An American Child in War-Torn Saigon

I read Sally Bush Lynch’s article with interest (“Perspectives,” April 2007). What a surprise that there was someone else like me there at the time! We arrived in Saigon in 1963 when I was 6, and left—without my father, foreign officer Gustav Hertz—in 1965.

I don’t remember being afraid to go anywhere and I regularly went down the street by myself and around the block behind our gated house to play with American kids living back there. My father, a spontaneous “free-spirit,” intensely compassionate and interested in everyone and everything, would frequently take us out on weekends in the car on expeditions, as he called them, to rubber plantations, deserted villas, a big grass landing strip, temples, restaurants and markets. It seems we went everywhere. My father believed in immersion and in “doing as the Romans do.”

I remember well the day Ngo Dinh Diem fell. Our house was a stone’s throw from his residence. That evening my father and I sat on our rear balcony in the twilight listening to the heavy trucks and the artillery. Dad calmly listened and described to me the sounds we were hearing. In retrospect I suspect Dad knew what was happening.

My father met often with the countryside’s chieftains. On February 2, 1965, Daddy rode off on my brother’s motorcycle and we never saw him again. A few days later a note in Daddy’s handwriting arrived for my mom telling us he’d been captured by the “National Liberation Front.”

Shortly thereafter, President Lyndon B. Johnson escalated the war, and American dependents were ordered to evacuate. I got terribly sick with measles and chicken pox simultaneously, and was quarantined and unable to leave Saigon for six weeks. My mother gamely remarked that she had the underwear section all to herself at the PX.

Even with this extra time staying behind, my frantic mother was unable to find my father. My spontaneous father had not told Mom where he was going that day. The Americans even emptied my father’s camera hoping to find a hint in his photographs of where he might have gone.

We finally left Saigon and returned to our home in Virginia. My French-speaking mother became pen pals with Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was friendly with both the Americans and the North Vietnamese. Eventually from him Mother learned that my father died of malaria in a holding camp in 1967, and we received his watch. However, my family had heard many rumors and news stories, and had even gotten late-night phone calls from crazies with “news” of my father. Without a body, we still really didn’t know what to believe.

It took years of effort by government agencies and the military to interview local Vietnamese, identify where my father had been held just outside of Saigon, retrieve remains, conduct DNA testing and verify the findings. About six years ago, we gratefully received my father’s remains and he is now buried in Leesburg, Va. After a lifetime of not knowing my father’s whereabouts, he is home. Oddly, Dad returned February 1, 2001, the eve of the day he disappeared in 1965.

Tina Hertz Evans
Ashburn, Va.

FSB Thunder III, Revisited

I recently read the article about the battle of Thunder III, written by Tim Long (October 2006), in which I was mentioned. This made me think about doing something I have been thinking of doing for a while now. I hope you will give me this opportunity to thank two heroes.

Sometime in October-November 1969, a Spc. 4 Johnson and I (Spc. 4 James Massengill)—both of Recon/Flame PLT, HQ Co., 2-2 Mech Inf, 1st Infantry Division—left Dau Tieng, Vietnam, en route to our division depot. We were returning an experimental model “track” when the thing started running hot. It was to be used to service our “zippos” (flame tracks). We had to get out of the convoy we were traveling with and drive at a very slow pace. Meanwhile, we were trying to reach our company via radio to advise them of our situation. We did not manage to contact them, but someone did intercept our transmission and stated they would send help. I wasn’t sure it would happen, because I knew how easily things could get mixed up sometimes.

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