http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2001/metzner.htm
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Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam:
Personal Postscripts to Peace
Edward P. Metzner, Huynh Van Chinh, Tran Van Phuc, and Le Nguyen Binh
When helicopters plucked the last Americans off the roof
of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, countless Vietnamese
who had worked for the Americans remained behind. Many
were arrested and sent to "reeducation" camps, where they
faced forced labor, indoctrination sessions, and severe
privation.
For a decade before the fall of Saigon, Edward P.
Metzner served as an advisor among the people of the
beautiful and hotly contested Mekong Delta. After the
war, he diligently sought news of the close friends and
comrades he had made among the Vietnamese military
officers. Many had died; others could not be found.
When Metzner eventually located a few, he believed their
stories should be told. Three agreed to do so, and their
accounts form the core of Reeducation in Postwar Vietnam.
Huynh Van Chinh and Tran Van Phuc, who had been
colonels in the Army of Vietnam, lived through the
deprivation and torture of the camps and eventually
found freedom in America. Le Nguyen Binh tells a different
story: that of his dangerous escape from Vietnam, with
some of his junior officers and enlisted men, in three
overloaded fishing boats.
The matter-of-fact, even stoic stories of these
survivors stand as a testimony to their endurance and
persistent desire to return to a life of freedom.
_________________________________________________________
EDWARD P. METZNER, who lives in Salinas, California, is
a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as an advisor to
South Vietnamese military commanders, from district and
province levels to the Vietnamese Joint General Staff. He
has told the story of his own experiences in More Than a
Soldier's War: Pacification in Vietnam, also published by
Texas A&M University Press. HUYNH VAN CHINH, TRAN VAN
PHUC, and LE NGUYEN BINH were all colonels in the Army of
Vietnam. All three now live in the United States.
Number Seventy-five: Texas A&M University Military
History Series
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