Vietnam Babylift Personal Stories
Wayne Day
April, 1975, at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, just
north of Manila, was a busy time for many of us who lived and worked there.
I was in the US Air Force, assigned to the 6204th Broadcasting Squadron which
ran the American Forces Radio and Television Service station at Clark. It
was the headquarters station for the American Forces Philippines Network.
The morning of the 4th was a Friday. It was supposed to be my last day as
the afternoon disk jockey on the local AM station, a thousand-watter that
could be heard for 15-20 miles away from the base. As usual, we weren't planning
anything special for my last show.. it was just a "normal" rotation,
and from the AM station I'd be moving the the news department for the overnight
shift, heard throughout the network.
It was the radio station's ability to be heard throughout the area of central
Pampanga that we were using that day, trying to help organize the supplies
necessary for a C-5A Galaxy that was full of Vietnamese orphans that was headed
to Clark that afternoon from what used to be the Tan Son Nhut Air Base in
Saigon. Probably half of the dependant families of Air Force personnel lived
off-base in Angeles City and the suburbs, and everyone, on-base and off-base
alike, was being urged to bring blankets, diapers, and anything infant children
would need as they began their journey to adoptive homes in the United States.
From what we had been told at the station, the Galaxy was loaded and headed
our way so we had been kicking up the appeals into high gear. I was on the
air in the control booth and doing some such announcement or the other, when
I noticed one of the squadron's senior staff come up into the trailer that
we used as a studio complex, and begin talking to some of the other folks
that were working in the adjoining studio. I remember seeing faces that, minutes
before, were happy and purposeful turn into faces of shock, and some tears.
A moment later, the word was passed to me in the on-the-air studio that the
Galaxy had crashed upon departure from Tan Son Nhut. No word on survivors.
I was told to hold off on any more organizational announcements, but not to
say anything regarding the crash at this point.
About that time, the song that had been playing ran out, and for the first
time in a long time, there was silence over the air of AFPN. It took me a
few seconds, probably less than 10 seconds in total, but it seemed like a
lot longer, to get another record cued up and begun. And for the first time
that afternoon, there wasn't a voice urging the base's families to raid their
pantries and store-rooms to work for what was supposed to be one of mankind's
most joyous occassions.. the arrival of babies, leaving a war-torn country
headed to the land that we all knew as "home".
I flashed back to my own tour of Vietnam, five years earlier, and the orphanages
I had visited as part of the Air Force's Civil Actions programme... the faces
of the Amerasian kids who were stuck, through no fault of their own, in a
world that did not value them as human beings. I had gone on several trips
to the orphanages that the Chaplains at Phan Rang were attempting to help,
and remembered the faces of the kids that were attending the party that was
thrown for them on-base. I still, to this day, treasure the image of the young
girl looking through the lens of my camera, and remember the look of amusement
she had when she looked through that lens.
And I remembered the faces of some of the flight nurses and medical techs
who I had met on base, either at the base hobby shop, or the shopping center,
or the sport parachute club, or maybe the NCO Open Mess, or even off-base
and feared that some of them might have, no, probably were, on that flight.
I found out my fears turned out to be true.
For the first time in my professional life, I didn't know what to say when
the mike was turned on, so I said nothing, and played another song... and
another.. until one of my friends came into the control room to see what was
going on.
And I walked out of the control room.
In the next month, there was so much going on. A new job, lots of other evac
flights coming through Clark with all kinds of folks on board allowing Clark's
families to finally put into place that humanitarian effort that was aborted
on that Friday afternoon, and then less than a month later, the end of a profound
and painful part of our lives.
As I listened to the HF radio traffic of the aircraft coming out of Tan Son
Nhut and Saigon I heard a transmission from what apparently was a command-and-control
chopper describing the scene from their evacuation point, and the pilot was
describing the desperation of Vietnamese who were trying to get the Americans
to take their children with them...
Now, 30 years later, that part of my life is locked away in a place I choose
not to visit too often.
But every now and then, especially when I see one of the Air Force's remaining
C-5's fly into one of our local military or civilian airports, I'll remember
a flight that should have been, but wasn't, and I wonder if a little girl
that I once met is alive and well.
http://webpages.charter.net/n5wd/Images/Me-and-my-model.jpg
I knew her name only as Pham. Image taken at Phan Rang Air Base, Phan Rang,
Vietnam October 1970.
Email: n5wd@charter.net
