Tu Biet-Farewell Forever

Song of Saigon : One Woman's Journey to Freedom
by Anh Vu Sawyer, Pam Proctor

Do I dare tell you about the dream I had in anatomy class? If Mother knew, she would be scandalized. It just isn't the thing a well-bred Vietnamese girl fantasizes about. Anatomy lab was right after lunch, and with my stomach full and my brain still fuzzy after a midday siesta at home, I found it impossible to keep my mind on the tedious work ahead. It was hot, stiflingly hot, as dust blew in through the open windows and onto the corpses that were stretched naked on concrete slabs around the laboratory. My nostrils burned with the pungent odor of formaldehyde, which infused the air from across the room, where eight or ten corpses were afloat in an open vat.

I was standing at my workstation and had just picked up my scalpel to slice into the thigh of a cadaver when-in my mind's eye- a handsome young man appeared just outside the door. He seemed to come out of nowhere.

He was slim and tall, with a gentle face, curly brown hair, and soft, elegant hands. He wore jeans and a loose denim shirt that appeared to have been draped carelessly over his body, giving him an air of wanton abandon. Although he looked nothing at all like the GI Joes who were everywhere in Saigon, with their buzz cuts, bulging biceps, and fatigues, I knew instantly that he was American.

The very thought of him made me blush. I had never spoken directly to an American man before. I had only heard their voices, calling to their buddies outside the bars, haggling with the aunties selling ao dai in the marketplace, or laughing with young women in skintight miniskirts. These Americans were loud, grasping, and self-important..They even brought themselves so low as to walk around the streets wearing women's underwear on their heads like a trophy. To compound the shame, these young American guys would sit brazenly with their women in the front seat of a pedal-driven cyclo, kissing and tickling each other, as the poor old cyclo driver pedaled behind, trying to avert his eyes in humiliation.

"Very bad women," my mother would say when I was young, ordering me to cover my eyes as if we were walking along some kind of nude beach. I pretended not to look, but through the cracks in my fingers, I took it all in, wondering what it meant. Later on, when as a teenager I saw such things, I felt less revulsion than pity. For some reason I can't explain, I found myself overcome by a great burden to pray for their children-the mixed-race offspring of these prostitutes and their boorish Americans.

But my American lover was different. He had a tenderness about him-an inner tranquility-that was so strong and sure I was over-powered by its magnetism. When he was with me, I felt such a sense of security that nothing could harm me: not the terrifying rockets that came in the night; nor the random bombs that exploded in the markets by day; nor the salacious whispers of my friends and family; nor even the disgust of my anatomy professor, who had to keep reminding me to keep focused on my dissection.

"Ngoc Anh," he would intone, "if you intend to be a doctor, you must first get through this class."

I would apologize many times, bow very low, and pretend to be absorbed in my lab. And then, when Professor Hung wasn't looking, I would smile and cast a glance at my lover, who was still waiting for me patiently, as I knew he would be, just outside the door. When I finally finished my work and left the classroom, he would walk me out of the building as if I were a queen. My friends were green with envy. I could see their jealous looks and hear the hushed whispers, but I didn't care.

My lover was with me, and that was all that mattered. We didn't touch, or even say a word. We simply walked quietly down the steps of Minh Duc Medical School and onto the hot, dusty street, where we hopped on our motorcycles and rode off into the evening.

* * * * *

Perhaps the dreams made me oblivious to what was going on in Saigon right under my nose. It was the spring of 1975, and my country was on the cusp of an historic political cataclysm. Although I was twenty years old, I hadn't the foggiest sense that a maelstrom was swirling around me.

I did notice one thing strange: I would be sitting in class one day and a messenger would come to the door, call out the name of one of the students, and he would be gone. Not just gone for the moment- but gone for good. It happened a couple of times a day. One minute a classmate like Hiep, the son of a prominent Air Force general, would be sitting next to me, and the next minute he'd be rushing out the door like the March Hare, as if he had forgotten an important appointment.

