To Saigon with Love Some 40 Years Ago, Not Long Before its Fall That Ended a Bloody War That Divided America

To Saigon with Love Some 40 Years Ago, Not Long Before its Fall That Ended a Bloody War That Divided America
By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST Ministries and the ASSIST News Service
LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS - May 3, 2015) – It was on April 30, 1975, that the North Vietnam troops (Viet Cong) captured Saigon in a terrible war that killed up to four million Vietnamese, and more than 58,000 U.S troops, and split America apart.
And, as the world’s media last Thursday, covered the the fall of Saigon, and the end of the Vietnam War, some 40 years ago, my thoughts went back to the time I visited Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, and how it brought a doctor and his wife who had been working there with children, to come and live with us in our British home and a cynical move by a British newspaper.
It all began when, back in 1975, I was working for the Middlesex County Times,  a weekly newspaper in West London, had been awarded a Rotary International Group Study Exchange scholarship with others from London, England, to visit Southeast Asia and speak at various Rotary Clubs in the region about our lives in the UK, and learn about the lives of people there.
After a short stopover in Calcutta, India, we moved on to Singapore where we addressed several Rotary Clubs and were shown around this city-state which had one of the highest standards of living in the Far East.
From Singapore we went to Malaysia and then across to Sarawak, Sabah, and Brunei in Borneo. We arrived in Bangkok, Thailand, where the Bangkok Post called us the “emissaries of goodwill.”
There came a possibility of finishing our tour in South Vietnam but, not surprisingly, I found that the rest of the team didn’t feel too happy about going on to Saigon, so I made the decision to go there on my own. (Something that was of great concern for Norma).
“A Dr. Wang will meet you at the airport,” I was told by our leader, Alan Bruce. “He is a leading Rotarian in Saigon.”
I don’t think I had ever prayed so much as, when our plane flew over Vietnam. As I looked down, I felt terror as I saw hundreds of bomb craters pock-marking the whole countryside. This indeed was a country scarred by a terrible war.
At the time, the Americans had withdrawn their 500,000-strong army and, despite the so-called peace agreement with Ho Chi Min, the Viet Cong were continuing their inevitable push towards Saigon.
“I am surprised a journalist would come here now,” said the passport control officer at the heavily guarded Saigon International Airport. “We are facing a nightmare, yet the world’s press largely ignores our plight.”
He smiled as he handed my passport back to me. “Have a good stay in my country,” he said, adding, “And write the truth!”
I thanked him and headed out through the barrier. I looked in vain for the doctor, but he was not there. My heart was now pounding violently. What should I do? I was in a strange and dangerous country. And all I had with me was a piece of paper with his name and phone number on it.
A kindly airline girl agreed to phone through to him and discovered he was dealing with patients. Apparently he had been given the wrong flight to meet, and had returned to his surgery thinking that I had decided not to come after all.
“He wants you to take a taxi to this address,” she told me.
After passing through the various airport roadblocks, we were soon tangled up in a mess of bicycles and mopeds that were clogging up the road. There were also many horse-drawn carts, now back in favor in this war-torn land. We passed two men who were fighting at the side of the road. It was a violent scrap with fists and feet being used equally.
“You Yankee?” asked the driver.
“No, I’m English,” I responded.
His face lit up. “I’m glad. Yankees gone and ditched us. They said they were our friends; then they left.”
His face became very serious.
“You tell the people in your country that we will fight to the death. But still the VC will win.”
Soon we pulled up outside a large house surrounded by a high wall. The driver honked his horn and a girl suddenly opened the gate and let us in.
“Is Dr. Wang in?” I asked.
She bowed.
“He's at work. But his wife is here.”
As I went into the house, Mrs. Wang, a slight Chinese lady, greeted me.
“You are welcome in our home. Thank you for coming. Not many people do so these days.”
After Chinese tea and polite conversation, Dr. Wang arrived.
“Mr. Wooding, I can’t thank you enough for coming to Saigon. You will get a deep insight into the real truth about what is happening here.”
As the portions of the Chinese meal were served to us, the stocky doctor told me his story.
“My wife and I came here from Shanghai, China, about twenty-five years ago when I was a newly-qualified doctor. I was really shocked when I saw the plight of the thousands of poor people living here. So we both decided to settle. Since then I have treated more than a million Vietnamese free of charge.”
I gasped.
“Do you know that in our war-torn land we now have about 400,000 war orphans?”
When I was shown to my bedroom on the second floor, Dr. Wang informed me that the room had been taken over by the Army during the Tet Offensive, when the Viet Cong had tried to take over Saigon.
“There were gun battles going on from your balcony,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.
Having never been in a war zone before, I was finding the tension difficult to cope with.
The next morning I wanted to take some photographs of Dr. Wang’s Rotary Clinic for children, which was across the road from his home. As I pointed my camera and pushed the shutter, an arm came around my neck and began throttling me.
