddenly echoed an ear-deafening screeching noise. An oil-dry manual 10′ gear shifter operated by an inexperienced bus driver (they did some dry-run around the city in weeks previous to familiarize with the lay of the land). The likes of my chauffeur-uncle (who had walked out of his job). Those newly house-broken “chauffeurs” stopped often for wads of USD in lieu of bus token (off list and not deemed at-risk passengers). In other times, a bus could take up to 50 passengers with flight luggage. That day, twice the capacity of apprehensive passengers previously assembled at 13 safehouses – code-word knocks only. They were to be underground tunneled to DAO airport auditorium. The convoy, to everyone’s surprises, were heading toward Saigon tourist district (Freedom corridor), in the opposite direction.
Lately, I met a Special Forces translator. He was abandoned only to make it to Hong Kong years later. Apparently, he missed his Rendez-vous.
Third hurdle!
We tailed the convoy. Tu Do Street (now Dong Khoi), once bustling with foreign tourists, beggars and bar girls. Over the bridge we slid onto a less-wealthy district 4 (only a mile apart, but miles apart). At maximum speed possible only during curfew, the lead bus skidded then made a sharp left turn to Pier 5 dock. Had my brother failed to floor the pedal we would have been cut off.
Those drivers always had ready a bottle of Scotch to bribe the guards. They were busy socializing or couldn’t care less to notice a small unofficial car in tow (no flapping flag of any kind).
The boom barrier, like a “guillotine” drop, slowed to a stop by its counterweight. Those precious seconds allowed us to slip right through our “sliding doors”. If I had had two heads, one would have rolled – more likely – that romantic side of a pre-med aspirant, who just a few days before, had collected donation in his SPCN Lecture Hall for Central-Region refugees.
Fourth hurdle
CLUB NAUTIQUE PARKING
Inside the gate, in broad daylight, shirtless bystanders were milling about, lurking and looting office supplies and abandoned equipment. Even police changed to plain clothes to join in: “Finally US Aid got to us.” He meant furniture and air conditioner, luxury none of us on “dong” salary could ever afford. Even on my brother’s medic captain’s pay, his first wife couldn’t afford to stay “til death do us part”. In reviewing Evac Plan, the WH group doubted local police and soldiers would stay guard for the last American and at-risk Vietnamese to leave unharmed.
What had been bottled up e.g. class resentment, religious and ethnic strife, 400X Hiroshima worth of bomb – 4.6 million tons to be exact- agent Orange and agent CIA, death and destruction, divorce and dispossession – coup after coup, long speeches and teary farewell (they, us, them, which side was which), husbands let wives be whores, taxi picked up only expats for larger tips, battles lost in whorehouse and not out in the field). finally popped, Khmer-Rouge style: The inmates running the asylum.
My brother saw a parked car whose chauffeur slump over the steering wheel. That body was the only one on the lot that wasn’t moving. Nothing is more dangerous than young men who suddenly be in the possession of a loaded gun. (even revolutionary chic’s struck a pose for a selfies and souvenir).
(pg102 of Terzani’s book lists an inventory by the University of Van Hanh, whose students collected: 1,525 carbines, 2,596 M-16s, 399 M-72s 174 M-79s and three boxes full of pistols. A week before we were collecting donations for refugees in flux from Da Nang).
Private vehicles and army Jeeps previously status symbol now a liability (the ultimate was Ky’s handgun and AirForce jet used to court his hostess de l’air-turned spouse). After offloading all passengers, the convoy made a U turn for its next haul. We, its unintended tail, stood out like a sore thumb, an easy mark among shirtless zombie-like looters.
At the water edge stood an imposing 10-foot static sandbag wall, partitioned the haves and have nots. This barge-turned-bunker blocked our river view. It’s an 11th-hour plan conceived by the Oval Office, the Embassy, and Can Tho outpost, a brainchild of Carmody (see Honorable Exit). Army Engineers Corp retrofit, a marked upgrade from previous all-hell-broke-loosed open-air vessels, a death trap with shoving and slipping in herd stampede.
Thieu’s swift and sudden withdrawal from Highland MZ caused chain-reaction that left disgruntled civilians and army themselves abandoned by superiors – with no time to evacuate their own immediate families
Mob hysteria had a mind of its own and would care less about friends or foes. SVN dominoes (not the theory of the same name by the Eisenhower administration) fell one by one, folding its MR map from Central Region to Central District, better known as Convoy of Tears. Jail house freed prisoners to add fuel onto a hot bonfire.
This time, we saw a lesson learned, with a bunker that resembled WWI, stacked with sandbags on both sides. .
War at the waterfront.
Standing atop the sandbag heap – a lone gun (M16) in un-tugged white short sleeves paced back and forth, while screamed out:
“Just get out of here”
seeing my brother-in-law linger (Xem xet tinh hinh – situation assessment).