We never saw him again.

These disappearances continued with increasing frequency. There was my friend Mili, the daughter of a wealthy banker, and then Bao, the son of an official attached to the American Embassy. After that came Tran, Von, and Nhan, until the class had more seats that were empty than full.

At first no one spoke of what was happening. We simply hung out with our friends as we always had, laughing at some silly joke over a bowl of noodle soup, or comparing notes on an upcoming exam. But before long, the whispers started.

"Did you notice there aren't as many Americans around?" someone said, sotto voce. "I hear they're all leaving." Another confided, "I saw my cousin Duc yesterday. He was a soldier up north in Hue, and now he's home for good. He says units are retreating all over the countryside." "How about our classmate Diep? I hear she left for Paris with her brothers and sister."

Toward the middle of April, the rumors of a North Vietnamese assault on the South were thick as a plague of grasshoppers, but we had nothing to confirm them. We tried looking through Time and Newsweek, which were readily available in Saigon, but the government regularly censored the Far East editions and decisions about the war never quite made it to their pages. My family did have one potential source of real information: my older brother, Phong, who had graduated from California State Polytechnic Institute and was now working in San Francisco. But we hadn't heard from him in months. So we were left, like most everyone else in Saigon, to try to discern the truth of what was going on and fend for ourselves.

We had no powerful connections or financial clout to buy our way out of the country as many of my classmates did. If we hoped to leave Vietnam, we would have to find our own way.

My mother, who was always enterprising about such things, started to dig up information by talking to everyone she knew. One friend told her it might be possible for me to arrange a fake marriage license, showing that I was married to an American. With such a document, the woman said, the American Embassy would give me an exit visa.

As tempting as the idea was, other friends counseled against it. "I've heard that people end up losing their money and never get the marriage certificate," they said. "It's just a scam." The rumors kept flying, and we kept running, first here and then there to find a shred of real information. When my mother heard that there might be some tidbit to be had at the local city hall, she sent me on my bike to hang out and listen. When I arrived there, the place was so crowded I couldn't even wedge myself inside the door. I had to wait in a field outside with hundreds of others who had obviously heard the same rumor.

All around me, people were tense and anxious. I could see them scanning the crowd for a friendly face who might give them a piece of news. But there was no news that day that could help any of us, and as the truth of our predicament began to sink in, I did what I had always done ever since I was a child: I began to pray. "If you want us to leave," I told God, "you'll have to show us how."

All my life, I had felt free to put questions to God, and in various ways he had never failed to answer. Why should I expect any less of him now? I just knew that our position at that moment appeared to be hopeless, and if indeed a way out of Vietnam existed for my family, the specific details would have to be divinely orchestrated.

* * * * *

"Chi Huong, Chi Huong! Open the gate! It's me, open up!" Because of a twenty-four-hour curfew, which had just been imposed a few weeks earlier, we regularly kept the gate of our family compound closed and locked. Now someone was banging loudly, clamoring to get in. For some reason, he was calling out Chi Huong, or "elder sister Huong," the familiar name of our nanny. "Who could it be?" asked Mother. "Don't open the door!" Still the gate rattled, and the male voice shouted again. "Chi Huong-the gate-please open it!"

"It sounds like Master Phong," our nanny said. "That's impossible," retorted my mother. "Phong's in America." At the very mention of my brother's name, my sister, brothers, and I rushed out the door to our house and up to the gate, where my very bedraggled brother Phong was standing outside, grasping the iron bars. Nanny opened the gate, and he quickly slipped inside the compound, where we crowded around him in awe and excitement.

I barely recognized him. When he had left Vietnam nearly eight years before, he had been a skinny teenager with a sophisticated veneer of slicked back hair, tailored designer jackets, and luxurious Pierre Cardin ties. Now he was a grown man, strikingly handsome, well fed and brimming with confidence. His hair was so long it nearly brushed his shoulders. And in his tight Levis and denim jacket, he looked every inch an American.

