Posted on 08/21/2021 11:18:17 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
On April 29, 1975, Nguyen did something that could have been ripped from the script of a “Mission Impossible” movie. He was fleeing from the North Vietnamese army with his wife and their three young children as communist soldiers crashed the gates of Saigon
“We couldn’t figure out how he did it; he was a Houdini,”.
“Unless somebody shoots at us, we ain’t shooting,” Jacobs told his crew.
He radioed the Kirk that he would hover just above the deck. Then he would order his wife and three children to take their chances by jumping out of the helicopter, into the arms of sailors. Kent Chipman was one of those sailors waiting below. ... “Chippy.” He weighed only 130 pounds, and wondered if he was big enough to break the fall of the Chinook’s passengers. As he held up his arms, he had a thought: This is going to be bad
Chipman never forgot Nguyen’s coolness under pressure and the relief he felt when he successfully caught the pilot’s infant daughter and wife.
“It was a happy ending to a shitty war,” he said. As they made their way down a hallway, the first Kirk crewman she saw was “Chippy” Chipman, the sailor who had caught her and her infant daughter as they jumped out of the helicopter years ago.
“He was staring at me and I was staring at him. He knew and I just knew,”
“I was proud,” Chipman said of seeing Mina. “I don’t have children, but it was like seeing your long-lost daughter all grown up. She did well for herself.”
Nguyen shuffled to his feet from his wheelchair, straightened his jacket as he looked at Jacobs, and, with a trembling right hand, he saluted.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Amen to that.
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