April 29 – Late afternoon, Pier 5
Engine idling, we huddled. Having loaded and unloaded time and time again, we grew skeptical. Fifth and final attempt over the sand wall (we couldn’t see who, how many, were supposed to board, where and when it was going). The water edge (filled with oil and God-knows-what in the water) stood as our final destination. I could not envision my mom and brother swim.
Millions of calculations. Nine little heads!
Opportunity cost, push/pull. To climb or not to.
Push comes to shove, should we turn around, would the men be sent to Kham Chi Hoa – our city jail. Per “America in Vietnam”, 41.4 per cent of people shared this fear of reprisal.
Or worse, as in next door Cambodia, and subsequent Killing -Field e.g. beheaded for just wearing glasses?!? as the government no longer bothered with feeding and reeducating its population (Hue 68 was still on our mind). I grew up with episodes of Cambodia “cap duon” (beheading). Goose bumps I felt when going pass the Cambodian embassy (that fear was confirmed years later when I was on a tour, with a stop for the skulls-exhibit at the village of Ba Chi.) Growing up, I joined kids in the neighborhood witnessing a monk-burning at that same intersection.
Since I barely got my first beer for passing the SAT:” Mama, life has just begun”. Dream, dream, dream was all I had.
What about the children and their future (in medical studies). The same aspiration applied to immigrant generation, to make costly journey a self-fulfilling prophecy. For others, like my other half-uncle in the Navy. to stay means to endure re-education as a price to reunite with his mom/brother, a train conductor – from up North.
Without embarkation papers at the Embassy was one thing. To leap on the barge on a stranger’s get-out-of-jail card was another (Nixon’s nose grew after his China card).
In deep thoughts, no one thought of cranking down the window.
In a stuffy Simca emerged a makeshift jury, eerily quiet all of a sudden, very unusual for a loud family.” Are we going or not!” I blurted out – just like “are we there yet” since I was soaking-wet – in a Clint Eastwood Mexican stand-off.
Our window of opportunity was fast closing. Chronos vs Kairos, time vs eternity.
An imaginary PA “All-Aboard” announcement would have tipped the scale.
Suddenly, a unanimous decision made itself, like a poker last draw. My brother-in-law tossed the car key, his last chip, to a bystander. That shirtless guy in “xa lon’ (male sleepwear shorts) had made a few passes (canh me).
” Eternity in an hour”.
To this day, no one knows where the car is …
and over the course of those 24 hours, not just key to the car, but key to the country that got changed hands (2:30PM) “Infinity in the – empty – palm of your hand”.
Knapsacks over our shoulders, “beaucoup dien cai dau” behind (the expression later a line by our Kieu Chinh in Hamburger Hill). Between Operation Homecoming and Vietnamization of the war, we should have been warned. Yet day-to-day we were caught up in a hyper dollarized inflation before hyper urgency prompted us to switch from saving face to saving lives.
The day before, when RVN Congress convened to confirm Big Minh, only 136 out of 219 were present. Even our Chief of Staff Cao Van Vien had fled right behind Thieu behind his furniture flight. As we speak, our Chief of Armed Forces himself was on the stairway leading to that infamous helicopter lift at 22 Gia Long St.
No more time. The whole city was a wet sponge soaked up sweat and sulfur, blood and tears. Catholic paratroopers shot each other to bypass doctrinal forbidden sin (of suicide). No one had the last say. self-inflicted shot by Nguyen Khoa Nam in front of now-no-longer statue of soldiers and allies.
Apprehension and anxiety reached its climax. Like my friend who jumped – we hopped (Thoa, this is for you in San Diego. Who could see the future.)
_My mom first, followed by our young. We climbed without showing any papers in cramp legs and under the watchful eyes of that lone M-16 gunner atop the heap.
Unscathed and hassle-free we formed a circle on the rusty and stain platform, only 10 per cent occupied. Still early, all clueless in a strange surrounding “mat nhin dao dac” (quite unusual since barges were for cargo transport).
Catching his breath, my brother noticed some weeping girls sitting beside their father with only violins for luggage.
The barge would soon be packed tight with load after load of convoy haul. In one of those loads, I caught sight of my math teachers. It struck me odd since they had on slick tailored white shirts, perhaps prepping for an A/C airlift and not sealift (all day we saw only soak-wet shirts) The genius pair looked quite out of place, against the backdrop of blood-stained barge. Since we had never seen each other outside of classroom, squatting like mandarin among the mass – I thought to myself, this one was for real. An irreversible reversal of social order.
Our teachers – northerner – were perhaps pondering:
Will this river-barge be sea-worthy?
What capacity does this towboat have e.g. fuel and horsepower?
