Fifty years ago this month, the world watched as Saigon fell. Carried Away: A Memoir of Rescue and Survival Among the Orphans of the Viet Nam War by Ross Meador Book Tour with Guest Post
“When the World Was Watching, He Was Already There”
Fifty years ago this month, the world watched as Saigon fell. In the midst of it all, an unprecedented humanitarian mission unfolded: Operation Babylift, a race against time to evacuate more than 3,000 Vietnamese orphans before the country’s borders closed and violence overtook the city.
Ross Meador was not a diplomat, a soldier, or part of any government agency. He was 19—a teenager who had arrived in Vietnam the year before with a fierce desire to do something that mattered. Working through a grassroots nonprofit, he had spent months helping at orphanages, forming bonds with children who had lost everything. When Operation Babylift began, Ross didn’t have to be recruited—he was already in place, and already doing the work.
EXCERPT:
The buzzing vibration seemed to come from everywhere—not a noise really, but a hum that penetrated my bones as I passed in and out of sleep.
Where was I? I opened my eyes to see the under-side of a bunk just a foot above me. A harsh bright light illuminated everything in the room. The bunk above squeaked with movement as a hand fell over the side.
I turned my body to sit on the edge of the bed. My feet touched the !oor and I noticed the vibration again.
“Oh, my God,” I thought, hardly able to think at all. “The Midway.”
Then, “And Saigon is gone.”
The ship felt alive and the vibration its heartbeat; its awesome strength both protecting and intimidating. The engines of this floating city pushed us through the waves of the South China Sea, while its massive ventilation system kept us cool. Its brawn was achieved by 4,500 crew and eighty planes on a normal day. But today was not normal. Over 3,000 evacuees had come aboard the Midway in the previous twenty-four hours, all of us fleeing the North Vietnamese army that was burning our city. Saigon had become my home. Now it was gone.
I looked at my clothes, the ones I had been wearing for a couple of days. The walls creaked along with the sounds of things rolling in the distance. I tried to open my mouth, but it felt like it was stuck together. I needed water. I needed to go to the bathroom.
As I stood, I came face to face with the man sleeping on the bunk above me—had I seen him before?—and heard the snoring of two others in the bunks above. I found my way to the door, which opened to a narrow hallway with shiny, just-mopped floors, semi-exposed buttresses and plenty of painted rivets. I saw a sailor running in my direction like he was about to pee in his pants. When he frantically ducked into a doorway, I knew that was the head.
“Yes!”
When I was done going to the bathroom and drinking some water, I went back to the bunk room, opened the door and noticed my backpack laying at the corner of my bunk. I could see my pencil through the gap in the zipper. I grabbed for my backpack and sat down way too hard, feeling sure I shook the others awake. When no one stirred, I pulled it open and saw my notebook, the one that I had packed a couple of nights before. It was mostly blank pages.
“Perfect,” I thought. I grabbed the pencil and leaned against the wall. “Dear Mom,” I wrote. “I have been a little busy the past week or so and haven’t had a chance to write. I was in Saigon until the end. So sad for all of us. There is much to tell.”
I rested my head against the wall and put the eraser in my mouth. “The problem is figuring out where to begin…” I stopped to think while reaching for my pillow, damp from sweat, and turned it over. Was I up for going back in time, to make sense of everything that had happened? Writing it all down seemed like a good idea a moment earlier, now it didn’t feel like I had the strength. I laid back on my bunk and put my arm behind my head, and began to really, really think.
Guest Post:
I grew up during the Viet Nam war years, and was profoundly aware of the horrible tragedy being inflicted upon the Vietnamese people. The plight of the war orphans was especially compelling and I felt driven to help.
I learned of a group called Friends of Children of Vietnam that was dedicated to helping the orphans. I was 19 years old and had no money or resources. I hitchhiked from my home in San Diego to the organization’s office in Denver. There I learned that the group had no office in Vietnam, but wanted to start one. All they had, however, was $500 and a one-way ticket to Saigon. My dream was coming true.