“Argh....” I made a sharp glottal sound of surprise. I could feel myself losing consciousness as I fell backwards.
Then I heard Dr. Wang’s angry voice shouting at my assailant.
“Let him go,” he yelled loudly, his eyes bulging with fury. “He’s with me.”
The man eventually let go of my throat and I got up from the ground and looked up at a young man with a terrible scar across his face.
“I am sorry for that Mr. Wooding,” said the doctor. “He thought you were photographing the machine-gun post in front of the clinic. Men who have been injured in battle, like this one, are stationed to watch for suspicious characters that try and photograph military installations. If I were you, I’d be a bit more careful with that camera.”
As I sat with him during his surgery and saw the never-ending stream of youngsters, he turned to me and said, “My philosophy is simple. To safeguard children is to safeguard humanity.”
After I spoke at Saigon Rotary Club, Dr. Wang arranged for me to visit a refugee camp well outside of Saigon. It took a special pass to get there through the various roadblocks and a driver and guide were arranged for me.
When we arrived at the Camp -- a few corrugated iron huts on a desolate piece of ground—I was taken to the main gate where a couple of soldiers were jabbering away in Vietnamese on walkie-talkie radios. They examined my documents and then ordered me to follow them. Suddenly I was being held in a hut and the men were now shouting at each other in an excited way.
I looked desperately to my guide for an explanation.
“They think you are a Viet Cong spy.” A jittery smile hung on her face.
I uttered a shaky little laugh.
“I don’t know,” I thought to myself. “I’ve been held by the Russians for smuggling Bibles, and now these people think I’m on the opposite side. The world’s absolutely crazy.”
The guide was deeply embarrassed.
“It seems that your papers are not completely in order and everyone is very jumpy these days about the VC.”
Eventually, I was ordered at rifle-point to re board the mini-bus to Saigon.
“Mr. Wooding,” she said gently, “you will be pleased that they now say they believe you are not a spy, but you cannot look around the camp until you get the proper documentation.”
Next day, I was able to get the right paper and was sent back, this time to be treated as a VIP. I was able to interview whomever I wished and to take as many photographs as I wanted.
Each day in Saigon, I met heroes. Relief workers, medical staff, and missionaries -- all of whom would not leave their posts of duty.
“We know we could be killed, but we will not leave,” said one American missionary. “God has called me to Vietnam and here I will stay -- until the very end.
When the time came for me to leave Saigon, I had tears in my eyes. I thanked the doctor and his wife for their kindness to me during my stay.
“My eyes have been opened by this visit,” I told them. “Any time you are in England, I would be honored if you would come and stay with Norma and me.”
I never dreamed that they would have to take me up on the offer to house them, but shortly afterwards it happened. Doctor Wang and his wife looked as if they had been through a nightmare when they arrived at Heathrow Airport. The couple, who had dedicated a quarter of a century to serving the people there, had been forced to flee for their lives. The country was in turmoil.
“We lost almost everything,” said Dr. Wang after I introduced him to my wife. “We are going to have to start our lives again from the beginning.”
The couple did stay with us for a time in our new home in Walton-on-Thames and became valued members of our family. Then I discovered that some of Dr. Wang’s former patients were in England at the Ockenden Venture Home in Haslemere. The orphans had been flown over to England by a newspaper that had mounted a last-ditch effort to rescue” the children from the mayhem that was expected to result from the fall of Saigon.
The paper had prominently featured the airlift, but had come in for considerable criticism for taking the children out of their natural environment, however bad it had been.
But I was still shocked with the apparent callousness of the man on the picture desk when I told him of this reunion between Dr Wang and their “war orphans.” “We’ve gone off Vietnamese war orphans, old boy,” he said curtly. “Sorry, we’re not interested.”
“But you brought them over….”
With that the phone went dead.
After their stay with us, the good doctor and his wife left the UK and start their lives again in another part of the world, and when I saw them off at Heathrow Airport, I suddenly felt ashamed of part of my profession. The words of that man on the picture desk kept repeating in my mind.
“We’ve gone off Vietnamese war orphans, old boy.”
Then I thought of the words of Jesus: “As much as you do it unto these children, you do it unto me.”
Photo captions: 1) North Vietnamese tank breaks down gates of US embassy. 2) A Viet Cong base being destroyed by US troops. 3) Civilians sort through the ruins of their homes in Cholon, the heavily damaged Chinese section of Saigon. 4) South Vietnamese troops arrive during the Tet Offensive. 5) Some of the babies "rescued" from Saigon.
About the writer: Dan Wooding, 74, is an award-winning journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for more than 51 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly "Front Page Radio" show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of some 45 books, the latest of which is a novel about the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother called "Mary: My Story from Bethlehem to Calvary". For more information, please go to http://marythebook.com/, where you can find details of how to order the book.
** You may republish this or any of our ANS stories with attribution to the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net)
Read more