Escape from Saigon

by Andrea Warren

  Instead of taking a stand, the president of South Vietnam ordered his troops to fall back to the Saigon region to defend the city and outlying areas. The retreat turned into a rush for safety. As frantic soldiers fled toward Saigon, so did hundreds of thousands of refugees, jamming roads, disrupting the military, and creating a withdrawal that became known as the Convoy of Tears.

  Pursuing them was the army of North Vietnam.

  Carrying her wounded child, a woman and other refugees flee from heavy fighting north of Saigon in 1975

  5

  NO WAY OUT

  By the end of March 1975, the war had reached Saigon. The North Vietnamese troops were still miles away, but they had the city surrounded. Soon they would break through the last South Vietnamese military resistance and march into the streets.

  Within the city, everything had changed. People feared for their lives. The Communist takeover of Danang, the second largest city in South Vietnam, had been bloody and brutal. Many children were killed alongside their parents, most of them while trying to flee. The actual taking of Saigon could be worse. The Communists were sure to single out foreigners, especially Americans, and anyone who had worked for them. They would also target South Vietnamese soldiers, government officials, and their families. This meant hundreds of thousands of people were in danger, and with the city surrounded, there were only two ways out: by sea and by air.

  To try to escape by sea was especially dangerous. Those who were desperate enough to try it had to motor or row small boats forty-five miles along the Saigon River past enemy troops and then out into the South China Sea. There, large ocean vessels, including American military ships, would pick up the lucky ones. The rest faced the open ocean as they tried to get to a distant, friendly port. Along the way, they could encounter pirates, who would rob and might murder them, as well as storms, sharks, and the blazing sun.

  Some 17,000 South Vietnamese refugees crowd the deck of the SS Pioneer Contender trying to escape the war

  By air was the best way out. But every seat on every outgoing commercial flight was booked. Desperate people jammed the offices of the airlines, begging anyone going in or coming out to help them. No amount of money could buy a seat.

  From positions just miles outside the city, the North Vietnamese army began to fire randomly at the airport. Because of the extreme danger, commercial airlines stopped their regular flights. The only planes still landing and taking off at Tan Son Nhut Airport were private charter planes or military flights.

  People looked to the U.S. government for help. Would it send last-minute aid, perhaps preventing a takeover? Would it undertake a massive evacuation of all the South Vietnamese who had worked for and helped Americans? Or would it leave these people to their fate? No one knew.

  * * *

  At Holt, Long knew something was about to happen. All the older kids did. Their teachers tried to keep routines normal, but the children saw the concern on the adults’ faces, the sudden tears, and the increased activity at the Center.

  At first Long didn’t worry. The war had been going on since before he was born. If there were a serious problem, America would come to South Vietnam’s defense. He was certain of that. Besides, he was going to leave in three to four months for his new home in America. Ky had already gone.

  Then he overheard Lan, one of Holt’s Vietnamese staff members, talking to another staff member.

  “I try to stay calm,” she said softly, “but will the streets run with blood when the Communists arrive? I hear they will kill anyone with connections to foreigners.”

  “That’s just a rumor,” the staff member protested. “Nobody knows.”

  “It has happened other places. They could punish me because I work for Americans or because my child’s father was an American soldier. They might hurt my little Tai for being half American.”

  “Can her father help you?”

  Lan shook her head. “I don’t know where he is. How can I save my daughter?”

  As Long listened, he became frightened. He was Amerasian, too! Would the Communists try to hurt him?

  The next day, Long and some of the other children witnessed a chilling sight. While they were playing outside, several mothers holding small children came to the gate of the wall that surrounded the playground and the Holt Center. They pleaded with staff to take their children and keep them safe. “You must get my baby to America!” cried one. “My family lived under the Communists in the North. He must not grow up that way.” Another tried to reach through the gate to grab a staff member’s arm. “When the Communists come, I will kill myself,” she sobbed, “but please save my child!”

  A young mother with her child seeks help from Holt

  Miss Anh immediately moved the children away so they could not watch, but Long had seen and heard enough to suddenly realize how serious the war situation had become. But surely the American people would not let down the people of South Vietnam in their greatest hour of need.

  What Long did not know was that in America, many people were pressuring the government to resist offering additional support to South Vietnam. For ten years, the United States had tried to help South Vietnam win the war. More than 58,000 American soldiers had already died in what the Vietnamese often referred to as the American War, and the Americans had finally withdrawn. The Vietnam War had created a rift in American society that would take decades to heal. The U.S. Congress was not going to vote any last-minute aid. This time, South Vietnam was on its own.

  In Saigon, this was not yet known. At Holt’s Saigon Center, staff members listened constantly to the American news station, trying to get the latest war information. Holt had already evacuated forty children from its care center in Danang before that city fell to the Communists. Those children and some from the Saigon center had left earlier when commercial flights were still available. But Holt had more than four hundred children still in Saigon. Most were Amerasian, and almost all of them were already assigned to adoptive families in other countries. No one questioned the necessity of getting the children out of the country. Under the Communist regime that would soon govern South Vietnam, their lives could be difficult, for in them flowed “the blood of the enemy.”

