Flag flies and horror recalled

– Shaun Inguanzo
GREATER Dandenong’s Vietnamese community flew dozens of former South Vietnamese flags proudly last week as its members paid respect to the Australian soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War.
Community leader Phong Nguyen said Vietnamese Australians had never doubted the efforts of Australian soldiers as they battled hard to save South Vietnam from North Vietnamese rule.
“Years of suffering and countless human rights abuses after the war have proven that you were right to be there in the first place,” he said.
About 250 people attended the South Vietnamese tribute to Vietnam Veterans’ Day at Dandenong RSL last weekend.
Among the crowd were Vietnam veterans of a different kind – refugees, now Australian citizens, who fought for South Vietnam and escaped communist rule after the war ended.
One of those veterans was Henry Thompson Huynh.
The former soldier said he befriended a US Army lieutenant named Henry Thompson during the war when US troops helped train South Vietnamese troops in combat.
But when Mr Huynh and his troops arrived to support Thompson’s battalion during a firefight, Mr Huynh found his new friend dead and beheaded.
“He was my best friend, and so I took his name to honour his memory.”
Mr Huynh and fellow veteran Andy Nguyen told the Star of the horrific ‘reunification camps’ the North Vietnamese Government established after the war.
Mr Nguyen, who fought with South Vietnamese forces between 1972 and 1974, said the reunification camps were a form of ‘revenge’ by the North Vietnamese Government.
He said the camps held South Vietnamese soldiers as prisoners of war but without food and medicine.
“Soldiers were left to die,” he said.
While Mr Nguyen avoided the camps by posing as a lawyer and not a soldier, Mr Huynh was a prisoner of one camp.
“They took me to the Chau Ba concentration centre,” he said.
“But I escaped because the North Vietnamese were too busy pillaging nearby villages instead of watching prisoners.”
Both veterans said they were relieved they could fly the former South Vietnamese flag at last Sunday’s commemoration after Prime Minister John Howard intervened to resolve an issue that would have seen a Federal grant lost if the RSL allowed the flag to fly.
“Australian soldiers were sent to fight for this flag and that is a part of history you can not change,” Mr Nguyen said.