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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A Note to Readers

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Map

  1. A Little Boy All Alone

  2. A New Life in Saigon

  3. At Home at Holt

  4. A Family for Long

  5. No Way Out

  6. The Crash of the C-5A

  7. Operation Babylift

  8. The Flight to Freedom

  9. Into the Eye of the Storm

  10. A Real American Boy

  11. Return to Vietnam

  Afterword

  Multimedia Recommendations

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Photo Credits

  Index

  By the same author

  Copyright

  For Alison,

  born in my heart

  The author’s Vietnamese daughter, Alison (center, baseball cap), with children in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam, near the orphanage where she once lived

  War, no end to it, people scattered in all directions …

  —PHUNG KHAC KHOAN

  Vietnamese poet, 1528–1613

  A Note to Readers

  The events I recount in this book are based on documented historical fact and the recollections of those whose stories appear, and as memories are necessarily subjective, they may differ from those of others. I have reconstructed conversations from the memories of these individuals, bearing in mind that many of the incidents in this story occurred in the 1970s and that people rarely have perfect recall after so many years.

  Introduction

  I will never forget the fear. In the first days of April 1975, the baby daughter we had never seen was trapped in Saigon, South Vietnam, half a world away from us. Alice Spring was only six months old. She had been brought to Saigon for medical treatment from her orphanage deep in the Mekong Delta. When her health improved, Friends For All Children, the humanitarian agency we had worked with for two years in hopes of adopting a Vietnamese orphan, told us about her. Would we be interested?

  Yes! we cried. Send her immediately! That was in January 1975. We knew it would take until summer to complete paperwork so she could come to us. We settled in to wait, loving her from afar.

  But in March it suddenly became clear that South Vietnam was about to fall to the North Vietnamese forces. We began to wonder if we would ever hold our baby girl. In a very short time, Saigon was surrounded by Communist troops. The only safe way out of the city was by air, and commercial airliners were no longer flying into Saigon.

  It seemed like a miracle when the American government responded to pleas for help to evacuate the orphans in Saigon who were already assigned to adoptive homes abroad. Our hearts were filled with joy.

  But on April 4, we awoke to the horrifying news that the first planeload of orphans on Operation Babylift had crashed. The children were from our agency, Friends For All Children, and many were dead. Was Alice Spring on that flight? When we finally learned she was not, we rejoiced, even as we grieved for the families who had lost their children.

  Today, Alice Spring, renamed Alison, is a happy, healthy adult—a college graduate and a mother. Growing up, she remembered nothing about being evacuated in the nick of time from a doomed city, nor did she remember her homeland. In 1996, shortly after Vietnam reopened to the West, our family journeyed with Alison to see that homeland. We were enchanted by the beauty of the country, the warmth of the people, and the delicious cuisine—all part of the rich Vietnamese culture.

  But the highlight of our journey was meeting the brave and wonderful people, many of them Catholic nuns, who had cared for Alison as an infant and made certain, when she became sick, that she got to Saigon and to help. We saw Newhaven, the care center sponsored by Friends For All Children, where she grew strong during the months leading up to the Babylift. With us on the trip was Mary Nelle Gage, a Sister of Loretto from Colorado who had worked at Newhaven. We also met with Rosemary Taylor, the Australian at the heart of Friends For All Children, who many believe single-handedly did more to assist the orphanages and orphaned children of South Vietnam than any other person during the war. She explained the challenges of trying to care for overwhelming numbers of children, many very ill, in a country at war, with too few supplies and too little medicine.

  We returned from our trip humbled by the devotion of these volunteers in South Vietnam, both the Vietnamese and those from other countries. My daughter owes her life to them, and so do thousands of other adoptees and other Vietnamese children.

  I have long felt that the story of the plight of the war orphans, and of the Babylift itself, needed to be told. With my daughter unable to remember what happened to her at so young an age, I looked for an older Babylift child with memories of that fateful time. Matt Steiner, who was eight years old when he was evacuated, turned out to be that person. Unlike my daughter, who is full-blooded Vietnamese, Matt is Amerasian, with a Vietnamese mother and an unknown American father. When his family could no longer provide for him, he was fortunate, just as Alison was, to be cared for by an international relief agency that could help him find an adoptive family. Matt and Alison both know they were lucky, even if Alison never knew her biological parents and Matt lost his.

  Innocent children have always been the victims of war, and never more so than in the last century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 90 percent of war casualties were soldiers. In the last decade of that century, 90 percent of the casualties were civilians. Many of those were children. More than 1.5 million children died in the Holocaust of World War II. In the 1990s, more than two million children died in wars around the globe.

