Faith carries Le through war and POW camp to USA

Night was the worst, recounts St. Margaret Mary Parishioner Thanh Van Le. Unlike their Khmer Rouge counterparts in Cambodia – who acted in the open under broad daylight – Vietnamese communists preferred to conceal their brutality. Sometimes atrocities were committed in secluded – often forested – areas, but usually it just meant relying on the cover of darkness.

Examples abound. The Viet Cong usually bombed at night, emphasizing soft targets – such as bridges, marketplaces, and anything beautiful – to sow discouragement, chaos, and general terror in the civilian population, Le explains.

In the rural villages in which he grew up, bedtime stirred fears not of imaginary boogeymen, but of the very real possibility of an ominous nighttime knock on the door that could mean imminent death for everyone inside. 

In prison camp it was the sight of flashlight beams cutting through the darkness that signaled the guards were coming, bringing much pain and misery with them.

“They always tortured us at night,” Le said.

It was on Christmas night when the guards came for his dear friend, Fr. Andrew Nguyen, and whisked him away to an especially brutal mountain camp nicknamed the “Gateway to Heaven,” because prisoners never left alive. 

A good night’s sleep was impossible for people such as them, Le says, which is why the main thing he recalls about the first night he spent on soil outside his native country was a deep, refreshing slumber. 

“All of a sudden I could sleep,” he said. “I knew it as soon as I stepped off the boat.”

Surviving long enough to step off that boat was a matter of providence, Le insists, who cites more than one unlikely close shave as instances of divine intervention. 

It wasn’t only him, Le notes, pointing out that Fr. Andrew today serves as a priest in New Zealand because another unlikely event confirmed that the actual Gateway to Heaven is controlled by God.

“God has always been active in my life,” Le reflected.

North to south

Le has no desire to see Vietnam again, even to visit. The bad memories run too thick, the good memories are few and far between. 

Before he arrived as a refugee to the United States in 1985, Le and his family had already been refugees in South Vietnam. His family lived in North Vietnam until the communists gained control in 1954, he says, which sent most of his village fleeing south. He was six years old, the second child in a family that would eventually contain seven siblings.

“The communists did not like Catholics,” Le said. “The Catholic community knew we all needed to migrate.”

Life in South Vietnam was temporarily happier and safer, he recounts, but the communist Viet Cong carried out bombings and other terrorism in the country even before North Vietnam’s 1968 invasion. Since terrorizing the populace was a strategic goal, soldiers sometimes attacked small agricultural settlements.

South Vietnamese garrisons were rare in such villages, Le recalled, and so the communities’ pastors and able-bodied men would do what they could to protect the village. 

“The Viet Cong were very aggressive,” he said. “Farmers were suddenly forced to become soldiers.”

The family was already all too familiar with such raids, Le notes, recounting a night when the family still lived in North Vietnam and learned communist forces were approaching. “The community gathered together with only sticks and knives to protect themselves,” he said. “My uncle was killed trying to protect the people.”

In South Vietnam, the farmers became literal soldiers, which meant his gentle, mild-mannered father had to join the military. Le recalls always wanting to help his father, and recounts a particularly vicious attack. As flames consumed many of their village’s homes, Le saw his father struggling, and so took hold of him with one hand while wielding a pistol to shoot their way out with the other.

It was Le’s first experience handling a gun, but that changed when he turned 18 and began military service. “There was no choice,” he said. 

Canine reconnaissance

By age 21, Le had shown enough aptitude as a soldier to rise to the rank of second lieutenant, and led a squadron of about 20 men. One night their overarching unit of about 120 men came under heavy fire and bombardment.

“We were encircled and bombs were exploding all around,” he said. 

They fought back fiercely, but the surrounding enemy gradually closed in. By the third night – when Le believed the end was nigh – an unlikely sequence of events proved him wrong.

A fellow soldier’s German Shepherd had disappeared into the darkness moments before, but had returned with an apparent sense of purpose. The dog’s owner realized it wanted them to follow, and since the enemy’s figurative noose was tightening, the soldiers had nothing to lose. 

