Refugee Lift

They formed a long, rugged column down the single dirt road cut into the jungle. The refugees carried everything they owned on their backs and their children under their arms.

That's not exactly correct. They possessed more that what was in the straw packs. They owned the houses which they had built -- and were leaving to be burned. They owned the crops which were bursting out of plots hand-sliced from the dense undergrowth which also, of necessity, must be destroyed.

There were 1,654 of them, these citizens of Khe Tre, a village 60 miles northeast of Da Nang.

Terrorized by the VC, the Republic of Vietnam villagers had asked to leave. Eighteen UH-34D helicopters of HMM-163 moved them.

In giving directions for the citizens' evacuation, Lieutenant Colonel N.G. Ewers had said to the pilots of HMM-163: "Get them out as fast as you can and be patient. Remember, they are leaving home."

To Marines with firmly established homes, the exodus was pitiful. Old ladies, gnarled with age and weariness, carried screaming infants, their daughter's, their neighbor's, anybody's.

The Marines in one day, in addition to carrying the 1,654 Vietnamese, airlifted 66,440 pounds of furnishings and food. They flew in a single day 16,520 air miles. They could chalk up the record proudly -- Mission Accomplished.

Naval Aviation News, Aug 65, p.11