How long would it take to get to destination X from Pier 5 dock, wherever X was?
And most of all, how much and with what currency exchange/interest rates are we going to live on when/if all get there in one piece?
Luckily for them, math was math, wherever one goes.
Fifth hurdle
1954 inter-regional evacuation footage showed old folks in cargo net, craned up and swung over before gently dropped aboard US-assisted French Southward ships, with fanfare and banners e.g. “To join the exodus is to keep your dignity” Di cu de giu gin pham gia con nguoi.
It’s my turn sea-embarking on an US ship again. Just like World Airways chaotic evac soon repeat its mishaps outside of Con Son Island with refugees in cargo net.
30 days’ worth of retrofitting the barge (3/75-4/75) vs 300 days to pack (54). Years later, veterans of warwere legally and orderly processed for departure under a bi-lateral agreement.
Standing on the barge, shaped like a bunker on two sides, I tried hard to inch toward the rear for a view. Last view. Melody surged in my head to hasten our departure. Songs of my family – “Toi xa Hanoi” now mine “Toi xa Saigon”.
War-time vignettes of 1954 (Japanese soldier with execution sword at the ready) over late dinner then came alive.
Suddenly jerked forward, I stopped daydreaming. The future had reached back like a thousand-years-old giant after his afternoon nap. Our self-initiated Operation Passage officially began without chopper, form letters or fuel tank.
Once known as Paris of the Orient, the city, its charming Hotel Majestic near my sister’s bank grew smaller.
Tears welled up my eyes. Instinctively, I knew.
Allez sans retour.
Deja vu for the adult but a first for me. I tried to commit the last of home to memory. 18-years of e.g. 3 pupils to a desk, books as gifts for graduation, first date and first beer, all-nighter exam-crunch and all-nighter on-duty neighborhood watch (w/ carbine N1 on the side and lots of coffee in the mug).
“And Phai Song” …No, you must live (to raise the children, let go of me) I would have gladly taken the least desirable option i.e. to stay home and let my dad have a seat in the car.
”Mot con ngua dau ca tau khong an co”. All for one, one for all. 100 years of French lit e.g. Les Trois Mousquetaires
”Nhieu dieu phu lay gia guong”….(love your fellow human being as yourself)! Of late, I learned that my mom’s clan own distribution rights of commodity in the highland. Our patriarch empowered and endowed each branch of the family with partnership and agent contracts.
Yet I found myself surrounded by shifting shadows of “saying one thing, acting the other”. All grey, not Black and White, indiscernibly. A world turned upside down.
Outside of those roundabouts, away from guardrails and grammar, conjugation and composition, I lived the scene the Last Emperor, who was taken away forcibly.
Even in denial, I could hardly come up with any excuse for what had just transpired: a sudden act of collective bewilderment and betrayal – in my brother’s case, pre-mature AWOL on the eve of our nation.
Be Run Be.
No turning back. I missed my mentor (the city itself), personified by Robin Williams as a “retard” in Brooklyn, “mentally challenged” or whatever you may call those 17 million people since the times they are a ‘Changin. The city once mine, then no more.
Ebb and flow. No lights and no warnings. What at first seemed easy turned difficult. No check-ins hence no updates. Bait and switch? Twice, unhooked we were left to float. “mac xac may”, let it all hang. Without a towboat, the barge a floating hearse. “Beo troi song” so stoic (shit flushed downhill)
Betrayal begets betrayal.
Our fate and future. Nine lives – Band on the Run- at the mercy of shooters and looters. Occasional flashing flares and ear-deafening rockets jolted us. Standing room only.
Grazing bullets could have buried inside those sandbags. At times, we were just a short swim away from the bank. Anyone friend or foe could easily hop onChildren? oo scared to cry.
Aimlessness wrenched us throat dry. We could not hack karma push our luck further (North-South was it). No exodus 2.0 for .
Overnight, I turned gray. One cannot just take off and leave everything, then expect uture served on a plate
We were not alone.
Shielded and semi-soundproof, we missed out on all anxiety and action in the city. Only later I accounts: from mass suicide to strip tease, looting to shooting, “coming out” to hiding out that I could fathom the depth of misfortune and mishap befallen
Others, in groups of 45-50, staged for Heli-lift. In one account (Honorable Exit), they commandeered an official limo – even an embassy fire truck – to amuse themselves, turning “America” into Arcade, frequent parties in otherwise more peaceful times in the embassy to boost morale (the green zone) termed Luau Night like right after Thieu’s three-hours radio farewell address.
Eventually and unfortunately, 420 – including hung-over South Korean – “missed the train” (and had to straighten out those paper “airplanes” to buy some breakfast) – italics mine. Far Eastern Economic Review journalist reported “plain dainty Jane” looted embassy couch (ghe salon), once seated dignitaries and diplomats – from Lodge to LBJ. Slightly burned dollars from DAO or the embassy, later seen resurfaced in Guam.