They followed the dog as quietly as a group of 120 adult men carrying military gear and moving through the wilderness can hope for. The dog soon halted, so they did too. Again, it vanished into the darkness, but about five minutes later its owner felt a gentle tug on his pant leg. The soldiers then followed the dog in a cycle that would repeat again and again, as they all slipped through the enemy perimeter and proceeded about four miles on foot until they reached a friendly base.

“It was a good dog, but that was miraculous,” Le said. “I was sure we were going to perish, but thanks to divine intervention, we were literally able to walk out of there.”

In 1972, Le was transferred from the infantry to military intelligence, where his tasks included trying ascertain Viet Cong targets, numbers, and strategies. He performed that work until North Vietnam’s 1975 victory. Not only was he unable to escape the new regime, but his history in military intelligence set him apart, and not in a good way.

Seeking betrayals

According to Le, Viet Cong re-education camps were split into quadrants. His new home for the next eight years, Nam Ha Camp, contained 3,500 prisoners who were sectioned off into sub-camps: One for former high-ranking military officers, another for mid-tier officers, another for foot soldiers and a last segment for mostly sick or otherwise ailing prisoners.

“That was the agriculture camp,” Le said. “If you were in agriculture, you were dying.”

Le was not placed among the top military brass in Quadrant A, but Quadrant B prisoners were also subject to repeat interrogations and torture, which was one reason why Le prayed the rosary incessantly after he laid himself down to sleep each night, often shivering as the cold wind infiltrated the sleeping quarters’ thin bamboo walls.

And when the guards came for him – “always at night,” he reiterates – the brutality was straightforward. Guards would often grab a restrained prisoner by the head and bend him forward to knee him in the face. Le experienced that amid the torment of solitary confinement.

“My jaw was broken on each side,” he said. “One side still hasn’t been corrected.”

Le eventually deduced that the interrogations were less about extracting information, and mainly served as opportunities for betrayal. Prisoners received a mere one pound of food a day – often rice or potatoes – that would be withheld for myriad offenses. 

“Their main goal was to get us to rat on each other, to destroy each other,” he said. “Let’s say you had a headache, you didn’t even want to mention that to other prisoners, because they could tell the interrogators. They wanted to break all trust among us. Because of starvation, some prisoners were bribed to become ‘antennae’ — who spied, reported, betrayed.” he said.

They all thought they were going to die, Le describes, and it was difficult to remember his state of mind during that era. “I really don’t know what I was thinking back then,” he said. “All I remember was that most of the dying men called for their mothers. So many called out for Mom.”

Daytime often involved a different sort of mistreatment. “They wanted to give us work that was demeaning, horrible, and disgusting,” he said. 

One task assigned to a former South Vietnamese vice-presidential candidate, Dr. Binh, and others like him involved dead water buffaloes. “These carcasses had been rotting for a long time so that they smelled repulsive and were covered with maggots and flies,” Le said. “They would hand the person a knife to scrape them down to the bone.”

Another assignment that stands out in Le’s memory dealt with obtaining bamboo. With the camp surrounded by mountains on three sides, a particular pool of toxic run-off could reach 12 feet or deeper during monsoon season. The water at the bottom was frigid.

“Their task was to hold their breath, dive to the bottom, and cut these plants at the roots, which were embedded in the rocks” he said. “The skin on their legs would start to strip right off. Within 90 days, 65 men with that job died.”

Similarly, Le assumed Fr. Andrew was not long for this world after the priest was taken on Christmas night to the Gate of Heaven camp in the North Vietnamese mountains. However, it was that relocation that arguably saved Fr. Andrew’s life, since it was close to the area China invaded in 1979’s brief Sino-Vietnamese war. 

