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  • Veterans by other names

    Giới thiệu bài viết của Ký Giả Riste, Phillip R - người từng viết trên Time và Washington Post - bài viết của ông có tựa đề "Veterans by other names:" Ông được Boeing mời tham dự buổi thuyết trình về My POW của Phạm Văn Bản, rồi ông viết bài này cho Boeing Diversity:

    Veterans by other names

    Hello, my name is Vincent Pham. I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to share my story with you on Veteran’s Day. My history, like that of many veterans, is unique. But, the stories of all veterans are built on a willingness to protect liberty and sacrifice so others can prosper. Because of this, today, I am every veteran.


    Vincent Pham, circa 1973.

    After graduating from Law School in 1968, I joined the South Vietnamese military. Being multi-lingual, I held several positions as a translator and often went with my teams on patrols. I also saw combat and was wounded during my time as a translator. After several years of this, I transferred to the South Vietnamese Air Force and applied for flight training. I was accepted and sent to America for pilot training. In fact, the photo you in the hand-out is from this time period.

    After 2 more years of training, I was able to fly and returned to my country to begin flying combat missions. I did this for several more years until one fateful day that changed my life forever. This is my POW story.

    March 26, 1975

    My POW story really began like any other day: A normal day, another bombing run, fighting the Viet-Cong somewhere over Cambodia.

    The first pass went well, but by the 2nd bombing run, they were ready. This often happened and the enemy on the ground was prepared for the 2nd and subsequent bombing runs. A missile, most likely a Russian made SA-7, hit my left wing and sent the plane out of control. When I came to, the plane was spinning hopelessly through the air. I quickly realized there was no chance to control the plane. My training kicked in: I called ‘May Day’ and pulled the ejection trigger somewhere over the battlefield… near a place called Klong Khot, Cambodia.

    Everything had happened so quickly that it is hard to explain. The explosion, the plane spinning, ejecting and I had even been shot in the foot, it happened in a matter of seconds. Now, as my parachute engaged and began floating towards the earth, I steered the chute away from the enemy positions below and towards the dense jungle.

    And, it was quite a jungle that I found myself in. Dense foliage, a wounded foot and the enemy nearby looking for me. While I had managed to bandage my wound, it was my ability to move that was the most serious issue. I could not effectively evade the enemy with a bullet wound to my foot.

    I managed to find food and avoid capture for a while, but before long I was caught. Elements of the 9th North Vietnamese Army picked me up about 100 kilometers into Cambodia…neither of us were supposed to be there.
    This is how I became a Prisoner of War. Interrogations, Torture, Starvation and chain labor quickly ensued. During this time, the war was going badly.

    Then, on April 30th 1975, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and they quickly began pushing further. America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and the ceasefire had meant that aid once flowing to South Vietnam had dried up. The South Vietnamese government held on for a time but they were not able to hold back the North Vietnamese. With this change, any hope for a quick release faded.

    You won’t find anything about South Vietnam’s battles between 1973 and 1975…nor is there much information about the lost POW’s of South Vietnam. This history was quickly erased; we as prisoners had become a liability or an inconvenience. But this fact didn’t release me from my prison, my torture or my pain.

    During my 7 years as a POW, I saw and experienced terrible treatment. I saw friends and fellow servicemen die from torture and starvation. I experienced torture, the shackling, beatings, near-drownings and interrogation. I felt the cold waters of a river in winter while being forced to harvest bamboo shoots at gun point. I experienced the tedious rewriting of my history….they did this hoping to find a mistake or perhaps learn something about American and South Vietnamese tactics and equipment.

    Many American Servicemen suffered similar fates; our collective pain and suffering was for the same reasons: fighting for our countries, for freedom and because we were asked to.

    As time painfully moved forward, I was allowed to see my wife and son….once every 6 months. The first time I saw my son, after 5 years of captivity and torture, we were closely watched by guards with AK-47s. My son was 5 years old by this first reunion….five years of his life lost to me.

    My wife too endured much during this time. She travelled a great distance to visit me in the far away POW camp. But, her toil was different than that of American wives: She, at least, could see me. American wives were half way around the world without knowledge of their husband’s fates, without the ability to touch their faces and go to sleep knowing that, at least, their husband was alive.

    Finally, in May of 1982, I was released from captivity. By this time, my health was completely destroyed. I was constantly coughing up blood and was malnourished and weak. My value as a prisoner was gone and now there was more concern about how my death in captivity would look to the world. They informed my family to come once again to the prison camp….this time to take me home.

    But walking the streets and being released from prison wasn’t the same as being free. This wasn’t the freedom my soul yearned for. This wasn’t the country I had fought for…nor would I be content to forget my love of liberty. My family could sense my state of mind and they soon helped arrange for me to leave Vietnam.

    My first attempt failed badly and I was forced to return. But, on my 2nd attempt, I made it to Thailand. It came with great cost: My son had been captured and imprisoned and my wife had elected to stay with him. Knowing that only death awaited me there….I could not return.

    In Thailand, I found a job working for the United Nations in the Save the Children refugee camps. I worked as a supervisor there for 2 years, seeing the residual effects of the wars raging in that part of the world. America’s Vietnam War, Vietnam’s war with Cambodia and Cambodia’s genocide of its own people. It was heart-breaking work but also very healing for me.

    After 2 years of this, I immigrated to the United States and began working for an American education and regaining the life of liberty that I had dreamed of. Several years later, my son was freed and my family was reunited once again.

    By this time, I had joined Boeing and they’ve been very good to me. They’ve offered me a home in exchange for my skills with aircraft and I have been made happy once more. What I learned in the military and endured in captivity has become an asset in my daily life. Service to my work team, my family and my country is now a something that helps Boeing be successful.

    There are a great many veterans that work for Boeing. Our jobs are different, faces different, stories different, but our service is the same. Our Service has helped build Boeing’s first 100 years and it’ll be a huge part of the next.

    I’d like to thank Boeing for allowing me to speak and thank our Veterans for their service.


Hội Quán Phi Dũng ©
Diễn Đàn Chiến Hữu & Thân Hữu Không Quân VNCH




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