I could smell the stench long before I reached
the nursery. It was the stench of urine, excrement, and disease, but
I wasn't prepared for what I saw there -- a bare room with the floor
littered with scabby, naked infants. This was the "inner sanctum" of the Honai orphanage near Biên Hòa AB. Few Americans ever saw
it--certainly no visiting stateside reporters.
We all know "Baby-Killer!" was the
name war protesters snarled at returning vets whether they were Security
Policemen, chaplains, pilots, corpsmen, or just dazed and weary grunts.
The death of babies in Vietnam, was a situation little known to back-home
civilians who thought watching the evening news made them experts on
all that was going on over there.
Honai (SVN) was a town made up
mostly of Catholic refugees from the North and was known for having
almost as many churches as houses. All seemed to be hastily slapped 
together
in a jumble. The place had a desperate look and was always vulnerable
to communist infiltration. No doubt among its few hundred anti-Communists
there were many enemy agents.
One of the compounds in the Honai-section was the Ke Sat orphanage.
Behind concertina wire gate and thick yellow walls several Vietnamese
nuns cared for the lost children of the war--or tried to.
When assigned to the 3rd SPS, and on a second tour at Biên Hòa, I often
visited the compound in off-duty hours with Med Cap teams and other
Army and Air Force personnel able to get off base for civic-actions
work, which helped break the monotony of on-base duty. Getting permission
to go off base wasn't always easy, especially for those assigned to
the 3rd SPS, as we were often on alert status, but a few did. Most CO's
didn't figure an unsecured settlement of northern refugees was a great
place for their troops to hang out in off-duty time. Nevertheless, in
1969, several NCO's, did manage to build a orphans' dormitory there.
The
problem at Ke Sat, like other war orphanages, was there were more kids
coming in than could properly be taken care of, even with the help of
USAF and Army medical personnel visiting weekly. Mothers who were ARVN
widows would occasionally leave their babies (often, of mixed Vietnamese
with GI fathers) with the nuns. And through the gates of Ke Sat there
was a brisk business in abandoned babies, many of them wounded, all
sick. The nuns took them all and worked heroically to protect them,
while they themselves lived in considerable danger, given their location.
The sister who was my contact at the orphanage like to be called "Twiggy," (photo, left) a name some GI had given
her a year earlier. After medicine and food for her children, the thing
she wished most for was to be allowed to drive our jeep. She would hop
in at a moment's notice, but we always managed to protect that bit of
government property.
Twiggy's grimmer duty was to take-in babies and save those she could--which
weren't 
many.
Priority went to the children who had survived infancy and might make
it to adulthood. We'd look at those kids and wonder if they'd grow up
to be war fodder as so many of their fathers had.
Twiggy took me into that stinking room, and watched for my reaction.
Of course, she wanted Americans, those who might help, to see the suffering.
There were about twenty babies lying on thin rags on the concrete floor,
several in puddles of urine. Most of the babies had skin diseases as
evidenced by white or red scabby patches. Their mucus-smeared faces
were blank, eyes crusty with pus, and whimpering weakly. Americans who
saw this kind of pathetic sight in Vietnam, could not have helped but
contrast it with spotless maternity wards in hospitals back in "The
World."
A couple of Vietnamese women were seeing to the needs of the babies,
when possible, but the orphanage was filled with older children's conditions
demanded care and attention. And most seemed to be suffering some combination
of respiratory, skin, and eye diseases.
The next week when I visited Honai there were still ten of the babies
in the nursery, with one or two crying more robustly. I had hoped they
might survive, but realized it was chancy. Too many of the babies were
too far gone when they had arrived, and a new crop of infants and babies
lined up along one side of the room.
Without thinking, I asked Twiggy, "What happened to all the other
babies from last week?" Though it must have seemed a stupid question
to her, the nun reported patiently,
"Beau coup baby die."
The next few weeks were a High Threat of enemy action in the Biên Hòa
area, and a lot of enemy movement was reported. The battle-hardened
Đồng Nai Regiment of North Vietnam's Army was supposed to be gathering,
and the Honai sector was strictly off-limits.
When we were able to return to the orphanage one Saturday morning, we
were met at the gate by Sister Twiggy. She was smiling as usual through
all the troubles. We delivered supplies, and told the sister yet again
we couldn't let her drive the jeep. The USAF dentist with me began examining
and treating the older children. As I walked through the compound, I
neared the nursery and turned to look in, but Twiggy quickly blocked
my way.
"You no look--no see," she warned, still smiling.
I had seen the orphanage over-crowed before and new the nuns were sensitive
to room's appearance. "Many new kids this week?" I asked,
as I stood near the doorway. The room was eerily quiet. Something was
wrong. No crying or whimpering or anything.
She looked down and said in a low voice, "All baby die."
I have no idea if all the babies had died. It's hard to believe that
twenty or thirty of them had all died in so short a time, but I knew
that many had died, and more would die. And had seen the empty beds and cribs were children slept fitfully the day before. I knew that some
of the kids would make it farther along the hard life that was a Vietnamese
war orphan. And I knew that many would not. The Sisters' desperate need
for help was all too real, and more than we could provide.
Decades later, it is the quiet room I hear in my dreams, and not the crying room of living children.
