Tran B. Quan - Soldier On: My Father, His General, and the Long Road from Vietnam

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Soldier On

Soldier On

My Father, His
General, and the Long
Road from Vietnam

Tran B. Quan

Texas Tech University Press

Copyright 2021 by Texas Tech University Press

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including electronic storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit prior written permission of the publisher. Brief passages excerpted for review and critical purposes are excepted.

This book is typeset in Crimson Text. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39. 48-1992 (R1997).

Designed by Hannah Gaskamp

Library of Congress Cataloging-in -Publication Data
Names: Quan, Tran B., 1974 author.
Title: Soldier On: My father, His General, and the Long Road from Vietnam / Tran B. Quan.
Description: [Lubbock, Texas]: Texas Tech University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: The story of a South Vietnamese officer who smuggles his family out of the country toward the end of the Vietnam War, as told by his daughter. Forty years after the departure, the officer reconnects with a respected general, Tran Ba Di, during a family road trip to Key West, Florida.Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005430 (print) | LCCN 2021005431 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1 - 68283-097 -0 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1 - 68283-098 -7 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: VietnameseUnited StatesBiography. | Vietnamese AmericansBiography. | Quan, Le, 1948 | Quan, Le, 1948Family. | Di, Tran Ba, 1931 | Vietnam (Republic). Quan l cOfficersBiography. | Political prisonersVietnamBiography. | Political refugeesVietnamBiography.
Classification: LCC E184.V53.Q35 2021 (print) | LCC E184.V53 (ebook)
| DDC 973/.04959220092 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005430
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005431

Printed in the United States of America
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 / 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Texas Tech University Press
Box 41037
Lubbock, Texas 79409-1037 USA
800.832.4042
ttup@ttu.edu
www.ttupress.org

For Dad

Contents

Illustrations

Oversea Highway, Orlando to Key West, summer 2015

Authors father at ten years old

Authors father reading a letter from home, Thu Duc Military Academy, 1968

Authors father, his friend Thanh Du, General Di, authors mother, Cousin Hung, and Hungs wife Hoang, Florida rest area

Major Di awarding medal to village militiaman, 1963

Authors father looking out on the grounds of the ARVN 16th Regiment, 1970

Authors parents celebrating their engagement, 1971

Authors parents honeymooning in Da Lat, Vietnam

General Di sharing meal with American advisors, including Captain McFarland, 1963

Authors parents in front of hut in Laem Sing Refugee Camp, Thailand

Grothen family and authors family sledding in Hastings, Nebraska

Author, authors father, and John Deere tractor, Nebraska, 1980

General Dis letter to Ronald Reagan, 1981

Cousin Hung and wife, Hoang, authors mother, author, authors sister, authors father, General Di, John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Key Largo

Authors family home

N&T Seafood Market, Houston

Author with captains bars, May 25, 2002

General Di pedaling snack pushcart, Orlandos Splendid China Amusement Park, 1993

Author in Key West with General Di and authors father

Authors father and General Di, Key West, 2015

Foreword

The literature of the Vietnam War is vast but conspicuously sparse in two important areas: assessments of American advisory assistance to the South Vietnamese and accounts by the Vietnamese themselves. As regards the latter category, Tran Quans fine memoir is a valuable contribution to our knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the Vietnamese diaspora, especially in America.

Born in South Vietnam during the last stage of the war, Tran came to America at just five years of age with her parents and a six-year -old brother. They in effect escaped from their homeland, becoming boat people, after her father had suffered three years in a communist prison camp. A very difficult path still lay ahead of them. She tells their story without self-pity or sugarcoating.

Tran Quan is intelligent, observant, and grateful for the new life she and her family found in America. And she is an extraordinary researcher, tenacious and relentless, basically extracting from her father Le Quan and his wartime commander the details of their ordeals as prisoners in the so-called reeducation camps, Major General Tran Ba Di for an incredible seventeen years.

Trans book also demonstrates her enormous energy and dedication. She served as a US Army Medical Corps captain for a number of years. This represented an extraordinary accomplishment on her part. When still a little girlas she and her family were trying to adjust to life in a country where they knew neither the language nor the customsTran had considerable trouble in school. Her father drew her to him. I believe in you, he said.

He was right to do so. Late one night, many years later, Tran showed her father three letters. The first informed her that she would be graduating from college magna cum laude. The second was an acceptance to medical school. The third, from the US Army, told her she was being awarded a scholarship that would pay her medical school expenses in return for four years of service as a captain in the Army Medical Corps. The sharing of those letters must have constituted an event of almost unbelievable triumph and gratification for both father and daughter.

For the past decade, Tran has been medical director of the Richmond State Supported Living Center, part of a Texas network assisting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. While carrying out these demanding duties she simultaneously researched and wrote this moving account of her family and its travails and triumphs.

It thus seems quite fitting to me that Tran Quan completed her book and found a publisher during the zodiacal Year of the Rat. I have considerable sympathy for the Rat. He lives a hard life and never gives up. I hope Tran will be flattered, not offended, by the comparison.

Trans story is perfectly suited for Texas Tech University Press, exemplifying as it does the under-reported but inspiring story of how perhaps a million South Vietnamese left their homeland after it was overrun by the communists and made their way to America, where they have by dint of hard work, family loyalty, and ability made new lives for themselves and enriched our culture.

lewis sorley, phd

Soldier On

Chapter 1:
Key West

While the wait staff wriggled between the seats of the packed Orlando restaurant and customers chattered away enjoying their meals, a silver-haired Vietnamese man in his early sixties quietly cleared the dirty dishes from the empty tables. Even though it was his first month on the job, he worked fast, scraping food off the plates and stacking them into meticulous towers. His tanned, sinewy arms moved back and forth with precision. He surveyed a table and saw a half-eaten trout, grilled ribs with chunks of meat still on the bones, and clumps of warm rice left on plates. His heart sank as he emptied the leftover food into a garbage bin. For a moment, he thought about how for seventeen years he ate mostly cassava roots and drank dirty well water in the jungle prisons of Vietnam. The starchy, bland roots settled in his stomach like a puddle of paste. Sometimes he went to bed with an angry belly that growled from days without food.

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