Smitty and the kids at Go Vap

Sundays (1969-70), if we weren't on duty (at Tan Son Nhut Air Field), we'd head to Go Vap Orphanage to spend time with the kids. Smitty dreamed of doing more, of making a lasting difference. I still remember the kids, holding on to us, holding tight. Forty years later I returned to Saigon. One day I met one of those we left behind. We talked, spent time together and she told me about her life after Saigon fell, after her mother left her on her own. As more and more American veterans are returning now, she wondered, she told me, if her father might be among them.