  Orphaned children, and those left behind by parents unable to care for them, are also the victims of war. In South Vietnam, more than a million children were orphaned by the war and only a few thousand made it to adoptive families. Of the rest, some found their way to relatives, if they were fortunate enough to have them. Others tried to live on the streets, fending for themselves, while still others were taken to orphanages, where they might grow up if they were lucky enough to get the food they needed and if they didn’t catch a fatal disease. Some never grew up at all, but instead turned their faces to the wall and refused nourishment, perhaps because even at such a tender age, they’d had enough of the world.

  A young boy and his brother flee the fighting in South Vietnam’s central highlands

  As you read this story of the other side of war—not of soldiers and battles, but of orphans and people trying to help them—my hope is that you will think of all the other children in this world whose lives are scarred by war. And when you have the opportunity, I hope that you will do whatever you can to help children, wherever they live, who are in harm’s way and cannot help themselves.

  Prologue

  Vietnam is an ancient land, both beautiful and mysterious. It lies along the eastern coast of Southeast Asia, half a world away from the United States. It is rich in natural resources, and since its earliest history, these riches have been coveted by other nations.

  Though Vietnam has been conquered many times, its people have always fought valiantly to expel invaders, including the Chinese, who ruled Vietnam for a thousand years, ending in the early part of the tenth century. The French arrived in Vietnam in 1859 and left in defeat in 1954. />
  That same year, because of conflict over who would control the country, Vietnam split in two. North Vietnam was under Communist rule, and South Vietnam struggled to establish an independent republic. Both North and South wanted a unified nation, but each wanted its own form of government. Thus began the long war between the two Vietnams, a war that would take many lives and leave no family untouched by sorrow.

  1

  A LITTLE BOY ALL ALONE

  His mother gave him the simple Vietnamese name of Long.

  When he was born in 1966, Long’s mother—whose name he no longer recalls—was living with his American father. Deep in memory, Long carries a vague image of this man. It’s like a photo. In it, he sees his parents together. His father has blue eyes and hair the color of sand. He towers over Long’s petite Vietnamese mother, so lovely, with silky black hair and laughing brown eyes. They look very happy.

  Long doesn’t think they were married, nor does he know why his father had come to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. He might have been a soldier or a businessman. All Long knows is that by the time he was two, his father was gone. And his mother was never happy again.

  Long does not know why his mother wanted to live in Saigon. Because of the war, she might have thought they were safe there, since it was the capital of South Vietnam and an important base for the military. Known as the Paris of the Orient, the city captivated the senses with its tropical flowers, graceful palm trees, constant crush of people and traffic, its bright sun and unrelenting heat. In the midst of war, it was full of energy, intrigue, and excitement.

  Many Americans were in Saigon. The United States supported South Vietnam’s struggle against the Communists of North Vietnam. With the assistance of other democratic nations, in 1961 the U.S. began to send advisers and then troops to help in the conflict. By 1965, nearly two hundred thousand American soldiers were serving in the Vietnam War, fighting alongside the South Vietnamese.

  Saigon in the 1950s, when it was known as the Paris of the Orient. Bicycles and cyclos were, and still are, a popular form of transportation

  The American government had its embassy and military headquarters in Saigon. In 1968, shortly before Long and his mother arrived in the city, the Communists launched an all-out assault on South Vietnam. They almost took over the American embassy, and there was fighting in the streets of Saigon. Because of this, security was tight in the city, and soldiers were everywhere. Long soon got used to seeing military jeeps, trucks, and soldiers on the streets. He learned that if you begged for candy and gum from the friendly American GIs, you usually got it.

  When Long was three or four, he and his mother moved in with a Vietnamese man. It’s possible his mother married this man, for Long thought of him as his stepfather. The man had a son, an older boy Long called his stepbrother. The four of them lived in a tiny apartment in a rundown neighborhood near the Saigon River. They had no electricity or indoor plumbing. When they needed to go to the bathroom, they waited their turn at the wooden stalls lined up along the banks of the river.

  During the decade Americans fought in South Vietnam, children in villages as well as cities discovered that many GIs were friendly, and often carried candy and gum for them

  The war had little reality for Long. What was real was how his violent stepfather treated his mother. When he struck her, Long tried to protect her.

  In 1971, when he was five, Long and his mother fled the city to escape his stepfather. In the village where Long’s mother had grown up, they crowded in with relatives. There was always someone just a few steps away. One of them was Long’s grandmother, called Ba. He liked Ba, who was tiny and feisty and cooked delicious, spicy food. Ba often chewed a seed called betel nut, which had turned her teeth dark. Many Vietnamese, especially older ones, chewed betel nut, believing it improved their health and protected their teeth from decay.

  Today, homes in rural Vietnamese villages look much like they always have. Long may have lived in a house like this one

  Caught in a crossfire, two village children cling to their mothers as an American paratrooper searches for Vietcong snipers

  The village, which sat at the edge of a jungle, was its own separate world. While the adults and older children worked in the rice paddies outside the village, the old folks like Ba cared for the young children.