“A lot of priests were sent to that death camp, but when the Chinese invaded from the north, they moved those people out,” Le said. “That’s how he survived. But even after they moved him back down to the south he was beaten so badly that he lost his sight. Priests, often identifiable because of the crosses they wore around their necks, were punished by beatings with big sticks so their ribs would break.”

Nevertheless, Le says he caught glimpses of providence at work. In one example he recalls, Le and another prisoner were placed in the bed of a pickup truck. Guards pulled a covering over the two of them and said the plan was to take them away and shoot them. 

“We were going to die,” he said. 

The two prisoners huddled in the back of the pickup as the guards climbed into the cab and turned the key, except the engine never roared to life. The guards got out and discussed push-starting the vehicle.

“It had just rained hard and was very muddy,” Le said. “They could not push-start the truck, so they gave up and sent us back to camp. We were shocked. It felt like a miracle.”

The boat to America

By 1983, economic considerations prompted the Vietnamese government to seek better relations with the United States, which included releasing Vietnamese prisoners of war. After he returned to his former home, Le encountered a woman, Ha, that he had known before his time in prison. Although they had not been romantic during the war, he realized that could change. Although she was a Buddhist, and he a Catholic, he asked her parents if they could get engaged.

Not only did they agree, but they also backed his plan for her to escape with him on a boat to the United States, where Le’s family had already immigrated. 

They became so-called Vietnamese “boat people,” a class of refugees that faced storms, diseases, starvation, and pirates in sea craft never intended for extended journeys over open water. The lucky ones reached shore a week or two after departure, but boat people spent months at sea, suffering from hunger, thirst, disease, theft, and attacks.

“Over six boat trips, 19 of my family members all made it here,” Le said. “They were hard journeys, and my pregnant sister-in-law lost her baby, but everyone else made it safely.”

Le’s boat encountered a friendly Malaysian fishing boat, which took them to Indonesia – where he got that first good night’s sleep in ages – and from where he eventually would be transported to Seattle. Shortly thereafter, on Jan. 20, 1985, he was brought to Wichita, where his family had settled. 

The family attended Mass together that week at Wichita’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, after which they walked over to Catholic Charities.

“That’s how my whole family learned English,” Le said. “I learned from one of the St. Joseph sisters.”

Building a life

Catholic Charities also arranged for Le’s first apartment – at $185 a month – on Topeka Ave., within walking distance of the Cathedral. The organization also helped him obtain clothing and furniture. 

Meanwhile, after a few months of marriage preparation, he and Le Bach Ha were married at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. They went on to have two children – both of whom eventually graduated from Bishop Carroll Catholic High School – and now have three grandchildren. Their son, Toan, is an engineer at NAIR. Their daughter, Linda, is a nurse anesthetist at Wichita’s VA Hospital.

Le says Catholic Charities also helped him find work at Wichita Bindery, a print shop where he spent his entire professional career, and which would go on to employ his wife and other relatives. Decades there gave him intimate knowledge of print shop work, Le says, and also filled him with deep appreciation for his longtime boss, John Marshall.

“He helped me so much,” Le says. “I thank God for how much so many people have helped me.”

Le wasn’t the only one to notice, indicating that his wife was deeply impressed by the level of care and assistance they received through Catholic Charities. Not only had she become Catholic during their short stint in Indonesia, but as her family came to the United States, they also became Catholic. 

“Her family came over, listened to the story about my life, and heard how God has taken care of me,” Le said. “I tell them I am not especially smart or wonderful, only that God is at work in my life. My faith drew them in.”

Although the years of peril, hardship, imprisonment, and poverty could prompt bitterness, Le instead exudes gratitude, and says his life is an example of how good people can be. As a refugee in South Vietnam as a small child and in the United States as an adult, he has twice arrived in a strange land with little more than the shirt on his back and received an outpouring of help. 

“People who complain about life in America don’t understand,” Le said. “They have never lived anywhere but paradise.”

Editor’s note: Special thanks to Mai-Lan Brown, who provided considerable translation help for the portions of the interview in which Le was better able to express himself in Vietnamese.