Had we made over the wall of the embassy like our uncle, we might have moved in full circle and walk home in defeat.
Intended mostly for our US ambassador and his crew, Operation Talon Wise, at 4:58AM, pulled anchor, with (Tiger, Tiger, Tiger) boarded next-to-last CH- 46 Lazy Ace 09 flanked by a larger CH-53. A still photo showed Martin in crumpled suit and bloodshot eyes aboard the USS Blue Ridge giving interview i.e. “Oh, I thought we had a shot at it” (via French Southern ambassadorial attempt).
Rain and tears, artificially induced by tear gas whose canisters and liquor bottles rolled down the stairs to a stop. The end of decades-long US involvement.
At 7:51 AM the last eleven marines (having told the remaining crowd that “I will not leave you behind” – Marines’ mantra except for a quick stop at the john “mac dai”). In fact, it’s the call sign “Swift 22” that did it.
Eyes scanned, flags (of our fathers) folded – in contrast to Iwo Jima’s military ceremony. Marine Major described it as a scene from On the Beach. Moralist would say our sins have finally caught up with us.
Meanwhile, the Architect of War was hasty in announcing “Peace is at hand”. Then “It’s over” (still with evening-out tuxedo giving a high-five in the Oval Office); before self-correcting at next day Press Conference: “Sorry! we were eleven-marines short”.
That exit closed out US decades- long campaign, from Johnson’s War Power Act (like Grandma’s sleep shirt, it covers everything) against Communist aggression to “honorable exit” after Nixon had played the China card.
By pure luck we fled via the river artery on the most unseaworthy vessel (twice at zero mph stand still) under the noses of danger. “Mother wants you to call home”? “Mom, it’s me, Whiskey Joe” overheard on DAO two-way “What are we going to do with the 2 (last US) bodies?” Reply: “Take them to the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital” (medical facility nearest to the airport). In crisis there is luck.
Wednesday APRIL 30, 1975, OPEN SEA
Dawn broke. Loud cheers erupted Apparently, contracted to tow multiple loads of passengers, the towboat was running – with engine-light on. Everything that moved, especially those overworked 75 Marines choppers, moved.
Of all objects at sea, we were the slowest but glad to be moving at all.
A trip of 40 miles took us all night.
It was like D-Day in reverse – screen right to screen left: Hueys, Chinooks and Sea-Stallions all zipped and buzzed overhead and away from Cap St Jacque. Death of a Nation with surround sound, showing “Charlon Heston” in red robe and wide-spread arms like Moses summoning Old-Testament apocalyptic plague (of bugs, single-piloted choppers, dotting and darkening the sky) “Let my people go!!”.
Leaf-like boats battered and beaten swung up and down, even sideway to stay out of bazooka shot from high-vantage point. Under the watching eyes of world opinion and world press, a single-engine was hit causing huge splashes against an already bleak Vung-Tau sky. NBC footage that day showed what was transpiring (Last Days of Vietnam) including a burnt press car, Canadian flag even.
What started out with a boating incident (Tonkin) closed with a boating incident (Vung Tau).
We wrenched rain waters from a poncho for drinks. A single bag of instant noodle for 9. a Polanski’s the Pianist scene: whereby the dad cut a menial brown-sugar cube with his pocketknife for entire immigrant family.
20 miles out we spotted the 7th Fleet with their 40+ war ships evenly fanned out in battle-arc formation. Its protruded canons looked like sun rays on an overcast morning.
Apparently, those rocket launchers could have been taken out, but the fleet were ordered to stand down. That long war was largely a land-and-air (Heli and B52’s) war, exhaustive enough without an encore.
Soft flesh and snail’s pace, we’re no match against the backdrop of a vast ocean and Soviet-supplied military hardware. Finally, we closed the distance against all odds.
Technically, when you got transferred to a battleship (USS Blue Ridge?) it was as good as setting foot on US soil. Our Ellis-Island moment.
Unsteady on a swaying gangway. we did however not see the Statue of Liberty. Just an oil-drum filled with freshly confiscated guns and knives. A navy sentry eyeballed all carry-on.
Leaning to peak over the person ahead in line, the giraffe in me saw an open Samsonite sardine-packed with gold bars (glistening like les poisons doré– in the Au Marche poem I learned at French school).
Not everyone made their escape as hastily.
From one other account, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky also landed on USS Midway where he reluctantly handed over his handgun (purportedly a personal gift from John Wayne).
Passing the Security checkpoint was no cause for celebration.