  During the year that Long and his mother lived there, war did not disturb the village. But in many other areas, villagers lived in constant fear of soldiers. They also feared the South Vietnamese who were Vietcong (short for Vietnamese Communists), guerrilla fighters who sided with the North. The Vietcong did not wear military uniforms. Instead, they looked the same as the South Vietnamese villagers, making it very difficult to detect them. At any time, the Vietcong might raid a village, taking all the villagers’ food, killing their livestock and burning their homes, and even torturing or killing the villagers themselves.

  Trouble could also come from soldiers of the South Vietnamese army, who were looking for Vietcong or their sympathizers. During the decade that American soldiers fought in the war, they, too, might terrorize a village in their search for “Charlie”—their name for the Vietcong. Whole villages could be destroyed by any of these soldiers, or villages might be bombed from the air. Some villagers were killed while working in their rice paddies or while trying to protect their families.

  But in Long’s village, these terrible things had never happened. And in spite of food shortages affecting the entire country, he had enough to eat.

  Long adapted easily to village life. He was always barefoot and wore shorts and cotton shirts. Though his mother had worn dresses in the city, here she wore pants and long-sleeved shirts to work in the humid heat of the rice paddies. When she pinned her hair under the cone-shaped cane hat she wore to keep the hot sun off her face, she looked like any other villager.

  A special treat for Long was riding the big water buffaloes used to help with the work. These animals were the villagers’ tractors. Long looked forward to the day he could be a real buffalo boy and help take care of the great beasts. Sometimes his mother took him out to the rice paddies so he could see how the rice was growing. He liked walking along the dikes, but kept a careful watch for snakes and lizards.

  Long wanted to become a buffalo boy like the boy shown here

  Though the villagers worked hard, they also had good times. Storytelling was considered an art, and storytellers drew appreciative audiences who listened intently to their retellings of old legends and folktales. Some villagers enjoyed chess and card games. Others played musical instruments while villagers sang and danced. Every holiday was a village celebration.

  Each morning, Long attended classes in the one-room schoolhouse, where he sat on a wooden bench with the other children. He wished he could go to school all day, but only children whose parents could afford to pay extra tuition were allowed to do that. In the afternoons, after he had helped Ba sweep the house, gather firewood, or weed the small family garden, he had the run of the village.

  Long was an easygoing little boy with a big smile, and he readily made friends. If any of the villagers were disturbed by the fact that he was half white, he does not remember it. “When I was very young, I looked like the other children,” he says. “I had black hair, brown eyes, and my skin was dark enough that I could blend in. As I grew older, it became more obvious that I was half white. What set me apart from the other children when I was young wasn’t the way I looked, but that I had no father. I didn’t mind. My mother was gentle and sweet. I didn’t feel the loss of a father, as long as I had her.”

  But something wasn’t right with his mother. She slept more and more, ate little, and grew silent. She lost interest in village life. She still took excellent care of Long, but she seemed distant. Only rarely could Long get her to smile.

  One day she took him on a walk across the fields and rice paddies and along a jungle path. They reached a road where an automobile was waiting. Long had never been in a car, and found it a gre
at curiosity. It was large and shiny. The door opened, and Long’s mother urged him to get in. He climbed into the backseat, expecting her to join him. Before he knew what was happening, the car sped away. His mother still stood by the road.

  Long panicked. He cried her name, but the car would not stop. When at last it did, the driver had brought Long to a vast plantation that had once belonged to the French. There, a Vietnamese couple tried to make him feel welcome. They offered him toys, food, and new clothes. They were very kind to him. They said they owned the plantation, which would be his new home, and they would be his new parents.

  But he would have none of it. Where was his mother? He wanted his mother! Whenever anyone tried to talk to him or come near him, he shrieked at the top of his lungs. All day and all night, for several days and nights, he cried and carried on. He refused to eat, even though his stomach rumbled from hunger.

  Finally, the couple gave up. Long was put in the car and returned to the place where his mother had left him. She met him there, her face without expression, and took him back to the village. Long was bewildered. Why had his mother tried to give him away? She would not answer him, and in his relief to be back with her, he did not ask again.

  A few months later, in 1972, when Long was six, the world as he knew it ended. Awakening one morning on the sleeping mat next to his mother’s, he was surprised that she was not yet up. He shook her, then realized how still she was.

  He screamed, and his grandmother rushed in. “What is it?” Ba cried. Trembling, Long pointed at the silent form on the mat. Ba touched her daughter’s cold face. When she could not awaken her, she began to wail. Other family members quickly gathered around. Long’s beautiful mother was dead.

  How had such a terrible thing happened? No one knew for sure, but later Long heard relatives say that she had probably taken poison.