Since I'm the bloke who started this, my reason for the original post was just to point out the lengths to which some people will go in pursuit of a better life. Their exploits are intriguing to me for three reasons:
1. In 1965 I saw many Vietnamese who implored us not to leave areas where we protected hard working farmers and fishermen from VC thugs and tax collectors who would return in a flash to confiscate the rewards of people who were simply trying to make the best lives possible for themselves and their families.
2. I have a good friend who escaped from Communist Laos in the mid 1970s with his wife and very young daughter. His wife was shot during their escape, most fortunately just a flesh wound.
3. Our d-i-l is Vietnamese, met our son in high school in VA. In 1975 her father, a civilian who worked for MACV, put her mother and four siblings on a barge in Saigon, bound ultimately for Guam, and told his wife essentially, "Go, I'll find you somewhere." The father sometime later joined a group of South Vietnamese, including some military men, who fought their way down the Mekong River to the South China Sea where they were rescued by a U.S. 7th Fleet ship. The family was ultimately reunited more than six months after the barge sailed from Saigon. The to date end of their exploits: two very accomplished and successful grandchildren.