  There was another problem. During the transition to a new Communist government, who would care for the children? The Vietnamese staff would not dare come to work, for that would reveal their association with Americans, leaving the children with little or no care. Although Long was healthy, many of the children were not. Some had been crippled by disease or war injuries and needed braces, crutches, or daily physical therapy. Many, many children needed daily medication. It was painfully clear that their very survival depended on getting as quickly as possible to families that could look after their needs.

  * * *

  As the days passed, the American staff at Holt frantically tried to locate a privately chartered plane to airlift the children to safety. Every day they talked to Holt staff in Oregon. Had they found a plane yet? Did they have any possibilities? As March turned into April, the situation in Saigon grew worse. Food prices escalated. Milk for the children was scarce. It was harder to get some supplies, impossible to get others. The North Vietnamese shelled the airport more frequently, increasing fears it would have to be shut down—and then nobody would get out. The American embassy checked daily on the Americans still in Saigon, but the U.S. government had not yet ordered an evacuation.

  This boy, one of many civilian victims of the fighting between the Vietcong and the Allied forces, lost both legs when he was caught in the middle of intense street fighting in Saigon

  Each night on the roof of the Holt Center, staff members saw more flares and heard more gunfire. In the streets, new blockades and checkpoints sprang up overnight. In spite of the South Vietnamese government’s attempts to keep refugees from overwhelming the city, they still crowded in, hungry and afraid. The population had not yet panicked, but everyone was on edge, waiting for the worst.

  Just when it seemed tha
t nerves would snap from tension, Holt’s American director, Bob Chamness, received the phone call he had been waiting for. “We’ve found a plane!” he shouted excitedly to the others. “We’re going to get all the children out!”

  The phone call was from the Holt office in Oregon. They had arranged with Pan American Airlines to send a 747 jumbo jet that would hold more than four hundred children and adults. For the nonprofit Holt agency, the cost was a fortune: almost $250,000—which included very expensive insurance required by Pan Am for setting down a plane in a war zone. A private donor had agreed to loan the money. The scheduled arrival and takeoff date was April 5—just two days away.

  There was no time to celebrate. So much still needed to be done. The staff dived into the job of readying everything for the children to leave. They needed to prepare formula, food, diapers, clothes, and medicine. They had to set up an intensive-care hospital unit on the plane for sick and malnourished children. Some of these children would need to be hooked up to IVs or other medical equipment during the long flight.

  One of the biggest worries was making sure the two hundred Holt babies staying with foster parents in the Saigon area were ready to go on the flight. Social workers had to contact each family, none of whom had telephones, and tell them to have their foster child at the Holt Center early on the morning of April 5.

  Gathering the necessary paperwork for each child was a huge task. Under the best of circumstances, processing the children for their trips abroad was difficult and time-consuming. Each one had to have a birth certificate, a wrist identification band, a passport, and emergency travel documents. All the children needed exit visas, which had to be issued by the South Vietnamese government. How could they get those when that very government was collapsing?

  Six other child assistance groups were also trying to get their children out of the country, and all of them also needed government permission. The agencies petitioned Vietnamese officials with letters and used whatever contacts they had. Fortunately, the minister of welfare understood their plight and realized they were saving children’s lives. He granted blanket permission for all the orphaned children to leave.

  Then, as the Holt staff worked feverishly, determined to be ready for the April 5 flight, they received an amazing offer.

  “We got a call from the American embassy telling us that President Gerald Ford had decided the government would assist with the evacuation,” says John Williams, one of the Holt administrators in Saigon. “The press had already dubbed this effort Operation Babylift. We did not know how many planes there would be, but we were offered the first plane, at no cost to us.”

  The Holt American staff agonized over what to do. In the end, they decided to turn down the government’s offer. “We had the Pan Am flight all arranged and could take all our children with us on that flight. We would have to leave 180 behind if we accepted the use of the government’s military cargo plane,” John says. “In spite of the cost, we felt that the Pan Am plane was the right choice for us.”

  Long could not know at the time that this decision would save the lives of many of Holt’s children—including, perhaps, his own.

  6

  THE CRASH OF THE C-5A

  When Long found out he would leave in just two days to go to his new family, he was filled with mixed emotions. He wanted to go, and he was worried about the war, but he was not going to have a chance to say goodbye to Ba, and that was very hard.

  April 4, his last day in Saigon, was so hot and humid that the children did not go to the roof. Instead, they did their studies inside. The staff kept them there for another reason as well: the airport was being shelled and they could see fires when they looked in that direction from the roof.

  As Long worked on his studies that day and thought about his grandmother, he was unaware of a tragedy unfolding nearby. Rosemary Taylor and her organization, Friends For All Children, had accepted the government’s offer of the first evacuation flight. Like Holt, FFAC had been searching for a way to get the children in its care out of the country. Many of these children had serious medical conditions, and the FFAC staff was determined to evacuate as many of them as possible. The military plane would be a start.