My mother took one look at him and almost fainted. "Why did you come home?" she asked with a look of fear in her eyes. "You were safe. You had life. Why are you here?"

"I had to come," he said. "I tried to write. I even tried to send a telegram. When I couldn't reach you, I hopped a plane to Guam and then got a lift here as a volunteer on a Red Cross helicopter." The urgency in his eyes riveted our attention and rendered us speechless as he continued: "You must leave the country immediately," he said. "There is no hope left. The only chance you have is to get out with me, because now I'm an American citizen." For a long while, nobody said a word. We just looked at him, unable to speak, as the enormity of what was happening to us began to sink in. Then all of a sudden, we broke into smiles and started tittering with giddy laughter.

"Yes, yes," we all agreed. We would go tomorrow to the American Embassy, as Phong had said. He was an American now, a citizen, and that meant everything would be all right. He was sure of it. The next morning the house took on an air of celebration. It was as if someone had flicked a switch, turning the stark and scary darkness of our lives into an incredible burst of light. With Phong in our midst, we felt hopeful and safe, filled with expectation about our future life in America. Here was our hero, the bold rescuer-who had been born, appropriately, in the Year of the Tiger-who was going to bring us to the promised land.

For breakfast, our nanny spread out a feast: delicate crepes known as banh cuon, filled with savory meat; sticky rice with coconut milk; lemon sauces; tea; and the ubiquitous pho, the noodle soup that is a Vietnamese staple. How Nanny had managed this repast, I'll never know.

No shops or stores were open where she could buy such goods. Our only sources for food were the black market and whatever we could scrounge from our neighbors by bartering from house to house. But Phong was Nanny's oldest charge-she had practically raised him herself-and for her young prince, nothing but the best would do. I gorged myself on the banquet, paying more attention to my stomach than to the serious conversation between my parents and Phong at the other end of the table. But soon breakfast was over and before I knew what was happening, Phong hustled us out the door and managed to flag down an open-air minibus to take us to the embassy. Although it was dangerous for us or anyone else to be out in the daylight, as we traveled along I saw our friend Quang riding on a motorcycle.

I waved at him happily. We are going to life-we are going to our future, I thought, smiling to myself. Even after we arrived at the embassy and saw thousands of others who had gotten there ahead of us, my sense of euphoria was undiminished.

We waited outside expectantly as Phong maneuvered his way inside the building to talk to an official. But when he emerged an hour later, he looked strained and defeated. "There's no way we can do it," he said, shaking his head. "They say they are only taking American citizens."

We looked at each other in astonishment, not knowing what to do next. Mother was the first to speak. Mustering every ounce of courage she had left, she gave her oldest son a direct order: "I want you to leave us," she told Phong. "Go back to your American wife. Don't waste your life for us. You've done all you can do. You have a chance to live-take it. Take it now!"

There was a finality in her voice that brooked no opposition. We all knew that voice, and whenever she was in the command mode, we knew better than to contradict her. Phong looked at her, then at Father, and at each of my siblings, one by one. Then he looked at me. His eyes were filled with pain and yearning.

"Go, please go," I begged him, touching his shoulder lightly. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my body heaved with sobs. Next to me, my sister Diep, eighteen, and my brothers Hai, nineteen, and Khanh, thirteen, were drowning in despair. My older sister, Tram, twenty-six, escaped this awful moment only because she was studying in Germany. Just my parents and Phong remained stoic. When Phong could bear no more, he turned on his heels and ran into the embassy, afraid even to look back.

* * * * *

The minute we stepped through the gate of our family compound, my mother's steely conviction drained out of her, and she became almost catatonic. With her arms crossed and gripping her body, she sat on the divan, rocking back and forth and moaning in a low, steady drone, "My son, my son."

In another room, my father, his face white as a sheet, sat slumped in a chair, chain-smoking. My sister and brothers fled to our room, where they huddled together, talking in whispers, as if something would break if they dared speak out loud.