All empty surface on ship deck had been taken (even helicopters got pushed out to the ocean to make room). A Huey desperately and vertically touched down on the bucket-opening of the barge behind us. His miscalculated and hail-Mary force-land caused – steel-against-steel uproar of screeching sound often heard in sheet metal shop. Embers and loosened blade coming fast at us.
Faces. froze against wet floor. Except for my medic brother who had hitched rides on leave from Qui Nhon where he stationed, none of us was ever near a military chopper, much less brushing against its deadly blade. All day, everyone prayed for chopper landing. When it finally did, it came not as previously expected.
Pulling off that spectacular stunt i.e. repurposing abandoned barge into a Huey Helipad – without a slight regard for other’s safety, the pilot, out of mercy of our ship captain, got a provision of water and an inflated raft to seek shelter elsewhere. He might very well be our first Boat People.
In all, seven thousand shore-to-ship Frequent Wind evacuees made it. With helicopters pushed off ships I thought to myself, that day, that last day of the war, we let tons of steel – sunk to the bottom of South China Sea and by extension the American collective consciousness.
Sixth hurdle!
May 4, 1975, Subic Bay
Per 1954 Geneva Accord, close to 1 million northerners, majority of whom Catholics, elected or were persuaded to go South. Among whom Mom, Pop and siblings. Then history repeats itself. Joining Exodus 2.0 were me and my sister’s children.
We chain-linked step-by-step down to the ammunition dungeon, where from Saigon to Subic Bay, we were like Jonah – in the belly of the beast – incubated but unconsolable.
Starved and seasick, in a blur, I mentally blocked out the diesel-stench (nothing to throw up) cruise except for one chow call: an orange = courtesy of officer’s mess. So grateful and fearful (of starvation), I ate it all, peels and pulp.
For fresh air, I climbed up to the open deck, only to eyewitness a live sad cremation of real paper money let go into the wind, like ash from an urn. A guy with a thousand-yard stare, tossed “Ben Franklin’s” – our Tran Hung Dao biggest bills, one handful at a time. Blood money or unpaid payroll – no one knows. If any, the answer is ” blowin in the wind” (at the embassy, it took 8 hours to burn a million dollars cash, an order from Sec of Commerce).
Dust to dust.
No Sirens.
Only a silent rendition of Auld Lang Syne to end a set which opened with Bing Crosby’s White Christmas on Armed Forces Radio. “Mother wants you to call home” (heard every two hours).
Later I met a former RVNN officer. His fleet was escorted from Phu Quoc to the Philippines by the USS Kirk. Their ship’s serial numbers got painted over, old-regime flags down, insignia off – per International-law enforced by the Philippines government. Those rusty ships were later donated to the Philippines and Thai Land, courtesy of the US of Great A.
Grown men cried. The national anthem played and flag lowered.
Not the Liberation of Paris nor D-V Day. Weeping sailor vs kissing sailor, Subic Bay vs Times Square (where a nurse in uniform tilt her head in mutual consent to a public display of affection in celebration).
Indeed, finally on safe shore, I spotted a line of subdued and disrobed RVNN’s – in newly issued white T’s and blue jeans. Apparently, not just flags and vessels, but uniforms and insignias stripped. The big reset. Unlike US marine counterparts energetically and enthusiastically charged in opposite direction just a decade before into the welcoming arms of Ao Dai).
Failure is an orphan.
And orphan I started by pitching our worthless piastre to US naval troops: “In the future, it will turn souvenirs”. like Long Binh shoeshine boys with limited English “number 1” and “number 10.
Then, in the middle of the night, a welcome party handed to each new survivor a sandwich and a coke. Shoulders stooped, knees-deep, we waded in single file to strange shores.
Seventh hurdle!
Summer 1975
After three days of vetting, then a cramped seating on a C130 floor, we flew to Wake Island given Guam at capacity. Those same charter planes might have for days flown our troubled sky, carrying orphans and nuns, bar girls and bellhops, civilians and deserters. Per Woodward’s Shadow, it was then that DoD Secretary ignored and disobeyed a Presidential (Ford) order:” bring as many aircraft as possible to bear” in last-minute rescue attempt. Ron Nessen mentioned the 129 Marines still un-evacuated in the rear, previously detailed to protect 34 overworked helicopters.
Stateless, we, “Asylum seekers” each obtained an A – alien – number. For the 130,810 and 3300 orphans, our parole granted (Senate Judiciary Committee and the Indochina Migration and Refugees Resettlement Assistance Act). Between 1933 and 1945 approximately 125,000 German, mostly Jewish, immigrated to the United States. This time we were not given similar US public support. Certainly not Senator George McGovern’s and his Democrat colleagues’.