  In the sweltering heat of April 4, the FFAC staff put 230 orphans and fifty adult escorts onto a C-5A cargo plane supplied by the American government. Security at Tan Son Nhut Airport was very tight. Not only was there fear of attack by the North Vietnamese; there was also the threat that South Vietnamese who were frantic to get out of the country might try to take over the plane.

  The loading of passengers had to be done as quickly as possible. The babies were strapped into seats on the upper deck of the huge aircraft. In the open cargo space below, normally used to transport helicopters, adult escorts did their best to secure the children on the floor. Some of the children clutched teddy bears or photos of their adoptive families. The older children understood what was happening and were proud and excited that they were going to their new homes. They shyly waved goodbye to staff staying behind, and set off for their new lives.

  The gigantic plane with its precious cargo lumbered down the runway and lifted into the sky. But then, something terrible happened. Fifteen minutes after takeoff, as the plane neared the ocean and the first leg of its journey to America, an explosion suddenly rocked the aircraft. It immediately began losing altitude. As the pilot struggled to return the badly crippled plane to the airport, the adults aboard scrambled to administer oxygen to the children. But there were too few oxygen masks, and most of them did not work.

  The plane crashed into a rice paddy, just a few miles from the airport runway. It hit with such force that pieces of the plane began to break apart. It shuddered, then seemed to bounce back into the air before it struck the ground again, lurching and bouncing through the watery muck. The noise was deafening—screeching, high-pitched, and jarring. Finally the plane came to a stop, a heap of burning wreckage mired in swampy ground, with black smoke belching into the air from burning fuel.

  Most of the adults on board were killed. Miraculously, 152 of the 230 children aboard survived, though dozens had burns, broken bones, and other serious injuries. Many would later suffer from learning disabilities and other problems because they did not get enough oxygen during the crash. Emotional problems would plague some of them, as well as some of the adults who had cared for them or who tried to assist them later.

  South Vietnamese soldiers stand in the middle of the wreckage of the first Operation Babylift flight, which crashed shortly after takeoff on April 4, 1975

  * * *

  Word that a planeload of orphans had crashed while escaping Saigon became headline news around the world. In Saigon, residents saw the smoke rising near the airport and heard the nonstop sirens racing to the scene to rush victims to the hospital. On the streets, rumors quickly spread that the plane had been shot down and everyone aboard killed. Later it was learned that the rear cargo doors had blown off because of a mechanical malfunction.

  The horror of what had happened stunned everyone. “The crash of the C-5A … It could have been us and our children,” says Glen Noteboom, who supervised Holt’s Vietnamese social workers. “How could we even contemplate such a horror? Our hearts were heavy with grief for all those innocent children and adults, yet we had to keep on preparing everything for our flight the next morning.

  “It was like the city of Saigon was dying, like the whole country was dying.”

  * * *

  Long did not hear the crash, but he learned about it a short time later. He was supposed to leave on his flight the next morning. Now he wondered, would he be brave enough to get on the airplane?

  Late that afternoon he was told he had a visitor. He ran to the office, hardly daring to wish that it could be Ba.

  There she stood. When Ba saw her beloved grandson, she burst into sobs. Gathering him in her arms, she cried, “I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead! They told me all the children died.”

  Tears roll
ed down Long’s cheeks. He had thought he would never see Ba again. Yes, he was alive, but now they were about to lose each other for good. He hugged his tiny, elderly grandmother tight, holding her close, knowing he was saying his final goodbye.

  7

  OPERATION BABYLIFT

  The next morning, April 5, Long awoke with a start. He had slept fitfully, tossing and turning in the night, thinking about what was ahead of him. This was the day he would fly to America. It was really here!

  He wanted to go. He wanted a new family, and he wanted to live in America. But there was also that worry he couldn’t ignore. He was leaving so much here. He was leaving Ba.

  Already the air was hazy and hot—even hotter than usual. He looked at the long pants, shirt, and sweater given to him to wear on the trip. He could not imagine needing warm clothing, but Miss Anh had told him it would be cold in the city called Chicago when his plane landed there. He decided to put on the clothes later, and stuck them in the small bag he would carry on the plane. Also in the bag were the letters he had received from the Steiners, a few miniature toy cars they had sent him, and their family photo. He wished he had a picture of his mother and grandmother. He would have to remember them in his mind, the same way he would remember Vietnam.

  After breakfast, an American newspaper reporter who was visiting the Holt Center approached him. “I’m told you speak some English,” the American said. “I’d like to interview you.” Long agreed, doing the best he could to answer a series of questions.

  One was “How do you feel about your trip today?” Long thought for a moment. “I am so happy to go to America,” he replied. Then, looking at Miss Anh, he added that he was sorry to leave his teacher behind. At the end the reporter asked, “What will you say when you meet your new family?” Long struggled to express himself in English. Haltingly he said, “I am so happy to see you.” Then he burst out, “At the airport!”