From Sea To Service (eBook)
248 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-0825-9 (ISBN)
(No value selected)
"e;After all, emigration is not just a chronicle of sorrow and regret. It is also a powerful story of contribution and adaptation."e;Mary Robinson, President of Ireland, An Address to the Irish Parliament and Senate, February 1995 From Sea To Service is the story of Marc Nguyen's remarkable escape from Vietnam, his incredible journey to the United States and his commitment to a life of service to others. The book documents his harrowing efforts to leave the chaos of the Vietnam War and his early experiences as a vulnerable refugee child. Marc escaped the terrors of the war in April 1975 and eventually found his way to Boston where he was taken in by a Catholic family. Thanks to his unshakeable faith and inspiring grit, he graduated from the US Coast Guard Academy and went on to a distinguished career of service to the nation and to humanity. The memoir also includes the amazing story of his wife, Hong, a fellow Boat Person who was able to escape with her family several years after the Communist takeover of the country. Unable to flee Vietnam immediately after the war ended, Hong and her family were forced to live for three years under Communist rule and then dramatically escaped Vietnam via a death-defying open ocean voyage to Hong Kong in 1978. Her family was ultimately resettled in Colorado, where she excelled in academics and graduated from pharmacy school. She married Marc, her soulmate, and they began a life together, raising a family, united by their faith and a bond to honor their promise to live lives of service. The story was narrated to Coast Guard Captain Michael Graner, a former instructor at the United States Coast Guard Academy, who befriended Cadet Marc Nguyen, the young Vietnamese Boat Person; "e;Mr. G"e; became a lifelong mentor and family friend to the couple. The United States Coast Guard plays a prominent role in this story; it was the service that intertwined their lives. The book details the inspiring story of perseverance and gratitude for the many blessings Marc and Hong received and their commitment to pay it forward. The book contains a few themes that bind the story together. Both Marc and Hong are devout Catholics whose faith has been a pillar and guide. They both saw the power of education as a vehicle out of poverty; as they often said, "e;education is the way out."e; In both cases, Marc and Hong realized they were carrying the hopes and dreams of their family on their shoulders. Failure was not an option as they accepted the responsibility of achieving the American dream. The book details the inspiring story of perseverance and gratitude for the many blessings they have received and their commitment to honor their promise.
Chapter 1
The Promise
April 30, 1975, offshore near Vung Tau, Vietnam
Relieved but totally numb, I stood on the bow of an American cargo ship. We had just been lifted onto the deck in a large cargo net that had been lowered onto our fishing boat. As I watched the chaotic, frantic scene unfolding below, an unforgettable image was seared into my mind. The ship’s crew continued to lower their cargo net onto other small fishing boats filled with dozens of frantic refugees; people clambered to get into the net, but I also saw many fall to the choppy seas below as the net was raised. One image, however, has haunted me ever since: I saw a young mother struggling to hang on to the net with one arm and grasp her baby in the other. After being weakened by days at sea, she no longer had the strength to hold on. First the mother dropped the baby, then she fell into the ocean below, and both drowned immediately. The scene was totally chaotic, with refugees so desperate to survive that no one even tried to help them. While seeing that scene of death and despair, I made a solemn promise to God that if my family and I were able to escape, I would live a life of service. I didn’t know when, where, or how, but I would keep my word and honor the promise.
Refugees being lowered onto the crowded deck of a US freighter after fleeing Vietnam in 1975 (AP Peter O’Laughlin 1975)
The Escape
The days leading up to our escape were the most terrifying time in my life. On April 30, 1975, the government in Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, and that effectively marked the end of the Vietnam War. I remember the whooshing sound of the incoming artillery and feeling the ground shake under my feet from the many explosions. As my family and I were trying to make our way to a hidden dock to escape the death and destruction, the streets were littered with corpses, and we saw widespread looting of houses. My father had arranged for our family to escape by fishing boat, but none of us knew exactly where we were going. We only knew that we were trying to get away from shore to avoid the terrifying violence and chaos at the end of the war.
As we left the harbor from Vung Tau, we quickly realized that we were still in grave danger. Our boat was immediately fired upon by a group of South Vietnamese soldiers who also wanted to escape Vietnam and had commandeered a fishing boat of their own. Their boat, however, was completely overloaded, and they didn’t really know how to operate it. The soldiers fired shots across our bow and demanded that we stop to help them. They wanted to board our boat, but my father convinced them that our boat was too small to add anyone else. The fishing boat we were on was already dangerously overcrowded with approximately 45 people onboard. My father explained that we all would die because our 25-foot boat would swamp, and many of us, including the soldiers, didn’t know how to swim. Everyone finally decided that it was best for us to tow their boat away from the shore. As they threw the line over to be towed, my father whispered to the skipper of our boat to steer in a circle, which would make it appear like towing the soldiers’ boat was impossible for our boat. After several minutes of struggling but making no headway, my father told the soldiers that their boat was too heavy for us to tow, and they should consider taking over one of the bigger boats that were also heading out to sea. Thankfully, that made sense to them, and after a few minutes, they started shooting at larger boats and let us go on our way. We all felt greatly relieved because the soldiers were all carrying heavy weapons, and we were just unarmed civilians.
Refugee boat similar to the one my family used. The sheet draped over the side was a distress flag.