I arrived in Vietnam in early 1974. What I lacked in experience, I made up for in passion and enthusiasm. I visited orphanages whenever I could and wherever they may be located. The conditions I found were deplorable – filth, disease, starvation. I took pictures and wrote stories about what I found, and stirred the hearts of some generous Americans. A few donations trickled in, enough to rent a house big enough to take in some of the orphans from the overcrowded orphanages. Our international adoption program was born.
Soon after renting our first house, I was joined by Cherie Clark and her family. Cherie was a nurse with a deep commitment to helping the Vietnamese people. She immediately took charge and we began to expand. Within a few months, we had over 100 children in our care and we completed the first of our international adoptions. I was lucky enough to escort many of the children on flights back to the US and to say to anxious parents in the airport lounge, “Here’s your son!”
By the end of 1974, our operation was in full swing. We opened several more childcare facilities and regularly sent adoptees on the twice-weekly Pan Am flights to Honolulu and beyond. Little did we know that the end was very near.
In December 1974, the US Congress cut off military aid to South Vietnam. Nevertheless, conventional wisdom was that the country could hang on for at least another year. By February, however, the North Vietnamese succeeded in taking control of large areas of the South, and we began to realize that the inevitable was upon us. At that point we had hundreds of children in our physical and legal custody. Giving them back to the orphanages or abandoning them to fend for themselves was never an option. If we had to leave, our kids were coming too. That was the birth of Operation Babylift.
The INS agreed to waive visa requirements for the children, but we were on our own for transport. We spoke with every airline and cargo carrier in the country to try to arrange a flight. Eventually we found Ed Daly of World Airways who agreed to take our kids. The first flight was on April 2, 1975, carrying 57 of our older kids. I knew all the kids well and placed them on the plane myself. In spite of government efforts to block the flight, including cutting off the runway lights at the moment of takeoff, the children arrived safely in the US.
By April 3, the world press was buzzing about Friends of Children of Vietnam and the World Airways flight. Pressure mounted in Washington. President Ford then stepped up and agreed to fund flights for the remaining children.
The first government-funded flight ended in disaster. As the plane reached altitude, the rear doors blew off. The plane crashed in a rice field, killing about half of the children aboard. I was at the airport when it happened and saw the smoke rise from the sky.
The military flights resumed a couple of days later on smaller cargo planes, with the babies placed in cardboard boxes on the floor. I joined one of the flights, which landed first at a US airbase in the Philippines and then continued on to San Francisco the next day in traditional passenger aircraft. I stayed just a day in California before flying back to Saigon to continue helping with the evacuation.
Back in Vietnam, chaos reigned. The nuns who ran the jungle orphanages panicked. Many loaded all of their children on a bus and brought them to us. We closed our countryside facility after the World Airways flight, so literally hundreds of children were squeezed into our Saigon facility. The evacuation flights continued until April 26, when the last of our children were flown out, together with the last of our American staff.
I stayed behind to continue to help. Two days later, April 28, the airport was bombed and closed to fixed-wing flights. The next morning, our house was attacked as the army from the North took over the city. I fled to the Embassy and stayed there until the early morning of April 30, when I was one of the last American civilians to be lifted from the roof of the Embassy and flown to a waiting aircraft carrier in the South China Sea.
My perspective on the work we did has changed as I have watched the children grow into adults. At the time of their adoption, many of the adults involved act as if the children’s lives begin the day they get off the plane in the US. Most of the adoptees, however, retain a powerful connection to Vietnam and to their birth families, whether or not they ever get to meet them. This realization complicates the story. It is not only about the joy of finding a new family; it is also about the sadness of losing one. I have no regrets; the orphanages were terrible places for a child to grow up and the adopting families were generally wonderful. But it is hard to be orphaned, and for many of the kids, being adopted doesn’t completely eliminate the longing for their first mother.
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