An angered Ford (but not without compassion and moral leadership – shown in a stock photo, holding a bi-racial Babylift survivor at SF irport, or emptying his pocket change to WH photographer) bypassed Congress and appealed directly to VOLAGs and church groups for help with mass resettlement (Congressional brainstorm: an Amish-like self-sustained hectares in Pennsylvania to an industrial city off the coast of Virginia, per Dr. Hung’s book).
That summer, clear sky clean water, we processed our grief while the US government processed our papers. Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front remarks:” NYC, and by extension, the US, was not all walls made of steel, but of papers”.
We had no inclination to spend a “vacation” at the expense of the American public. The adults bore the brunt of worry (Giay rach phai giu lay le = starved but hold on to your dignity e.g. Xoi com chua? Da roi! Eaten yet? Yep).
Eighth hurdle.
From May to July, fish sticks and French fries, Fruit-of-the-loom, and Head-and-Shoulders, we were on the receiving end of charity and compassion. Consumerism reached us on the Island ahead of Mainland. Out of the 4 military installation-turned-processing camps (Ft Eglin, Ft Chaffee, Camp Pendleton, and Ft Indiantown Gap), we ended up with Pennsylvania, the closest to D.C. where my brother-in-law once visited.
Without being told, we split and scattered to four zip codes. Tearful goodbye aside we agreed on Crofton, Maryland, a cousin address, for future reference (if you were to add foreign exchange students and expat wives, Vietnamese in America at the time were just a handful (Asian immigration quota was around 100 per year). President Ford argued for an increase and parole given the circumstance.
To us, Mainland, Maryland (Agnew land) or Disneyland was just as good.
Many shot-gun weddings were officiated by camp Chaplain, mix and match.com as hastily as those songs from home I record in our barrack’s bathroom. We all fret separation and extinction
September 1975, State College, PA
From Central District to Central Pennsylvania, I had to overcome social-economic, linguistic and logistics challenges: barbed wires, boom-barrier, sand wall, raining rockets and flying blades.
My itinerary was multimodal: climbing wall, wading waters, car and cargo planes, barge, bus and battleship. I was flanked by Carbine and Canons, M-16’s and rockets. Finally, a few miles to State College, hold it … my house-church-designated rep, a divorced Unitarian minister with time in his hand (he took up Cello 101 at the university), wanted to show some class by scooping up a Woodie-Guthrie look-alike on Hwy 322. “How do you do!” for a “what’s up”.
Only then my liberal arts education could officially commence – one peck on college typewriter at a time (sounded more like gunshots on my first day. What a nightmare).
Armed with 300 bucks (a three-fold increase from what was in the French dictionary we managed to slip out of the country) from 1975 fiscal left-over aid, disbursed and distributed via the IRC (International Rescue Committee)- I grabbed Penn State by the horns – Blake’s “holding Infinity in the palm of my hand” like a cast-away.
Humbly yet eagerly, I held on to my birth certificate and my straight A’s transcript on Red-Cross stationary job Letter of Recommendation from the Bureau of Child Welfare – where I volunteered as an interpreter
Having missed “Move-In” date, I played catch-up: from night shifts on campus to a job offer at WNEP-TV 16 upon graduation.
Ninth hurdle
To my surprise, Happy Valley itself lagg behind counterculture movement. Penn State not Kent State. Months-long hair and jeans helped me blend in. Seeing autumn foliage, I realized it’s no longer a 2-seasons 2-wheels country, nor We but an I culture (in LA, it’s I-drive then Uber/AI drive). My first impressions: a PA-licensed driver obeyed reflexively a STOP sign amid heavy downpour in the camp. Rules-based reflex in a mono-chronist society, first comes first served.
My first impressions and culture shock!
After a long and lonely winter, I sat on the grass (while others smoked “grass”) and heard “Here Comes the Sun”, opened our Spring break (my Woodstock). I hummed along, knowing for sure” “it’s alright”. (The British Invasion arrived via Armed Forces Radio). Consequently, we, “Come together” embracing rock and roll (See Vietnamizing Woodstock) to quelch war-weary propaganda (Tung canh chim tim ve to am – SVN attempt at flipping the VCs).
Music and mourning aside, I am forever indebted to 58,220 names on that dark Washington marble. On his way to the airport, Frank Snepp noticed President Thieu looking away from: “The noble sacrifice of the Allied Soldiers will never be forgotten.” (Thieu’s predecessor, Diem, wasn’t lucky. He was shot by his designated driver in 1963).
A TK – teacher’s kid- my mom instilled her Old-style gratitudeI grew up knowing grandma except for “ba vu nuoi”, who was her guardian i time at a semi-live-in at Hanoi French pedagogy boarding school.
I likewise. remember and reflect on the sacrifice of Blacks from Mississippi and Whites from Pennsylvania, linger their girls wholetters.