I was beyond tears. Beyond fear. Yet I wasn't ready to surrender to some futile fate. I was consumed by a sense of urgency, an overwhelming conviction that we had to leave the country immediately. But I was also burning with an equally strong desire to wait for a little while and pray. It was almost as if a sturdy hand had been placed on my shoulder to steady me, to calm me, and to keep my mind focused. Instinctively, I began to speak to God. I wandered from room to room with no particular destination or purpose. There really wasn't much else for me to do. In those anxious years of war, with few activities to occupy us, we either read or just sat doing nothing.

I know now that's why I daydreamed a lot, and why prayer had become a regular habit. We spent so much of our spare time worrying that, for a respite, I found my spirit yearning to be in God's presence.

Something inside of me-beyond my will, beyond my conscious mind-craved a constant connection.

I could be in the middle of some small task, such as helping Chi Huong prepare dinner, and I would catch myself talking to God. I wasn't even aware that I was praying, but I was. Sometimes, when I was lying in bed waiting to fall asleep, the wail of rockets overhead testing my tranquility, I would engage him in conversation. "Are you really real?" I asked. "Would you show me, then?" Before I knew it, I was drifting off to sleep, feeling securely enfolded in the protection of everlasting arms.

Of course, these conversations weren't proof of God's existence in a visible way. But over the years, our conversations had taken on a life of their own as I had come to know that God was always there for me and his love was very real. To me, that was all the proof I needed. It was only natural, then, that as my family faced the biggest crisis of our lives, my soul drifted back to God. Over and over like a mantra, words came flooding out of my mouth. "Lord, have mercy. God, have mercy."

For what seemed like hours, I whispered my petitions, humbly beseeching God to pour out his compassion upon me and my family and permit us to leave. I knew that we didn't deserve such favor any more than the Nguyen family next door or the Duongs down the street. Nonetheless, I believed with all my heart that God had the power to pluck us out from among millions of people if he chose to, and that to such an awesome God, even my small voice was not too insignificant to be heard.

"God, you are merciful," I said simply. "Please be gracious to us." The longer I prayed, the more I was buoyed by an unwavering sense of assurance. Nothing in our circumstances had changed: my mother was still moaning, my father was still smoking, and my siblings were still holed up in their room. Yet a stillness welled up inside of me, a gentle calm that made me feel as if I were a paper flower, a bougainvillea, floating down a meandering stream. Like that paper flower, I was being carried along by a force that was not of my own strength to a destination not of my own choosing. And as I bobbed along on the sparkling water, I remained vibrant and intact-with bright fuchsia petals that sent a message of joy and hope.

* * * * *

"Anh, wake up," my mother said, tugging at my sleeve the next morning. "We've decided to go to the American church. I remembered someone telling me a few weeks ago that if we get to the church, the American pastor will help us."

Over breakfast, we started talking animatedly among ourselves, weighing this new option. We lived in Gia Dinh, a suburb of Saigon that was a half-hour's motorcycle ride to the church. The problem was, we didn't have enough motorcycles for the entire family. A quick peek out on the street-where not a soul stirred-confirmed that our chances of finding a minibus, as we had the day before, were slim. Even if we did have transportation, the thought of buzzing around the streets in broad daylight, with armed Vietnamese soldiers ready to enforce the curfew, was unnerving. Even more questionable was the idea of finding refuge at the American church itself. Allying ourselves so openly with Americans as their power was disintegrating seemed foolhardy at best.

Yet at that moment, the American church was the only plan we had. But the problem remained: how would we get there? As the debate and discussion swirled around me, I withdrew into myself. A voice seemed to whisper in my ear: "O taste and see that the Lord is good! Happy is the man who takes refuge in him!" It sounded just like Mr. Titus, the soft-spoken Mennonite missionary who had been our teacher at Vacation Bible School many years before.

I remembered the platter piled high with cinnamon toast that he had passed among us at snack time each day. I could almost taste the rich sweetness of the cinnamon-sugar, the saltiness of melted butter, and the crunch of toasted bread. It was an almost sinfully extravagant luxury that dissolved in my mouth and made me feel as though I were at a king's banquet.

