Small Bamboo (3 page)

Still, the people of Gia Dinh didn’t take much notice of these warnings. They believed the Lunar New Year was untouchable, as the military forces of North and South Vietnam had agreed to a ceasefire, a few days of peace so families could celebrate Tet. This allowed soldiers, including my uncles in the air force and army, to go home and celebrate the New Year with loved ones. Everyone felt there would be some sense of normality during this period and they were able to relax.

But on 30 January the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong broke that truce and launched surprise attacks on Central Vietnam. Just twenty-four hours later, parts of the South came under heavy attack. No one in my father’s family had expected this. From the front yard, Dad could see gunfights and explosions edging closer, towards the Go Vap district, as hovering helicopters and planes sporadically fired on nearby Ba Queo. My father was frightened, and wondered when these attacks would reach them. He knew his family was not safe.

As the ferocious attacks went on, scenes of panic and hysteria flooded the streets across Gia Dinh Province. Locals could see the attacks on Ba Queo; they knew their town was next and were scrambling to escape, screaming and running with all the possessions they could carry.

Uncle Three, by then a captain in the South Vietnamese Air Force, and Uncle Four, a high-ranking spy for the army, were both home for what was meant to be a peaceful, happy time with their families. Now they were fearfully gathering the entire clan in my grandparents’ home, frantically trying to work out the safest place to go. Uncle Five, who had married my dad’s sister, suggested the family could take refuge in his office in District One in Downtown Saigon. They would be safe there, he explained, as the Viet Cong wouldn’t go that deep into the city. There was also enough space in the office for everyone to stay together.

Uncle Three agreed and the family quickly packed what they could; with about fifteen of them in three cars, they could only take the basics—clothes and some valuables such as family photos and sheets of gold they had hidden away. (Gold, the main form of currency in those days, could be used anywhere and also be traded for cash.) Everything else had to be left behind. I can’t imagine what that must have felt like: closing the door on your home and thinking you would never return.

But they didn’t make it far. They were stopped at a roadblock at the far end of their street. Roadblocks had been set up across the region in an attempt to instil some order, and anyone trying to escape was stopped and questioned. Some cities and towns had been locked down and they weren’t letting people in or out. Uncle Three and Uncle Four got out of their cars, and together they approached the guards at the roadblock.

‘Where do you want to take your family?’ one of the guards asked them.

‘District One,’ Uncle Three replied. ‘We have a safe place to take them to.’

The guard shook his head. ‘No one is allowed into the city,’ he said.

My uncles tried to explain that Uncle Five had an office in the city, that the family had nowhere else to go, but the guard would not allow them through. He told them he was under strict orders not to let anyone out of the area and certainly not into the city. Uncle Three and Uncle Four had only one option left. With a wordless glance at each other, trying not to reveal their desperation, they casually showed the guards their identity cards, which displayed their ranks in the air force and army. The guards took one look, not another word was said, and the whole family was immediately allowed through the roadblock. My father says that his family only escaped because his brothers had worked so hard to rise through the military ranks.

As they drove through the roadblock, Dad peered out the rear window of the car. He watched as people frantically dashed about in their own efforts to gather their relatives and belongings. The Viet Cong were closing in and it was chaos on the streets. He wondered if these people would be able to leave and find refuge somewhere. And the young neighbours he played hopscotch and skipping with, would he see them again? He prayed that his friends would be safe.

After about twenty minutes, the family arrived at Uncle Five’s office building in Downtown Saigon. They quickly switched on the radio and settled down to listen to the horrors of the Tet Offensive. It was a massive assault on more than a hundred cities and towns in Central and South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong wanting to inflict as much death and destruction as they could while the South Vietnamese were caught off guard. It was the first time conflict had reached the cities, and parts of the South, including Gia Dinh, were destroyed during gunfights and bombings. Tens of thousands of people were killed in those ruthless and brazen attacks; 1968 became the deadliest year of the war and one of the largest military campaigns. News of how many were killed brought sorrow to Dad and his family, but what shocked them most was how easily the enemy had reached the major cities, and their home, where they’d always felt somehow protected. They knew they were lucky to have escaped when they did.

It was more than a year before my grandparents returned to Gia Dinh. During their time in the city, they had no idea what condition the province was in after the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks nor even if their house was still standing. Thankfully, their home in the Go Vap District was still in one piece but many on the outskirts, which bore the brunt of the assaults, were destroyed. While my grandparents decided to stay in their home, Dad and seven of his siblings chose to live with Uncle Five in the city. Uncle Five, Dad says, was so generous and caring to all of them, and the younger family members enjoyed living in town and going home to visit their parents.

My father continued to attend school in Gia Dinh, which meant a thirty-minute bus trip each way, every day, back to his home province. But Dad didn’t mind because he loved to study and excelled in high school. His goal was to gain enough marks in his final year to study engineering at university. He wanted to be a draughtsman, like his father, or maybe an architect. But that dream would never eventuate.

In 1972 it was compulsory for all males from seventeen years of age to join the army. Dad knew he had a duty, but he didn’t want to fight, he didn’t want to be part of the war, and he was afraid. He was also devastated that he would have to give up studying to train for the war; he believed that if he had no education he would have no future. He had no choice, though, so he tried to find something good in the situation. ‘I can be like my oldest brother and become a pilot,’ he thought. Dad told me that this is the only reason he got through those years in the army.

