THE INNOCENT CHILDREN WE PROTECTED

Terry at Binh Thuy Air Base 1968



Over the years many people were misinformed
There were rumors of us abusing the villagers
That we killed the innocent and the helpless


Such stories make me sick even to this day
It has always been a miscarriage of the truth
These sick individuals were never in Vietnam


Yet some to this very day still claim this
That we enjoyed tormenting and killing them
This they say is how we got our own jollies


Well I was there and I know the truth as well
We risked our lives everyday for the villagers
And especially for the children who were orphans


I didn't get drunk and go to Vietnamese brothels
During any off duty time I had I wrote to home
Seeking the help of my town and veterans groups


They held clothing drives and collected toys too
They arranged for shipment of these items to me
So my fellow airmen and I could clothe these kids


They had never had toys and weren't sure what to do
So we showed them how to play with the toys & dolls
The little girls giggled as they held their toy dolls


Many times it was too dangerous to travel to them
Yet we knew how important all our visits were to them
It was worth the risks we took to see their smiles



© Terry Sasek - Alwaysawarrior - all rights reserved.

































Terry at the VFW Awards Dinner given in his honor after he
had returned home from South Vietnam in November 1969.


I was presented the key to our city and a letter of Commendation
for my own teams personal efforts to help the local Catholic nuns
in Can-Tho village save, feed and clothe the kids who were brought
to their orphanage during our tour of duty over there and at times
it was at great personal risk to myself and our fellow airman who
would always try to get through from our own very small and remote
air base to those kids at the orphanage at Can-Tho village to bring
them canned food, clothes and some toys to play with too. After all
these years that have passed by since that year, we still have some
people who will only believe what they wanted to believe which has
usually been the worst about our soldiers, sailors, marines and our
airman who fought to defend the South Vietnamese in that war. They
were dead wrong about us and no matter how hard they may still try
to rewrite the facts of history to present us to everyone as cold
blooded killers who'd derived great pleasure in killing others in life,
I know that the majority of our own fellow citizens do know better.
Some of these sick minded people had their own agendas then and  
in their own lives and they certainly never cared about the truth or
the real facts as they were never over there and we were. I hate to
have to burst their bubble they have wrapped themselves in, but all
these sickos had only one view of us veterans who served in Vietnam
and I guess that these pictures and these news articles above that'd
been written about us and our own efforts to save these kids would
speak a thousand words to most people, but even with all this proof
their views of us won't really change and the sick individual views
they formed about those of us who served in South Vietnam while we
tried defending the freedom that the South Vietnamese had wanted for
their own families as we had in America will never change either.

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