A 12 year-old Vietnamese village girl sees her first American

Le Ly Hayslip at 12

Courtesy of Le Ly Hayslip

In the sky, she saw two flying ships "whining and flapping like furious birds." The wind from these ships blew off her sunhat. She fell to her knees. She thought she was going to die. Then she reaised her eyes. The ship landed. "The dull green door on the side of the ship slid open, and the most splendid man I had ever seen stepped out on the marshy ground," she wrote later.

He was enormously tall and fair-skinned. "Still cowering, I watched his brawny, bond-haired hands raise binoculars to his eyes," she wrote. ."He scanned the tree line around Ky La, ignoring me completely." After saying something in a strange language to another man inside the ship, he went back inside.

"Instantly, the flap-flap-flap and siren howl increased and the typhoon rose again," Le Ly described. "As if plucked by the hand of god, the enormous green machine tiptoed on its skids and swooped away, climbing steadily toward the treetops."

The next sound she heard was her father's voice.

"Ba Ly--are you all right?"


Excerpt from "Le Ly Hayslip: 'Freedom is Never a Gift'" from Courageous Women of the Vietnam War.