All of a sudden, I heard a commotion and looked up to see one of my cousins rushing in the door.

"We have motorcycles," he said, "we have bikes. Where can we take you?" "To the American church!" my mother exclaimed, pushing us out Vietnamese dollars we could use to bribe the Vietnamese soldiers if they stopped us.

The six of us hopped on the backs of the bikes and cycles with my cousins, and like some ragtag caravan, found our way to the church.

* * * * *

By late afternoon, the American church, which earlier had been filled to overflowing, was empty. We watched silently as one by one, frightened families had sized up the terrible truth and fled for some other haven. A few headed for the harbor, where it was said a Korean ship was welcoming people aboard. Others like Chi Huong, who had stopped by the church briefly to bring us lunch, were going home to take their chances with the Communists. Even my uncle and his family had finally given up and, saying a last tearful good-bye, had taken their leave of us on their bikes and cycles.

Now, my family was the only one left. When we had arrived at the church around noon, the place had been humming with expectation. Hundreds of Vietnamese from all over the city were pressed together, sitting in the pews, huddling on their haunches in the aisles, scrunching into the choir loft, and leaning on the altar. People were eating lunches they had brought and chattering with their neighbors, as they waited for the pastor to appear and for something to happen.

But from the moment we had arrived, my mother had sensed intuitively that nothing was going to happen-for us anyway. "There's no way we're getting out of the country with so many people," she said, sounding defeated.

"Go ahead, tell her about your vision." The voice was urging me on, nudging me to respond to her fears. But how could I, Be Tu, or "Little Number Four," as everyone called me, have the courage to speak out?

Never in my life had I challenged my mother or even questioned her opinion. Even though I was twenty years old, I still felt like a young girl, hardly capable of opening my mouth. Yet again, I heard the whisper. "Tell her what you know."

"Mother," I said, with a firmness in my voice that surprised even me, "God gave us motorcycles and bicycles to get to the church, and soon he will send a flying machine to take us out of here." "You don't know what you're talking about," my mother snapped, turning her head away in rebuke.

But I did know-much more than I could ever explain. During those long hours wandering around the house praying, I had received a picture in my mind of a "flying machine." Whether the machine was an airplane, a big balloon, or something else wasn't clear. What was clear was that sometime very soon, this flying machine would scoop us up like a mother bird and carry us off into the heavens. Despite my mother's rebuff, I could see her shoulders relax and her body soften, as the hope of a deus ex machina, as improbable as it seemed, grabbed hold of her. Even as the shadows began to lengthen and the crowd began to thin out, she held onto the vision God had given me. And so we waited.

* * * * *

"Let's take a walk," I told my family. It was apparent to each of us that as dangerous as it was to be on the streets-where trigger-happy soldiers could mow us down on a whim-we couldn't stay at the American church a moment longer.

Just a few hours earlier, as we had huddled over a shortwave radio with others in the church, we had heard reports that the Communists were poised to enter Saigon at nightfall. For all we knew, they could be on the church's doorstep at this very moment, and if we wanted to distance ourselves from the Americans, we sensed that now was the time to do it.

It was nearly five o'clock when we set foot outside the church and sized up our surroundings. Although we hadn't noticed it before, the church was in a lovely residential area, with streets lined with trees. The feared soldiers-South Vietnamese or otherwise-were nowhere to be seen. In fact, no one else was around at all. We picked a direction that seemed safe and started walking.

Oddly enough, as our little family of six ambled down the street, it was almost as if we were out for a late afternoon stroll. We had no idea where we were going. We simply plodded along for a few blocks until we heard a muffled sound, like the roar of the ocean. Turning a corner, we came upon a mob of people, pressing against a building that looked strangely familiar.

"What's going on?" I shouted above the din to a bystander. "It's the back of the American Embassy," he said. "There are helicopters inside-everyone's trying to escape."

