Able to find out nothing about him after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, I feared the worst and for twenty-four years had presumed him to be dead.  He, of course, would have been one of the first targets for revenge by the conquerors.  In June of 1999, however, I was astonished to discover he had survived, and we talked by phone several times.  I learned that during those last days Chau was commanding his forces, prepared to defend his district.  The main enemy attack on Saigon, however, bypassed Di An, and when Saigon fell on 30 April 1975 he was ordered by his commander to surrender his district.  In a letter to me Chau said, “It was the sombrest day of our life.”  Fortunately for him he was taken by NVA troops rather than the local VC, and he spent three terrible years in prison camps in North Vietnam, barely surviving starvation, disease, and mistreatment.  He said, “During the time in concentration camps I thought that I would never meet my American friends again.  Because of my handicap they released me after 3 years.”  He made his way back to his family in Thu Duc, just outside Saigon.  Chau wrote, “But, 2 months later the local communists came to my home to take me to prison again.  I believed that they would do a terrible revenge on me because I had destroyed many of their soldiers and infrastructures.  I was sure they would kill me that time.  I had no way to escape, so I decided to make a suicide by taking an overdose of medication.”  He fell immediately into a coma and the squad of soldiers said they would “take care of him.”  His wife and neighbors created such a fuss, though, that the squad let them take him to a local hospital.  The details of his subsequent escape cannot be revealed because of potential danger to those who helped him, but the essence is that after several days he awoke from the coma, eluded his guards, and made his way into the civilian populace which shielded him for eighteen months, moving him from place to place weekly.  He said, “It was a very difficult and depressed time for me and my family.”  His courageous and resourceful wife finally was able to arrange his escape by boat to Thailand, and six months later she got herself and their six children out by boat to Malaysia.  The family was eventually reunited in California in 1980.

 After a difficult time in the U S at first, and one month after his arrival in November1979, Colonel Chau was able to get work with a refugee resettlement organization .  Since 1991 until he retired in January 2000 he had his own immigration consultant business, and since 1981 Mrs. Chau has been a medical translator at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.  All six children, four girls and two boys, received degrees from California colleges in computer, electronics, chemical, and aviation engineering and are high tech professionals in Silicon Valley.  The whole family is proud to be American.

 In Di An so many years ago, I knew Chau to be a sweet, gentle man who was a courageous, determined, respected field commander and civic government official.  My life has been enriched by him.  He said in a letter to me, “ I am always appreciating the noble sacrifice of all Vietnam veterans who were fighting the war in the dense jungles of Vietnam for our freedom.  My wife and I understood that the American GIs must leave their loved ones behind in their country to go fighting a very difficult war very far from their homeland.  My wife always advised me to love the American soldiers as we love our soldiers.  She understood that all American wives and children were suffering too much as she and other Vietnamese wifes were, when we left our families at Saigon to go fighting in 4 regions of South Vietnam.  She and my children suffered a lot every time I got a deadly wound.”

 Colonel Chau, I thank you for what you did for your country, for me and my troops, my family, and for America.  I am proud to have been your comrade-in-arms, and to be your friend.

Fort Hood, Texas, 1 April 2000      

Additional information on Nguyen Minh Chau:

American medals:  Siver Star

                              Bronze Star “V”

                              Army Commendation Medal