P.S. Last week, I met a son of a G.I. Immediate kindred spirit. His dad returned from “over there” and stayed in silence ever since.
________________________________________
It’s been years:
- since that tamarind tree of the US Embassy was cut down to make room for helipad,
- since Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” – about going home – not fleeing from it
- since an NVN T-54 charged and crashed the Independence-Palace gate (no GPS)
- and since trade and travel finally re-established.
But something kept nagging,
“Do you know where you’re going to, do you like the things that life is showing you…” heard over the radio that Wake Island summer.
What made us let go of the endearing for the estranged? Wanderlust? If so, the body might be transported multi-modally, but the morale, attitude and emotions still reside.
Was it my brother’s hyper-anxiety? My sister’s protective instincts? My brother-in-law’s nostalgia for that Cherry-blossoms arade (he showed us those travel slides after his DOS training trip)? Or I just wanted out, being stir-crazy and suffocated in the back – my mom and four of my sister’s kids in tow, in 105 degrees heat with car window up.
Did we even once think about our father? (We could have just climbed back over the wall or swam back – as 1000 petitioners did on Truong Son, a return ship from Guam). Or during our frenzy fleeing, we reached the point of no return.
A Black-Swan phenomenon.
Among peers, I had friends who:
- left on planned evacuation – Thai
- jumped in then out of plane – Thoa
- got off a helicopter but still in uniform (AWOL?) – Cang
- was with means yet ended up a Boat People – Phong
At Pier 5 dock our only hope was the known past would serve as guide for the unknown future; somehow, somewhere, we would find kind hearts and firm ground to start over.
Start-over I did, amidst 9% unemployment and a slim 36% of public opinion for us (vs 54% against per Gallup poll). Like a knife cutting through hot butter, I was on my own (my mom and her Ao Dai got left behind in that Northeast cold camp without a sponsor; her journey lasted the longest, from April 29 through Sept 13, 1975).
Living out of a rented basement of my divorce sponsor, I juggled a janitorial shift by night and a Speech class by day! (Speech field trip was just a short stroll to the Udall’s presidential campaign on campus).
One has to put the least strain on the system. Culture shock abated, I invited fellow exiled students to cake and music. White Christmas was on for the second time that year, this time, with real snow and boots outside, not 105 degrees back in late April outside of the US embassy.
We needed a haircut. It’s obvious from the outside, invisible tattoo, not so obvious. Fellow sufferers of fate, like our Remarque’s Ravic, in Shadows of Paradise (under the table emigrant surgeon operated for cash, after patients got anaesthetized by licensed and legit surgeon).
Joining the huddle mass, we lived in quiet desperation. Our American Dream has been what we made of it, at least its self-fulfilling and selective version.
This story could otherwise be told from the P.O.V. of my sister’s protective instincts or my brother’s fear of reprisal.
My sister, a Director of the Agriculture Development Bank, rebuilt her credentials – earning a CPA of Commonwealth Virginia. Her 80th-birthday saw all four children intact! She – strong, sincere, straightforward – thrived on challenges e.g. find a way out, just like other adults crossing earlier River of Ben Hai.
Just like early settlers crossing the last few miles from Ellis Island to Staten Island, we waited anxiously from Wake Island looking to Ellis Island, luckier than most e.g. tossing babies (like basketballs), flying-on-empty or climbing over embassy wall or Berlin Wall.
May God rest her soul (a year shy of her migration 2.0. 50th Anniversary.)
My brother still couldn’t believe we pull it off. He once thought we drive around to assess the situation, or best case, “be stationed” for good out of a Wake Island barrack, like Captain Hawk Eye – in fact, our distinguished senator from Rhode Island had suggested just that, Borneo (like that last lepers’ colony in Louisiana) to save taxpayers some money.
To my brother, Maryland is Promised Land. His signature French refrain “Mexi….co” then Colora…do where he had previously spent a year obtaining modern medical equipment training, courtesy of the US of A DOD.Out of gratitude (he reminisced that “tasty” sandwich on Subic Bay, first food after five seafaring days) he donated
A decade later, my P/T dad joined us, with violin in hand (not unlike those weeping girls). aimless feeling guilty as Hell, God knows, unknown,” I read so I won’t be alone”. No college-orientation nor graduation. ceremony.
Years later my brother-in-law was laid to rest. His car key once again tossed. This time to his granddaughter. His marker: “Life passes like a blink of an eye” (or a Simca on its last leg). He was an integral part of our larger learner’s family (either dictionary or Hit Parade for music). Songs like “Never on Sunday” kept playing in my head as I first heard it blasted from his newly bought Akai tape.