Yesterday the embassy had been swarming with people like us, who were waiting patiently for information. Today it was total chaos. Thousands of people were surging against a wide metal gate, trying to get inside the embassy compound. On either side of the gate stood two concrete guard booths, topped with small platforms ringed with concertina wire, about six feet off the ground. Astride the two platforms, U.S. Marines were pushing men and women away with the butts of their rifles.

Nothing deterred the mob. Children, grannies, and teenagers alike were climbing, shoving, clawing, elbowing-anything to find a means of escape. They were fighting to survive, desperate to be one of the lucky ones to slip over the gate through the Marines' grasp. Before we knew what was happening, we were swept up in the frenzy. I could see my brother Hai's head a few yards in front of me. Off to the left were my mother and father, along with my sister Diep and younger brother Khanh. Without even trying, we were being carried closer and closer to the gate.

All of a sudden, the crowd seemed to open up, and in the next blink I spotted Hai on one of the platforms. He was pulling up Khanh and Diep. Then came my mother and me. We grabbed Hai's hand and scrambled up the gate and onto the platform, oblivious to the barbed wire that was stripping the clothes from our backs and puncturing our skin.

To the right and the left of us, Marines were punching people in the face, kicking them with their shoes, and muscling them away from the platform. Yet no one laid a hand on us.

Down below me, still on the ground, my father struggled to climb up. With a burst of assertiveness, I turned to the Marine next to me-he was olive-skinned, Hispanic, with kind, compassionate eyes-and implored, "Please, could you help my father? I'll give you anything you want."

The Marine reached down, grabbed my father's hand, and pulled him onto the platform alongside me. With that, we turned our backs on the frenzied mob and hurled ourselves onto the grass inside the American Embassy compound.

* * * * *

Just as I started to pick myself up from the ground, I looked up to see a short, balding American civilian holding a pistol to my father's temple. He said something in English I didn't understand. But we understood the language of fear well enough to raise our hands high above our heads, as if we were criminals.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother brazenly waving two pieces of paper at the man. One was a letter from Phong's professor at Cal Poly and the other was from his inlaws vouching for our family's connections in America.

With the pistol still pointed at my father's head, the man looked at the letters, mumbled something under his breath, and shooed us on to a passageway that led farther inside the compound.

By now we were not only feeling incredibly scared and vulnerable but also embarrassed by our near-nakedness. The barbed wire had torn our clothes to shreds, our shoes had disappeared from our feet, and our arms and legs were oozing blood from the scrapes and gashes we had sustained. Luckily, as we scurried through the passageway, we came across piles of suitcases that others had tossed to the side in their haste to escape. Like scavengers, we rummaged through the luggage, grabbed some clothes, and threw them on.

When we emerged from the passageway, my heart sank. There, far in the distance, was yet another locked gate engulfed by a sea of people.

I saw Americans, Koreans, Germans, and Frenchmen. Some, with cameras, appeared to be journalists. Others, with children in tow, seemed to be diplomats or embassy personnel. Still others were Vietnamese who were either connected to the Americans in some way or, like us, had slipped over the gate and into this privileged inner circle.

We had no choice but to stand in line like everyone else, and wait. We stood there for what seemed like hours, not even knowing exactly what we were waiting for. But we weren't idle. Everyone was jostling for position, some moving closer toward the front of the line, some dropping behind.

As darkness fell, we found ourselves halfway up to the gate and next to a huge pool that was right in the center of the embassy grounds. I could hear music playing in the background, and although I found it somewhat odd, I also thought it was very kind of the Americans to give us this little bit of cheer.

Despite our desperate situation, I felt a strange calm. I wasn't the least bit nervous because the image of the flying machine kept coming back to me. In fact, I couldn't get it out of my mind. With each passing minute, I felt more and more certain that God was about to act. Suddenly, in the midst of the crowd and the confusion and the darkness, I saw everything around me with luminous clarity. It was as if I had tunnel vision, where objects appeared larger than life and seconds seemed to last forever. The first thing I saw was that most of the Americans and other foreigners in the crowd had disappeared. Everyone around me was Vietnamese!

