Betcha y’all didn’t know 189

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July 8,1969, A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division leaves Saigon in the initial withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the first of 25,000 troops that were withdrawn in the first stage of the U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam War. There would be 14 more increments in the withdrawal, but the last U.S. troops did not leave until after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973.

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In my fifth or sixth grade, our teacher's neighbor happened to be deployed to Vietnam.  Our class wrote him letters and sent small gifts to this serviceman.  Unfortunately, he was killed in action.  This was devastating to our class and our first encounter with loosing someone at war.   

 

Many years later, my wife and I were working with refugees from Vietnam.  They were either Amerasians or refugees aka boat people.  The Amerasians were outcasts in Vietnam because of their foreign fathers and the boat people left Vietnam by small fishing boats.  Often times their maps used to navigate the 800 miles to the Philippines were pages ripped out of school books.  Some of the boats we saw had single cylinder engines.  Pirates were active in pursuing the boat people and even stole the engines leaving the people without any way to propel their boats.  I am aware of one case whereas the refugee hid gold in an oil can and stored it next to the engine. These people weren't necessarily uneducated or poor.   My interpreter's family owned a clothing factory and his father insisted on him and his young family to flee before the communists took over the country.  These folks were resettled to countries all around our globe.  I have pictures of the wooden boats but for some reason the hard disk I have them stored on won't load onto this computer.