Our boat was carrying not only my family but also my eldest sister’s family, her in-laws, and the boat owner and his extended family members. With our destination unknown and heading straight out to sea, our boat began taking on water. My brothers and I took turns feverishly bailing our slowly sinking boat. Almost everyone on board didn’t know how to swim, so our bailing became a desperate act of survival. We saw many large ships on the horizon and tried in vain to hail them, but none stopped. As the hours passed, a paralyzing sense of desperation settled in as we saw that not a single ship was willing to stop and rescue us. The skipper of our boat finally stopped the motor to conserve fuel, and we began to drift. There were no more US cargo ships in view.
As our boat drifted, it became unstable and began rocking side to side; several people were getting violently seasick, and a pregnant lady on board passed out. We all began to pray for our survival and for somebody to rescue us, but I remember looking at my brother Bau and both of us sadly realizing that this was probably the end of our journey. We knew we were in extreme danger because we didn’t have much food, fuel, or water. I saw many other fishing boats drifting just like us, and I remember thinking that at least we wouldn’t die alone. During the whole time, everyone was praying continuously as we drifted on the high seas. Not only did we not know if we would survive, but no one, including the skipper, knew where or when our journey would end. Our desperation increased with each passing hour as we drifted. The praying became a low murmur, and even the babies on board seemed to sense our despair and became quiet despite their hunger and thirst. The only other sounds were from the bailing of water and the sea lapping on the side of our boat. Suddenly, however, it seemed as if our prayers were answered when a freight ship appeared and stopped on the horizon. Our boat and dozens of others in the vicinity raced toward the ship. As we approached the freighter, we were blocked by scores of abandoned boats left behind by the people who had already been rescued. The ship had to move forward to create space for other boats to come alongside, but when the ship moved, we all were terrified and assumed it was leaving us behind.
When the ship moved forward, a little space was created for our boat to get closer; the crew began to pick up refugees by dropping a cargo net onto the boat and lifting it up by their crane. When the net was finally dropped on our boat, we all hung on tightly, knowing it was the ticket to our survival. The use of the cargo net was required because the ship was designed to carry freight; it had a gangplank for crew and personnel transfer, but that was deemed too unsafe because there were so many fishing boats drifting below with people scrambling to get on the ship. The crew of the freighter determined that the safest option to bring the refugees on board was the cargo net. Thankfully, my family and I were able to get to the net and hold on as it was raised to the deck; once we were on board, my father gleefully observed that we had survived our escape from the war and the Communists who had taken over our country. That moment for me was pivotal; I felt both overwhelming elations coupled with extreme sadness. I was deeply grateful that the US cargo ship had rescued us, but at the same time, I was stunned by the drowning deaths I had just witnessed.
The Early Years
Once my family and I were safely on the ship and began to pull away from the coast, I experienced a flood of memories of my childhood in Vietnam. My earliest memories are of growing up in a large Catholic family. I was the youngest of eight children; my mom and dad had six boys and two girls. We lived in a town called Thanh Hai, a fishing village of approximately 8,000 people, about 100 miles from Saigon. Our village was near Phan Thiet, the center of the local fishing industry; the city was famous for the manufacturing of fish sauce. Although the majority of the people in Vietnam were Buddhists, nearly all the people in our village were Catholic. As a young child I went to Catholic school and served as an altar boy. Although the war had been going on since the mid-1950s, well before I was born, I was largely oblivious to the war. As a child I was only focused on fun things such as fishing or skipping school to find crickets.
However, by the early 1960s, the terror of the war had become an everyday reality for my parents and my older siblings. My family was originally from North Vietnam, a town called Ba Lang, a small fishing village near Hanoi. I remember hearing lots of stories about my father working with the French army during the First Indochina War while my mother and older brothers and sisters were at home. The Viet Minh, the Communist revolutionaries, defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and Vietnam was then temporarily divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17th Parallel until unifying elections could take place in 1956. Those elections never took place, and the North Vietnamese forces and Viet Cong insurgents in South Vietnam fought to take over the whole country. Since my dad had worked with the French, he was captured and imprisoned in a North Vietnamese re-education camp.
Fortunately, my mom and siblings were able to escape North Vietnam. There was a boat lift named “Operation Passage to Freedom” during 1954 and 1955; for a 300-day grace period, people were allowed to move freely between the two Vietnams, south to north and north to south, before the borders were sealed. Approximately one million people moved; people from the North,...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 26.8.2025 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8-3178-0825-9 / 9798317808259 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
EPUB (Ohne DRM)Größe: 19,5 MB
Digital Rights Management: ohne DRM
Dieses eBook enthält kein DRM oder Kopierschutz. Eine Weitergabe an Dritte ist jedoch rechtlich nicht zulässig, weil Sie beim Kauf nur die Rechte an der persönlichen Nutzung erwerben.
Dateiformat: EPUB (Electronic Publication)
EPUB ist ein offener Standard für eBooks und eignet sich besonders zur Darstellung von Belletristik und Sachbüchern. Der Fließtext wird dynamisch an die Display- und Schriftgröße angepasst. Auch für mobile Lesegeräte ist EPUB daher gut geeignet.
Systemvoraussetzungen:
PC/Mac: Mit einem PC oder Mac können Sie dieses eBook lesen. Sie benötigen dafür die kostenlose Software Adobe Digital Editions.
eReader: Dieses eBook kann mit (fast) allen eBook-Readern gelesen werden. Mit dem amazon-Kindle ist es aber nicht kompatibel.
Smartphone/Tablet: Egal ob Apple oder Android, dieses eBook können Sie lesen. Sie benötigen dafür eine kostenlose App.
Geräteliste und zusätzliche Hinweise
Buying eBooks from abroad
For tax law reasons we can sell eBooks just within Germany and Switzerland. Regrettably we cannot fulfill eBook-orders from other countries.
aus dem Bereich