It was then that I noticed the other gate. Across the patio, on the other side of the pool, was a small gate, much narrower than the one we were waiting for. I had never even noticed it before. Even more amazing, no one was lined up behind it. And no soldiers were guarding it.

I did a quick reconnaissance and realized that to get there, we would have to leave our places in line, go back through the crowd, and run around the pool.

The plan was risky-perhaps crazy-but something prompted me to take a chance and try to convince my parents to follow me. "Let's go there," I whispered to my parents, nodding my head in the direction of the narrow gate.

God must have prepared their hearts in advance, because the entire family followed me without question. The crowd behind us was only too happy to see us give up our places, and before we knew it we had pushed our way back to the rear of the line. After urging a few other families to join us, we quickly ran around the pool and up to the narrow gate.

"Let's keep in order," I told everyone, taking charge like a drill sergeant. "We'll have more of a chance of getting through." Beyond the gate, high up on a flat roof a few yards away, I spotted an official-looking white-haired man holding a walkie-talkie. I waved to him and smiled. "We're good!" I said, grinning broadly. "Please let us through, we're good!"

He bent down and said something into the walkie-talkie. A few seconds later, two soldiers guarding the other gate ran over to us and opened the latch. My family slipped through the narrow gate along with one other family, just as hundreds of people, seeing the soldiers run to help us, surged around the pool in our direction. But they were too late. In the split second it took for us to get through, the soldiers slammed the gate shut behind us, locked it with a chain, and stood guard as a melee erupted.

We didn't know until later that although the family behind us had made it through as well, a third couple had shoved their children inside the gate without them, just as the soldiers barred the door.

"Take care of our children," they begged the other family. "At least they will be safe."

Everything was happening so fast-we just kept running. The man with the walkie-talkie motioned us toward a fire escape, and we scrambled up the iron steps and onto the embassy roof. There, in front of my eyes, was a flying machine, a monstrous, olive-drab steel realization of my prophetic vision. The hulking Huey helicopter stood with its rear door wide open, beckoning us to ascend.

As we piled into the chopper, a soldier barked, "Lie on the floor!" We dropped to the floor and within minutes heard the clank of the metal door, the click of a latch, and the whir of rotating blades. Before long, we were airborne.

As the chopper pulled away from the embassy roof, I couldn't resist the temptation to look outside. Like a snake slithering up a wall, I stood up slowly and peered out of the little window. Outside it was raining fire. Bright, burning bullet tracers, from rifles bent on bringing down our chopper, crisscrossed the night sky. The streaks were so close I could almost touch them. Off in the distance, I could hear the rumble of explosions. The Communists were finally moving into Saigon.

But I knew I was safe. The steady beat of the Huey's blades echoed with the sweet sound of redemption as we rose higher and higher. "Farewell, country. Tu biet-farewell forever," I whispered under my breath. "Thank God I have life."

Copyright © 2003 by Anh Vu Sawyer and Pam Proctor

About the Author

Anh Vu Sawyer was born in Saigon, Vietnam. She is a speaker, writer, and high school math teacher. She continues to do humanitarian work through REI-Vietnam, an agency that provides medical and educational aid to Vietnam. She has worked with at-risk teens, offered a home-away-from home to international students, counseled Vietnamese-offspring of American GIs, and continued hosting International Fellowship gatherings in her home. Anh Vu Sawyer lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband and three children.

Pam Proctor, a former senior editor of Parade, is the author of seven non-fiction books, including: Love, Miracles and Animal Healing, with Allen M. Schoen, D.V.M; Looking Good at Any Age, with dermatologist Amy E. Newburger, M.D; and The Joy of Living, with "Today Show" personality Willard Scott. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and holds a Master's degree in government from Claremont Graduate University. Pam Proctor lives in Vero Beach, Florida.