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AFTERWARDS............AFTERWORDS

Operation Babylift 1975, which evacuated 2,600 children and took them back to the United

States for adoption. Locally former Representative Bill Delahunt (D-MA) adopted one girl.

At least some happy endings, but not all, a C5A Galaxy crashed (shot down?), 'cause still unknown,' the Air Force's C5A fleet worldwide was grounded for several weeks. 

10Jun77, an Israeli cargo ship en route to Japan crossed paths with a boat full of 66 Vietnamese. They were out of food and water, lost and scared, and their boat was leaking. The Israeli captain and crew immediately offered food and water and decided to bring the passengers on board and transported them to Israel. There, Prime Minister Menachem Begin authorized their Israeli citizenship, comparing their situation to the plight of Jewish refugees seeking a haven during the Holocaust. Following this rescue, between 1977 and 1979, Israel welcomed over three hundred Vietnamese refugees. 

As Begin explained to then-U.S. President Carter: 

"We never have forgotten the boat with 900 Jews the St. Louis, having left Germany in the last weeks before the Second World War... traveling from harbor to harbor, from country to country, crying out for refuge. They were refused... Therefore it was natural… to give those people a haven in the land of Israel." 

Our last losses, died in a rocket attack on Tan Son Nhut.

One from Massachusetts, a big Marine from Woburn.

He'd just bought an F150 with the big-block.

CPL Charles McMahon

The Swiss legation eventually negotiated the return of their bodies, almost a year after the fall. 

SOME OF THE FALLOUT

Two men who gave an incredible amount, and still somehow got home, yet never got the rest they so richly earned & deserved. 

US AIR FORCE CPT Alan Brudno

http://www.virtualwall.org/db/BrudnoEA01a.htm

my father-in-law went to high school and then Air Force ROTC with CPT Brudno.

They later served in the same squadron in 'Nam, Ed was a communications officer.

Ed got out of the Air Force after 8 years as a captain, stayed in the reserves, & retired as a full colonel, and after putting in 30 years at GTE. 

CPT Brudno was shot down & spent 5+ years as a POW. When released and home, in less than a month, he committed suicide, couldn't cope with what America had become.

At CPT Brudo's funeral, the little woman told me that was the only time she ever saw her father cry. 

US ARMY COL 'Nick' Rowe

Legendary Special Forces Commander

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_N._Rowe

escaped successfully after 5 years as a POW, (6'5" blue eyes & blond hair- tell me he didn't stick out), was direct promoted to MAJ from 1LT after regaining our lines. He set up the post-'Nam-era SERE school for the Army & Air Force at Loring AFB, ME. A past generation of Special Forces Troopers & Pilots learned some huge and valuable lessons there.

He wrote a book about the experience-

Five Years to Freedom

COL Rowe was killed in the field, advising The Phillipine Army while fighting Moro/Muslim

insurgents on Mindanao Island in 1989. 

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'Survivors Guilt' 

"what will you do with their passing"

COL Mike Plummer 

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Just because i'm old don't mean i still can't contribute, or have no interest to do so.

COL Plummer set up the 'Adopt a platoon' program. Send your old unit care packages and keep up the morale. I went a step further and looked for any way i could help.

"NEVER AGAIN WILL ONE GENERATION OF VETERANS FORGET ANOTHER"

--Me

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