For me, with Vietnam (both war and country) behind and dawn in America each day, I let go things not under my control. Yet at times, the past creeps up, reminding me of “When I was young, I listened to the radio, waiting for my favorite song.” My sandbox was “Your Song” and my boombox plays “Bell Bottom Blues” (“give me one more day, I don’t want to fade away”). My spectrum ranges from self-disgust (You can’t even help your dad) to self-delusion (playing God in subsequent sponsorship leverag my citizenship entitlement. All I know was, one day I was sleeping in my bed The next, I was homeless, stateless and fatherless. Me 1.0 purely Vietnamese. Me 2.0 do or die “banana” American. Me 3.0 regretful grateful VietnameseAmerican.
________________________________________
April 30, 1975, was like a bookend. The other bookend -April 1981- found me comfortably settle in a graduate-school library, flipping through the pages of Newsweek for a break from assigned reading “the Medium is the Message”.
Its Asia section caught my attention. My people ventured to sea with a 50:50 chance of survival.
An aerial shot showed tiny boats small as autumn leaves, like one that got hit on my own journey six years earlier; women and children were on their vulnerable most without the 7th-fleet. Repeatedly raped and robbed by Thai pirates then abandoned to certain death – unless to survive on fellow passengers’ dead meat.
Never did I envision a trip back so soon, even with self-recrimination and survivor’s guilt ( symptoms of PTSD).
“He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep while gaining that which he cannot lose”, by Jim Elliot, a fellow Wheaton alumnus, fresh on my mind and I owe him ever since (perhaps on Todd Beamer’s, another alum, when terrorists commandeered United Airlines Flight 93) for a chance to die.
After all, my other head already rolled – the other side of Pier 5. What’s left to lose. Having jumped through 9 hoops and hurdles, I might as well make it an even 10. ”
Back to those prison-turned-makeshift camps. Slamming doors vs Sliding doors (“When you look behind there was no open door”). At the time, I barely got my US Passport – and my “GoFundMe” (for youngsters who could only relate to crowdsourcing) were typed letters and licked stamps to anyone in my address book soliciting donations (I learned this from running for the American Heart Association).
In Hongkong, I offered any help I could: relief supplies, ESL classes, entertainment events and church-sitting (on my second tour). Hong Kong Island lock-ins were fed up with camp foods e.g. sardines just as we fish-sticks back on Wake Island.
My micro-fund raising from domestic stamps was converted into international stamps (those addressed but not stamped par-avion letters were sneaked out inside my shoes at the end of each day then hot chili (in) at the beginning of the next. I would never forget that lone shirtless survivor – a half-Chinese boy who stuttered.
After 2 tours (thanks to student-loan payment deferral program) as a responsible steward of blessing– I was distributing needed supplies to near-death fellow countrymen, then suddenly remembered I myself was on the receiving end of a Coke and a sandwich on Subic Bay ( a nun and a priest – pastorally handed out). What else could a communication major do to give counsel to – as an example – 2 raped and forced-by-circumstances cannibalism survivors – besides being there – upstairs of that Jubilee prison for a show of support). Again, with culture shock and catharsis, I found in giving there is healing.
Instead of improving my IQ in school, I ended up with better EQ in life.
Like that currency-as-confetti man, I found myself, on day off, at the peak of Hong Kong New Territories look back and long for home which by summer of 1981, still off limit.
Our Father in Heaven, our father in homeland…:
Back then, in our long journey into the night, we faced the Unknown. Yet our seeker’s genes constantly grabbed and reached for” Infinity in the palm of our hand”. A truth that hit home to me as it once did my sister:
“Do you know the way to the river”.
— THE END —
Credits rolled up for Crisis and Luck, the movie version 🙂
Homeboy w/ carbine N1 escort: Thai, neighbor
Father: Nguyen Duc Tien
Mother: Ngac Thi THo
Sister: Nguyen thi Bich Thu – Trung Vuong alumnus
Brother-in-law: Hoang Dinh Tuynh – Buoi alumnus
Brother: Nguyen Duc Thuy – CVA alumnus
Myself: Nguyen Duc Thang – CVA alumnus
Niece I: Hoang Thi Thu Tam – Catholic relief to Cambodian
Niece II: Hoang thi Thu Nga
Nephew I: Hoang Dinh Chien
Nephew II: Hoang Dinh My
Friend I : Trinh van Thoa (San Diego) CVA
Friend II: Nguyen Dang Phong (S. California) CVA
Friend III: Do Thanh Thai (S California) CVA
Friend IV: Cang (pilot) ARVN neighbor on same ship
Child Welfare Bureauat Indiantown Gap
Sponsor: Rev Ernest Hawk, rep of Sycamore house-church
Sponsor: Dr Rustum Roy (Founder of Material Research Lab at Penn State University) and the Waslunds at Weis.
Thank you for helping
Thang Nguyen 555 
Leave a comment