Ben Luc

The picture of the boy taken was exactly in front of my quarter at Ben Luc- the place I stayed from May 1972 to the last day of April 1975. I came to Ben Luc base as a rookies mechanic (Was 19 year of age then) after all of the jobs have been handed to Vietnamese Navy men. The commander (Major Dat Tan Le) assigned me to work inside the air-conditioned room which only take care of the fuel injector and super charge pump. During the time in Viet Nam, you (American) and us (Vietnamese) some how worked and sacrificed for the similar goals, but we did not have much communication in personal level due to language barrier (English is not easy to learn). At the night of April 29, 1975, the NVA used tanks and cannnons to attack Go Dau Ha base, the 5-6 of our personnel forced to retreat to Ben Luc by LCM, (one person in this 5-6 personnel later protest a Vietnamese Communist speaker at Harvard University in 1980) At the night couple of us died of the shell. One month later I have settled in Boston to work as dish washer- Years passed by, American population still look at us (South Vietnam Navy) as a failure but at my personal feeling- I do not think so, at my own task, I used to work very hard, but the whole South VN still fell. Many thanks to your guys about Vietnam- signed by btt- guess whom.

(Posted by guest: btt-guess whom) posted to SP4 USARMY HQ. USARMY MAC V TAD. at Sun Apr 04 15:22:39 EDT 2004.