Date published: Wednesday, August 25, 2004
By Scott Beveridge, Staff writer

DANANG, Vietnam – Do Truong Thach was abandoned twice by different Vietnamese families before his sixth birthday.

When Thach was an infant, his parents dumped him at an orphanage that placed him with another family. His adoptive mother later ran off, leaving him with a man who rarely worked and could not afford the basic necessities of life.

"My mom left to marry someone else," said Thach, who has since been taken in by the Village of Hope Displaced Children's Center in Danang.

The 9-year-old boy who loves to play soccer and aspires to be a police officer also has a team of adults from across the globe in the Pittsburgh area who care about him and other children in his orphanage.

Members of a Vietnam veterans organization, the Friends of Danang of McMurray, sponsor about a dozen children like Thach at this home. Group members also have been raising money to minister to children who have been injured by old war explosives that litter Vietnam, and others in need of orthopedic surgery.

These humanitarians each have been doing more than cutting a check to the orphanage once a year for $300, enough money to provide a child with food, shelter and an education.

Vietnam veteran Neal Armagost and his war bride, Thanh, packed nine of the children sponsored by the Friends of Danang on a bus in July for a field trip to an ancient citadel. The Armagosts then stuffed the children's stomachs with food and gave each of them enough money to buy new blue jeans.

"What chances do they have?" said Thanh Armagost, of Reynoldsville.

The Saigon native has her own sad stories to tell. She left her homeland in 1972, three years before South Vietnam fell to Communist troops, and was never allowed by the new government to see her parents again before their deaths. Twenty years went by before she was able to talk face-to-face with her sisters, the time it took the reunified country to relax its immigration rules enough to allow its former citizens in America to return home after the Vietnam War.

She's made three trips this year alone to her homeland to carry out the work of the Friends of Danang.

The bus she provided for the orphans followed a narrow dirt road from the gated orphanage, passing rows of shacks a few blocks to where Highway 1 meets the blue-green South China Sea. It chugged past lush jungles as it climbed the narrow Hai Van Pass, a long, steep, two-lane road to the top of a mountain 1,500 feet above sea level. The children sat quietly, too shy to speak around American strangers, who included a newspaper reporter and Neal Armagost.

The bus stopped at the peak, cooling its engine beside weathered reinforced concrete pillboxes – small, round forts used by French troops until 1954.

Thach was the only boy among the children, and the first to climb a dirt path to a pillbox, peeking inside the narrow slits in its wall from where soldiers fired machine guns. He immediately latched onto Neal Armagost and remained at the man's side the entire day.

The 57-year-old veteran knew the boy was trying to charm his way into his heart, hoping desperately to find a new father.

"I can't let it happen," he said, while the two later wandered among the temple ruins in Hue City, a former capital of Vietnam.

There, soldiers fought the final battles of the Tet Offensive, a surprise attack launched by North Vietnamese forces Jan. 31, 1968, the first day of the country's New Year's celebration. Northern troops took over several U.S. strongholds during the three-month campaign, including the American Embassy in Saigon, at a time when the U.S. media had been led to believe America was winning the war. During the fighting, 12,000 North Vietnamese soldiers were killed, and 3,000 of Hue's residents were executed by the enemy.

This was the first time Neal Armagost's feet have touched Vietnam's soil since he left as a civilian with his wife. He served in Saigon during Tet, but refused to discuss his life during the war.

"It's over. It's history," said Armagost, who worked as a photographer, mechanic and performed other jobs with the U.S. Army's 1st Military Intelligence unit.

He said Vietnam lost the war, as more than 1 million of its citizens were killed, as compared to the nearly 58,000 Americans who lost their lives in the fighting.

But this day was reserved for creating happy memories, among them spoiling the orphans with steamed rice wrapped and cooked in banana leaves. Their bag of treats also included nem, the Vietnamese word for ground ham and rice noodles encased in pig skin.

The children appeared thin and small for their ages because they lacked proper nutrition before coming to the Village of Hope, Thanh Armagost said. Even at the Village of Hope, they have been lucky to eat a small bowl of rice before heading off each morning for the half-hour ride on their bicycles to school, she said.

"I tell them they are lucky. There are so many children like them who don't have what they have," she said.

Thach had the good fortune in March to find a sponsor in Jill Dishart, assistant director of international programs at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh. A member of the Friends of Danang, Dishart was at the orphanage dancing a polka to "The Chicken Dance" when she was taken by the boy's deep, brown eyes.

"I just felt this warmth from this little hand," Dishart said. "My 6-year-old daughter has everything. When he was 6 years old his mother ditched him. I'm grateful."