My father joined the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces on 15 August 1972 at the 3rd Enlistment and Recruitment Centre, north-west of Saigon. After the preliminary processing, he was transferred to Tan Son Nhut Air Base for training as an airman. As it turned out, the air force suited him just fine. He followed orders easily, didn’t mind the hard work and was highly regarded among the troops. It was all very new to him, though, and the fear of eventually heading out to fight was always on his mind. He hoped he would never have to face the enemy. But unfortunately for Dad the enemy came to him less than a month after he joined up. Tan Son Nhut was a hot target and the air base was attacked regularly.

On 30 August 1972, after the nightly roll call, my father returned to his barracks to sleep. Just as he was dozing off, loud explosions erupted around the barracks and the air base siren started blaring. Panic set in for the new recruits. Dad jumped off his bunk bed and laid down flat on the floor, covering his head with his hands.

‘What do we do?’ he asked the recruit next to him who was also cowering on the floor.

But he didn’t know either. In fact, none of the new recruits were prepared for an attack.

Then a sergeant appeared at the entrance to the barracks. ‘We’re under mortar attack!’ he yelled. ‘Get out! Get out! Head to the trenches and take cover!’

The recruits ran faster than they’d ever run before. In the panic Dad even forgot to put on his shoes. The trench was about 200 metres away and Dad’s eyes were focused on the sky, hoping he wouldn’t be hit, as they made the desperate dash across the open ground. He took cover with the other new recruits, but as the attack continued some of them became hysterical and tried to run away. The sergeant had to force them to stay down. The explosions were so loud that Dad could barely hear what the others were saying; he just kept looking up at the sky at the helicopters, rounds of mortar and flares directly above him.

The attack was intense and went on for more than half an hour, though Dad says it felt like forever. He didn’t know if anyone had been injured or even killed. He just cowered down and curled up as small as he could, hoping that it would end soon and he could get back to the barracks, in his bunk bed, and back to the silence of the night. It was Dad’s first life-threatening experience, sheer terror that he’ll never forget. Amazingly, there were no casualties and no damage to aircraft that night.

This was the first of many attacks that my father experienced during the war; however, it was not the worst. The worst he seems to have blocked out of his mind. It occurred on 6 December 1972 and resulted in ten South Vietnamese personnel being killed, thirty-three wounded, as well as casualties among US personnel. Even though we spoke about it while I was researching this book, Dad’s memory of this incident is hazy. I’m unsure if it’s because of old age or if he chooses not to remember it.

On 20 January 1973, my father was transferred to the coastal town of Nha Trang. He continued with his training, always conscious that the enemy might come again. Only a short time after he arrived at the Nha Trang training base, Communist forces from nearby Dong Bo Mountain launched a rocket attack on the base. That assault wasn’t as fierce as the one on Tan Son Nhut Air Base, but it didn’t help Dad’s nerves.

After six months’ training as an airman, he completed a course of English lessons before being sent back to Saigon’s Bien Hoa Air Base in 1974. Dad was very grateful for this transfer, because his brother, my Uncle Eleven, was a lieutenant at Bien Hoa. Uncle Eleven looked after my father, and every Friday he would go to Dad’s barracks and ask for permission to send him home for the weekend. Then they would stay at Uncle Five’s house in Downtown Saigon and they would all visit their parents in Gia Dinh. The family tried to keep life as normal as they could during the war, but it was difficult for my father to stay in touch with his brothers—by that time, six were in the air force and one was in the army—and he missed his family being together. But that’s what war does. It splits families apart, for long periods of time.

Another year went by and my father continued his training at Bien Hoa while his older brothers continued fighting the enemy in the skies and jungles. No one knew when the war would end. There were predictions from the US forces that South Vietnam could hold on until 1976 at least. But by March 1975 the North Vietnamese had captured the major cities of northern South Vietnam, namely Hue and Da Nang. In mid-April, the North Vietnamese frontline was only 42 kilometres from Downtown Saigon. Then, on 27 April, 100,000 North Vietnamese troops surrounded Saigon, sealing the city’s fate.

On 28 April, the Communists’ target was Tan Son Nhut Air Base, a major facility for South Vietnamese forces, and also for the United States until their withdrawal in 1973. In the afternoon, the air base was bombed in what was to be North Vietnam’s first successful airborne attack on Saigon during the entire war. It temporarily closed down the air base, disrupting South Vietnamese evacuation efforts. My Uncle Three, based there as a captain for the South Vietnamese Air Force, managed to take cover during the attack, which lasted less than an hour. He believes there were no casualties but he can’t be too sure. He says he was too focused on trying to work out an escape plan, as was everyone else. Early in the morning of 29 April, Uncle Three and Uncle Twelve, who was based with his older brother, started making plans to get the family out of Vietnam. Uncle Twelve’s wife was still in Saigon, while Uncle Three’s own family had already left a week earlier. The US Air Force took his wife and five children out of Saigon to Guam, a safe haven for those escaping Vietnam. They were then flown to California where they waited for Uncle Three at a refugee camp. With his own family safe, Uncle Three could focus on his parents, brothers and sisters.

Uncle Three had been in charge of the C-130 Hercules fleet for four years, and he’d trained pilots to fly them. He knew the only way to get a large group, including his family, out of Saigon was on one of these planes. But with the air base in lockdown after the bombing, it was difficult to contact his relatives, let alone get them into the air base. Then, when Uncle Three finally spoke with his mother, my grandmother, she didn’t want to leave because Uncle Four was lost in the jungles. Uncle Four was the only one of my dad’s brothers who was in the army and he had been fighting the North Vietnamese in the jungles for months. But with the Fall of Saigon approaching, many South Vietnamese soldiers had gone into hiding to avoid capture. Grandma somehow found out that Uncle Four was still alive and she didn’t want to leave Vietnam without him.