Upon my return to Bangkok from the Pakse area where I was looking for leads on my friend Paladin, my visitor visa to Vietnam was ready. I flew to Vietnam that next day landing at the new Tan Son Nhut Airport which had just very recently opened. I had wanted to revisit Camp Eagle, my home with the 101st Airborne Division, but my tour guide suggested travel to the Hue area was not recommended due to a typhoon which did quite a bit of damage there killing some twelve residents. Instead, he arranged a car and driver who drove me to Due Hoa where I'd served a tour with MACV Advisory Team 99, 25th Vietnamese Infantry Division. The small compound where we suffered numerous rocket, mortar and ground attacks was not distinguishable. My travel guide asked some of the older villagers, and they pointed out an area that had been converted to rice patties.
On the second day I traveled south to Bac Lieu where I'd served with Advisory Team 51, 21st Vietnamese Infantry Division. I found the team compound which had been taken over by several companies and was being used in some type of manufacturing. My tour guide was unable to give me access to the area, but I was able to walk around the outside perimeter picking out landmarks then felt grief and sadness for the unnerving moments of fear and terror during the initial moments of mortar and ground attacks I experienced there.
I asked my tour escort to inquire about Minh, a former Vietnamese soldier who worked for me while I managed the team's PX. While serving in the Vietnam army, Minh had his left leg blown off just above the knee by an enemy landmine. He had been equipped with a crude artificial knee and leg which worked fine most of the time, but it would squeak terribly when walking.
I had first met Minh when I was a sergeant of the guard. We had a group of some fifteen Viet Cong prisoners whom we borrowed from the Vietnamese Army one day a week to do menial jobs around the team compound.
It fell on me periodically to guard the prisoners. Once I used them to clean out a warehouse where Minh was working. Minh worked right along with the prisoners and joked with them trying to teach them the broken English he knew. To an observer, Minh could have been one of the prisoners. During a break Minh borrowed my M-2 Carbine and asked me to take a picture of him guarding the prisoners as a joke. I went to my truck and grabbed my camera while they grouped together for the picture. They were all laughing and playing along until Minh said something to them in Vietnamese just as I readied to take the group picture. They became serious, I took the picture then everyone went back to being their normal selves. When I had the picture developed, I gave it to Minh. A few weeks later Minh wound up working for me when I took over management of the PX and warehouse.
Minh always worked hard and never complained about his squeaky metal knee. I gave Minh a small bottle of 3-in-1 oil which I used to clean my weapons. Minh applied it to his metal knee and was thrilled that it stopped the squeaking. "Mister Tony, now I sneak up to you," he once said. The oil lasted a few days, and we didn't carry that oil in the PX. Whenever I went to the Plantation Road's merchandise warehouses in Saigon, I would add a case of the 3-in-in oil to the merchandize invoices for Minh. I became Minh's best friend.
So my tour escort inquired of several villagers if they knew Minh who used to work "for the Americans" in the team compound. After several inquiries in different places, one old lady told him she knew Minh. She told my tour escort the sordid story about Minh. He translated it for me.
When the Americans evacuated Vietnam in 1975, Minh could have left with the Americans. Any Vietnamese who worked directly for the Americans was eligible for passage to a new life in the US. Minh didn't want to leave his homeland. Even though he denied ever working for the Americans, when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese arrived and started searching homes and interrogating citizens of Bac Lieu, the picture of Minh guarding prisoners was found. That helped send him to the North Vietnamese reeducation camp, an innocent-sounding name for a prison of horrors. According to the old Vietnamese lady, Minh never returned from the reeducation camp. I gave the old lady 400,000 Vietnamese Dong equivalent to about twenty US dollars.
I am not one to be burdened with regrets, but I do live with the one regret of having taken that picture which appears to have played a large part in sending Minh to the reeducation camp, a reeducation camp that was to be the end of Minh.
©Copyright texan@atudemi.com - January 2022