Mr. Ba, Vietnam (1969)
When the communists prevailed on April 30 of 1975, which led to the unification of Vietnam, it ushered in a new government for the southern half of the country. I had completed my tour more than five years earlier and had no communications with any of the Vietnamese that I knew. It was impossible to know how they were faring under the new regime. Reliable news only trickled out of the country, and rumors were rampant about what might be happening to those who had worked for, or were allied with, the Americans.
Of the three Vietnamese I knew best, one had been killed during my tour, and one was already an old man. I assumed he would be an unlikely target of reprisals. The third, a young woman named Linh, I worried would be vulnerable to the anticipated purge that many expected.
As news of the so-called reeducation camps ebbed out of Vietnam, it became apparent that the communist ideologues had gained control of governing the country. For a fascinating inside glimpse of how deep the purge went, I would recommend A Viet Cong Memoir by Trương Như Tảng. Even loyal Viet Cong who had spent years fighting the Americans were viewed with suspicion by leaders from the north who quickly consolidated their power. Fearful that these southern patriots were not sufficiently communist, many were excluded from meaningful government positions in the new regime.
In his book, Truong, a high-level official in the Provisional Revolutionary Government, the shadow government of the Viet Cong in the south, writes about being pulled from their headquarters deep in the jungle for “political education” in the north. This, at a time before it was certain they would win the war. After years of loyal service to the cause of a unified Vietnam, he eventually joined two million Vietnamese in fleeing the country. He was not alone among former Viet Cong to do so. Trương’s bitterness and frustration towards the northern leaders in charge of Vietnam is well documented in his descriptions of the excesses that happened after ideologues gained control.
With so much infrastructure destroyed during the war, and displacement of many Vietnamese, the country suffered great poverty. Hardships included Vietnamese going hungry. The American embargo contributed, but so did the stringent economic policies of the communist regime. According to Truong, political ideology often replaced talent when selecting important positions within the government.
Within two months of the fall of Saigon in 1975, the new regime ordered several hundred thousand Vietnamese to report for their “reeducation.” For many, stays that were supposed to be a few days to a month turned into years. At least eighty of the camps are known to have existed. Conditions were harsh and punitive, hunger and disease prevalent.
I had witnessed plenty of vengeance-based attitudes develop amongst the Americans I served with after we lost people, so it is not surprising it existed amongst the Vietnamese. War does that and Vietnamese on both sides of the conflict suffered and inflicted retribution during the war. Those that were aligned with the South Vietnamese were often viewed as traitors afterwards. I worried that Linh would be in one of the reeducation camps because she had worked in a medical capacity for the Americans. Those with lesser “sins,” such as teachers, were often detained. Intellectuals were also targeted, as were medical personnel drafted into the South Vietnamese Army (see “Re-education in Unliberated Vietnam: Loneliness, Suffering and Death,” by Ginetta Sagan and Stephen Denney, Indochina Newsletter, October-November 1982).
A frail beauty emanated from Linh, a gentle soul, one of those people I have met that were just “nice.” There was no romantic connection to the friendship, and I wouldn’t have thought to attempt one. There was a war in progress, I had a girl at home, and just how would one “date” someone in Vietnam? Physically tiny and frail, I wondered over the years what life had been like for Linh after the war. Whatever her mental fortitude, the camps would have been physically difficult to survive.
By 1978, the numbers of Vietnamese refugees leaving the country increased dramatically. Initially, many fled by boat seeking asylum. Commonly called “the boat people,” 800,000 safely arrived in other countries by this means. Nobody knows how many perished at sea. Overcrowded boats sank in storms and were attacked by pirates. Women were commonly abducted and raped by these criminals of the sea and never heard from again. Boats were sunk and the Vietnamese on board left to drown. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that between 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese died at sea. By 1995, two million Vietnamese had left their country. I wondered if Linh was among them.
In 1986 the Vietnamese government initiated economic reforms which began to improve the economy and the living standards of its citizens. Termed, Đổi Mới , “socialist oriented market economy,” conditions began to improve. Vietnam utilized the industrious nature of its people to move the country forward. Economic conditions have improved steadily. Diplomatic relations with the U.S. were established in 1996, and foreign visitors to Vietnam have become common, including American veterans of the war.
So what has become of Linh? While perusing a veteran’s website about the war to make sure the facts as I remembered them were accurate, I was surprised to come across a post of hers. She sought information about her late husband who was an American and a Vietnam vet. They met when the clinic she was associated with nursed him back to health. They stayed in touch. Linh was able to leave Vietnam before the war ended and immigrate to the U.S. where she married her husband. She has been in the U.S. since the early 1970’s. She has remained in the medical field and had a successful career. Her children are doing well.
Initially, my attempts to post a note to her on the website were blocked. It was enough knowing that she had avoided the camps, retribution for working for the Americans, the economic hardships, and did not perish at sea or spend years in a refugee camp. I wasn’t even sure she would remember me.
A post of mine got through to the website without my realizing it. An email from Linh arrived a month later. Fifty years had passed since I knew her. She wrote that “her family lost everything right after the war,” but she and her husband were able to get her parents and every one of her siblings into the U.S.
The war has a strange hold on many of us who were there. I think it has a lot to do with the themes I have covered in these blogs, the lies and poor leadership of our own government, the ugly reception at home on our return, the unresolved and ongoing problems associated with Agent Orange. The fact that we unleashed the arsenal of a superpower on a poor country, wasted untold lives (American and Vietnamese) without achieving any meaningful objective, and then left our Vietnamese allies in the lurch.
It is nice to know, after all these years, a friend from the war is doing well.