To be in a plane crash and to survive a plane crash is like getting struck by lighting twice. I don't know if people get scarred from lightning, but when I was struck, I was afflicted multiple with scars. On my chest. On my conscious. On the first breath I take when I wake up to the morning dawn.
Two half moon shaped scars span on either side of my chest. They are marks from a seatbelt meant as a lap belt for adults, but when strapped to an infant it goes across the chest like a breastplate. My scars are filled with luck and guilt. Guilt I can never separate from, and luck I did not deserve. Why was I chosen to be on that plane? Why did I survive while others did not? Why was I given a second chance? I am haunted with questions that have no answers.
I was orphaned during the Vietnam War or rather the Vietnam War orphaned me. Perhaps my parents were both killed in the plane crash. Perhaps they were killed during the war itself. Perhaps they escaped to America without me. Perhaps my father was an American officer disallowed from marrying his Vietnamese girlfriend and was ordered to return to the states. Perhaps my parents were Vietnamese elite and bribed my way onto the evacuation plane. Perhaps my mother had to give me up to the orphanage for fear the Vietcong would pour gasoline on me to light me on fire. Perhaps my parents are still alive and are searching for me. Like leaves falling from a tree, I have countless questions. Answering questions about my past is like raking up leaves on an autumn day.
On April 4th, 1975, my plane took off from Tan Sun Nhut Airport. It was the first flight of President Ford's Operation Babylift. The passenger list primarily consisted of children, some three hundred children, and some were orphans others were not; other passengers were the two pilots and a few military nurses. I was one of the younger children, so they placed me on one of the upper levels of the plane, strapped to the floor like luggage. The older children were down below. I could not have guessed that age alone would determine who would survive and who would not. All systems were go. After a few minutes in flight, forty miles out, something went wrong. Explosion. Beep. Beep. Warning lights. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. The rear cargo doors had exploded and jettisoned from the plane. The lower section of the plane instantly became a vacuum. Passengers were sucked out. They fell to their deaths with barely enough time to scream.
The plane had been divided into heaven and hell.
We lost power and the pilots attempted to make a retreat back to Saigon. We didn't make it. Our plane crashed into a field of rice paddies like a meteor. It skidded along the ground for a mile and then skipped up into the air for another half mile, gliding in air with a split second calm before the storm. The plane came back down with a fury and a second explosion; it had crashed into a wall of a dike that surrounded the rice field. The area was a tempest of burning metal and oil. A large column of smoke could be seen for miles.
The Army immediately sent in medivac choppers to rescue us. When they arrived, they discovered the cargo plane had broken into four parts. We were in the fuselage waiting. They were unable to land because the mud was too deep. It would be like walking into quicksand. Rescue workers were lowered from the helicopters while the spinning blades overhead creating a fierce whirlwind.
In the mud, a teddy bear had its face burnt, was missing its arms, and one of its legs was badly torn. Infants were found drowning in the mud; adult passengers were cut in half by burning metal. The C-5A Galaxy was the largest plane in the world, the largest plane crash in world history, and the largest plane crash in my life. When the rescue workers found us, they were surprised that none of us were crying. Orphan babies do not cry because they learn at an early age crying doesn't do any good.