Family & Evacuation Chaos

Saigon March 1975: Not your Ordinary Madness

In late March 1975, my mother—Nancy L. Welch—posted a letter home to her parents that breaks one’s heart even today.

Our dog Duffy, despite my mother’s plans, did not get out until a week before the Fall.

I’m including a recording for your listening “pleasure.” If you want to know what it was like to stand in the crosshairs as a mother of seven and try to think clearly, have a listen.

Letter Home, March 27, 1975

For a more lighthearted look at March—if you can call multiple visits to the hospital and doctor’s offices, lighthearted—have a listen to this letter from the 13th.

She mentions buying my brother a 10-pound bowling ball for his 11th birthday. That’s one indication that there was almost no foreshadowing of how quickly the country was going to start falling apart . . . for who, knowing they would have to pack up soon and in such a rush, would buy such a thing?

Letter Home, March 13, 1975

Note: My mother uses the term “mixed-breed” when referring to half-American and half-Vietnamese orphans. It makes me cringe now, but I don’t think she was being derogatory.

I mentioned my uneasiness with the term to someone yesterday and they said, “Yeah, don’t you remember Cher’s song, Half Breed?!”

A 1973 release, I’m sure this influenced my mother’s choice of language in 1975. Cher’s use of Native American imagery may be controversial by today’s standards, but at the time she was shouting a hidden (and undeserved) shame from the rooftops and its popularity shows that she did connect with a shifting pattern of awareness at the time. One that hopefully, made it marginally better for the many orphans of mixed parentage who fled to the U.S. at the end of the Vietnam War.

Thank you for reading.
Until next time,
Kat ❦

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