#2 I worked with the resettlement effort as a volunteer, starting in May 1975... sort of a combination social-worker, English teacher, driver, organizer, publicist... helping to resettle Vietnamese refugees in my hometown. One of them, just a kid at the time, had been a Viet AF MP, on duty at Tan Sun Nhut. He and the last of the Viet MPs were trying to work crowd control on the very last day, when the North Viets began shelling the airfield, and only helicopters could still fly. He was carried off his feet in a rush of people, and wound up in the doorway of a helicopter, and just on an impulse, threw away his weapon and got on. The heli flew out to the USS Hancock, which was landing them so thick and fast, they were emptying them out and throwing them overboard. Another family I worked with were supposed to be evacuated; the wife had taught English, and the husband was a librarian for USIS. They were waiting at their house with four childred, and the wife's mother... and only got away because the wife's brother was a Viet Coast Guard officer with access to a 100-ft launch. He sent away his crew to fetch their families, and he came to check on his mother. He told his sister and family to not wait a minute longer but come with him. They crammed a hundred people onto that launch. One of the other young men was a Viet AF mechanic; he got out because he was on a plane full of military technicians who flew to Thailand. Americans who had Vietnamese connections went all out during April 1975, sponsering out Vietnamese friends and family so they could get visas and leave. I met this one man who flew to Saigon to get his wife's parents out. He went for them, and came back with them...AND all of his wifes' sisters and brothers and their entire families, six of the inlaw's neighbors, and some total strangers that he took pity on, along the way; eighty+ people, all told.
I swear, I've blogged more about all this than I have heard on NPR, though. |