After a couple of weeks getting familiar with the aircraft and the mission & the procedures at Binh Thuy, I volunteered for the additional off-duty job as the 4th Special Operations Squadron Civic Actions Officer! Someone did that before I arrived at the little FOL of Binh Thuy on the southern branch of the Mekong River in the Delta. There certainly was not any training program for it -- basically, just hearing that we helped to sponsor the Vietnamese orphanage in nearby Can Tho which was staffed by French-trained Catholic nurse/nuns. All were Vietnamese and spoke French as well because they had gone to France for their medical training. Only one, Sister Anicet, spoke any English; luckily, I spoke high-school French for the times when Sr. Anicet was not at the Can Tho Orphanage during my visits. The kids at THIS orphanage were all under 5 years old and would form a throng around our G.I. legs happily greeting us on arrival. Obviously, they had associated visiting GI's over the years with the candy, hugs, and happiness we usually brought with us.
American GI's have always been softies for little kids in foreign countries. Kids always remind us of our brothers, sisters, kids, cousins, or neighbor kids back home -- local kids always seem to have the same innocence in spite of what they've seen in a war zone. Tan-skin, black-haired Vietnamese & Filipino kids reminded me of the Mexican kids (some would call "street urchins") I had often seen at border crossings into Mexico. Only difference seemed to be the lack of "chicle" for sale to support their families. Probably, kids don't seem threatening to soldiers like ours who averaged only 19 years of age in Vietnam (young, but not as young as many Viet Cong soldiers/"draftees.") Which is why the Viet Cong (VC) didn't take long to start using young local kids to carry/leave bombs and booby traps for American soldiers and vehicles (like tape-strapped grenades put in gas tanks.)
I liked this particular additional duty -- it was a social-justice kind of job. Since everyone had to have one or 2 additional duties, I figured I might as well pick one I could really enjoy doing & get some self-fulfillment out of it. Of course, Squadron Civic Actions officers had to recruit volunteers to go with us in the blue "6-pack" (6-passenger truck) we signed out at the Motorpool to take goodies or just to go visit the kids and nuns at the orphanage to strengthen the bonds of friendship we were building. An ongoing project which I had asked my newlywed bride, Raquel, to help continue was one where wives of Spooky crewmenbers would gather up clean, used clothes, diapers, and dehydrated milk to send us to give to the nuns for the orphanage kids. Many of those kids were extremely malnourished -- I'll never forget the little green-tinged baby lying in the crib who was dying of malnutrition but the nuns led us to hope & pray for that baby's sake. I never saw a child with such bone impressions showing through the skin before -- and that baby's skin was actually a shade of chartreuse all over! I just can't remember whether it was a boy or a girl since both were there and looked pretty much alike at the diaper-age of 18 months. On my next visit, that baby was no longer there.
posted by Richard A @ 6:52 PM
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