Tim Giago: I returned home safe from the horrors of war

Monday, June 24, 2019  

We have a tradition at our house of watching the Memorial Day broadcast from the Washington, D. C. Mall every year. And this year, 2019, the show was particularly poignant.

As we were watching a segment on the war in Vietnam I said, “I was there.” My wife Jackie was sitting on the couch next to me and her head swiveled my way and she said, “You never told me that.”

Well, I guess I didn’t. So I told her the story of my service in Vietnam. It all began after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the Geneva Convention divided Vietnam into North and South Vietnam. That left thousands of Vietnamese and French civilians stranded up north trying to find a way to South Vietnam. The United States Navy stepped up with its Operation Passage to Freedom that year.

I had just been reassigned after my second tour of duty in Korea. I was sent to Sasebo, Japan and stationed on a barracks ship called the USS DuPage. The DuPage had a very interesting history. It was a troop carrier that happened to be in Manila Bay when WWII started and a Japanese bomber sank it in the harbor. The Japanese salvaged it and used it to haul Japanese troops. It was in the harbor at Sasebo when an American bomber sank it again. When the United States occupied Japan they salvaged the DuPage again and moored it at a dock, totally gutted it and filled it with bunks and a mess hall and called it a barracks ship. All transit personnel going through that region usually found a bunk on the DuPage.

One day an officer came to the DuPage and said he needed some volunteers for a special mission. He lined us up and said, “You, you, you and you, are now volunteers.” That’s the Navy way. The four of us were taken by LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel) to an LST (Landing Ship Tanks). The next day we left for Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam. Once we tied up at the dock there we loaded about 1,000 refugees topside and in the well-deck and headed to Da Nang in South Vietnam where we unloaded them and turned right around and returned to Haiphong to pick up more.

Most of the refugees got sea sick shortly after we put out to sea and it was pretty tough on all of us as the decks were covered with vomit from the bow to the stern. The second trip north was our last one and all total, with the help of so many ships from the 7th Fleet under Admiral John McCain, Sr., we brought 310,000 refugees to Da Nang. I often think about them and wonder how many survived the horrific war that was about to follow.

Haiphong was a beautiful port back then. It was bustling with sampans and small ships loading and unloading supplies. A few years later it would be reduced to near-ashes when the U. S. attempted to bomb it into oblivion. Da Nang was just a small port with not much going on there, but in a few years it would be one of the major military bases in South Vietnam. Ironically, John McCain, the admiral’s son, would be shot down over Hanoi where he would spend 5 years as a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton.

I was assigned to the USS Chimon, AKS 31, when I got back to Sasebo and served out several more months before finally getting to return state-side. I received an honorable discharge in 1958 and returned to my home in Rapid City where I remain today, safe from the horrors of war.

Contact Tim Giago at najournalist1@gmail.com