Escape from Saigon (7 page)

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 that 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

T
HE
C
RASH 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 rolled 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

O
PERATION
B
ABYLIFT

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!”

This photograph of Long saying goodbye to his friends at the Holt Center appeared in newspapers around the world

*   *   *

Early that morning, foster mothers and members of their families began gathering at the Holt Center, arriving by motorbike, public bus, or on foot. Holding the babies they had been caring for and were now giving up, many of the mothers were overcome with emotion. Their tears flowed easily.