Left Behind in Vietnam | VOA Connect

This was a very difficult & trying part of the Vietnam War! One of my Best friends, a Navy Officer met ,& married a wonderful Vietnamese woman, married her & brought her back to the States where they reared 6 amazing children, his Vietnamese wife earned two degrees and they have been happily married for 50 years! He and his wife were very fortunate SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL !!!

The US military conducted Operation Baby Lift in the 70s for orphaned babies. Clark AFB Philippines was marshaling area for the babies. One day a C-5 flew from Clark AFB to pick up babies in Vietnam. It picked up many babies. It took off but experienced hydraulic problems and the ramp door blew off. The pilot conducted an emergency landing in a rice field. Not all perished in the crash but many did. Our Clark AFB community was just sad.

I recall that the U.S. military personnel going to Vietnam were usually anywhere from 17 years old and up, with many in their early 20's. When I arrived I was 18. We in the Marine Corps infantry used to call ourselves "oversexed, underpaid teenage killers." At that age, male hormones were at max levels and most of the guys I knew were always looking for opportunities to get laid. It was hard in grunt units, since they were usually out in the boonies away from where girls were, but when I was in a Marine CAP unit, there was the city of Hoi An just across the river, and there were whorehouses there. Although the authorities (both U.S. and Vietnamese) tried to prevent U.S. military personnel from visiting these cathouses, they were often not successful. I don't know what kind, if any, of birth control the Vietnamese girls had who worked in these establishments, but I suspect they had none, and that's where a lot of illegitimate children came from. Troops who were posted in large cities (like Saigon) also usually had local girlfriends and when their tour of duty was over, they ditched the girlfriend and headed home, regardless if she was pregnant or not. Most guys probably never knew they'd left kids behind, or if they did, didn't care. Unfortunately for the kids, the Vietnamese culture regards such half-breeds with disdain and these kids suffered prejudice and lost opportunities. The few that discovered or were discovered by their biological American fathers were very lucky. I also recall that in the Marines (which made an effort to keep us on the straight and narrow), we newbies were told not to mess with the local girls because they had venereal diseases (such as the incurable clap and the "black siph") that hadn't even been given names yet, and if we caught one we'd be sent to an island to die while our parents would be told that we'd died in an explosion with no recoverable parts. I must confess to being naïve enough to have believed this for a while, so when my buddies went to the cathouse, I was usually left to guard the door in case the authorities came around..