26.11.2014 Views

issue 54 - AsiaLIFE Magazine

issue 54 - AsiaLIFE Magazine

issue 54 - AsiaLIFE Magazine

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Tracking<br />

Down Disaster<br />

In the closing days of the war in Vietnam an audacious plan was hatched to fly<br />

thousands of Vietnamese orphans out of the country. The first of those flights<br />

ended in disaster, killing more than 150 people. Almost four decades later,<br />

Brett Davis accompanies a survivor of that fateful flight on a search for the<br />

scene of his brush with death.<br />

It’s an unusually clear early-<br />

August afternoon and we are<br />

standing in the middle of a<br />

small cluster of rice paddies<br />

in Ho Chi Minh City's District<br />

12. It is only a kilometre or<br />

two from the main road but<br />

the landscape quickly takes<br />

on a semi-rural feel, dotted by<br />

low-set houses with small front<br />

gardens.<br />

The directions were not<br />

exact; we had a rough idea and<br />

then started asking around<br />

once in the vicinity. Pulling out<br />

the photographs we were given,<br />

there is no doubt we have<br />

found the spot. This is where<br />

the first of the Operation Babylift<br />

flights came to a shuddering<br />

halt, crash landing shortly after<br />

take-off in April 1975.<br />

I’ve come along on the day’s<br />

search with Landon Carnie,<br />

who with his twin sister was<br />

among the fortunate who<br />

survived that day. They were<br />

both thought to have perished.<br />

Yet the two were found more<br />

than a day later in a nearby<br />

field, unharmed and reportedly<br />

clinging to each other.<br />

While he says he has often<br />

thought about visiting the site,<br />

Carnie only became aware of<br />

the general location of the crash<br />

recently. “I was interviewed a<br />

few months ago by a reporter<br />

from Al Jazeera, and she was on<br />

one of the later Babylift flights<br />

and she told me about the location,”<br />

he says.<br />

There are 173 other survivors.<br />

Another 153 people,<br />

including government officials,<br />

air force crew, nurses, civilians<br />

and 76 children were killed. Yet<br />

there is little to mark the location<br />

of such a significant event<br />

— just an old bowl and vase<br />

atop a cracked bit of concrete,<br />

nestled between two rice paddies<br />

hidden by the tall grass.<br />

The crash<br />

In the dying days of the war<br />

in Vietnam, then US President<br />

The only marker of the resting place<br />

of the plane's front section<br />

30 asialife HCMC

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!