A Girl Named Tran Ngoc Bich

Yesterday I attended the Veterans Day assembly at Granddaughter Autumn's school in south St. Louis. Afterward I was invited to address the classes in Autumn's wing of the building—the PEGS students. I wasn't sure what to share with them since they’re still kids, so I told them a true story about Tran Ngoc Bich, a girl who worked in our Dau Tieng mess hall who was their age, thinking they could relate to her more so than me.

Tran Ngoc Bich and I became friends while I was one of the walking wounded in August 68. After my book was published, I received a package in the mail. It was a paperback book sent by the author with a note that read, "Look on page 144." Okay, I thought, here’s someone who wants to argue with something I wrote." But I looked anyway, and there to my surprise was a photo of the same girl! I called him and over the next few months we exchanged emails, and he related her story.

It begins when Bich was 11. She lived in a brick house two doors from Dau Tieng's main gate. Her dad was, so I was told, a French foreman in the Michelin Rubber plantation. So Bich, pronounced "Bic" like the pen, as she was informally known, was half French.

Because she lived so close to the main gate, she passed it regularly, and came to recognize the Military Police guards who manned the gate. One day she spoke to one of them: "Don't go in the village today. Boocoo VC."

When the MP was relieved at the gate, he told his captain what he'd heard. "Where did you hear that?" "It was this kid, a girl who lives near the gate."

A few days later Bich told the MP about more VC activities in and around Dau Tieng, and based on what she reported, they planned ambushes in town. (I didn't know they did that, but the guy told me that they did.) A rock wall extended from the gate around that section of the camp’s perimeter, and a row of shrubs was in front of it. Bich would slip behind the shrubs, and sit on the wall, then relay what she knew of Viet Cong activities in and around the village.

Some time later Bich began accompanying the MPs on operations around the village as they captured and questioned VC suspects, serving as an interpreter since none of the MPs spoke Vietnamese.

The MP commander began worrying about her safety if it became known that she was aiding the Americans, so they moved her onto the base. She continued serving as an interpreter, and the Americans learned to trust her. On her own initiative she positioned herself on several occasions near the prisoner of war compound, and eavesdropped on their conversations. Then she told the MPs who to keep and who to let go. And they did what she told them!

This went on for several months, but then Bich went through puberty, and the MP captain, recognizing that it wasn't good for a pubescent teenager to live with lonely GIs, sent her home. But to compensate her, he got her a job in a mess hall elsewhere in the base camp--the one I walked into after being wounded on 19 August of that year.  

I wrote about Bich in On Point, but definitely did not know of her participation with the MPs, and she didn't tell me. Our company area had 7 or 8 walking wounded at the time, and we hung out in the mess hall because it was a lot cooler than our tents, which baked in the sun and were stifling.

Bich began teasing me, and when I wasn't there she asked the others about me. If I arrived late, she would meet me at the door, escort me to a chair she reserved for me, then bring me a glass of lemonade or fruit juice. Soon she began giving me photos of herself and writing me notes. I answered them at night, and handed her my replies when she arrived for work the next morning. I knew her for about two months, and during that time I held her hand on two occasions while sharing a bunker with her and the other mess hall workers during mortar attacks. She accompanied me to the air strip when my tour was over, the only person to do so. I kissed her good-bye, the only time I did so, and we wrote one another for the next 3 1/2 years. Of course she didn't have money for postage, so she talked various GIs into placing her envelope into one of their own, and writing "free" in place of the stamp (soldiers had free postage privileges). So every two or three weeks I received a letter from a soldier I didn't know, and inside would be an envelope from Bich.

Then we lost contact. It was around the time that our battalion left Vietnam, and the war was beginning to wind down. I've always wondered what happened to her. It's possible that the area VC executed her for her role in helping the Americans identify them. It's also possible that she spent time in a reeducation camp. The last time I heard from her, she was in Saigon. I hope that she was smart enough to stay there where no-one knew her history. I like to think that she stayed away from Dau Tieng and is a grandmother today. 

Tran Ngoc Bich and me, September 1968

Bich, left, with a friend

Tran Ngoc Bich about 2 years after I returned home

Genealogy Road Trip

On June 26 through the 28th we visited sites and cemeteries in southeastern Missouri where Lonnie's mom and numerous ancestors lived.  We were joined by Lonnie's sister Kelly and her husband from Colorado. Genealogy can uncover nuggets of family history, and here are a few.

The first day we visited sites near Cape Girardeau, and spent that night in a hotel there.  Kelly had contacted one of their first cousins once removed who lives nearby, and he and his wife joined us for an enjoyable dinner and conversation. Ernie is the sisters' first cousin 1x removed--the nephew of their grandmother.

Sisters Lonnie (left) and Kelly (right) flanking cousin Ernie Chiles and his wife Patty. 

During dinner I mentioned that I'm distantly related to President Rutherford B. Hayes, and Patty exclaimed, "So am I!"  After getting over the surprise, I promised to send her my link to our 19th President, and here's her response:

"You win: your 3rd cousin 3 times removed beats my 4th cousin 5 times removed! And we are 7th cousins 2 times removed, so that's getting pretty close to Adam and Eve. :)"

Over the course of the two days of ancestry search we visited five cemeteries finding the graves of twenty ancestors.  One of the highlights was the grave of Catherine Johanna Doretta (Herzinger) Ebrecht.  She and her family immigrated from Germany in 1838, and arrived in Jackson, Missouri two weeks before Christmas of that year.  Her father, a shoe maker, had come over the previous year, and set up shop in Jackson, about 8 miles northwest of Cape Girardeau.  Within the first year of their arrival, Catherine and her family witnessed the passage of Indians during their forced removal from the southeastern United States that has become known as the Trail of Tears.

Catherine was 8, and could not know the whole story and tragedy of the Trail of Tears.  Later in her life, in 1915, she dictated part of her life's story to her granddaughter, who recorded the tale in writing.  An excerpt from the document allows a fascinating glimpse of that period in history:

"My father was a shoemaker in Jackson, and had a big shop. We got there two weeks before Christmas. During the first year so many Indians were led by white men from Missouri through Jackson. I was so afraid of them when they would feel of my long yellow braids if I’d be on the street.

The Indians . . . had my father make shoes and boots for them, and when he’d tell them the cost, they’d make him take more. He sometimes made a hundred dollars a day. The Indians were passing through for two weeks." 

Kelly and Lonne at the grave of their maternal grandmother

After searching cemeteries farther north, we spent the night at the Inn St. Gemme Beauvais, a bed & breakfast in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.  

Lonnie & Kelly among ancestors' tombstones. The grave of Catherine, the girl who witnessed the Trail of Tears is on the left. 

Dinner in Ste. Genevieve

One of our rooms in the Inn St. Gemme Beauvais