Old friends from Vietnam's CDEC --- "in exile"

If memory serves, it's been 48 years since I last saw or visited with any of these beautiful people, gathered at a restaurant in San Jose, California, for lunch on Monday. For the record, they are (from left) Chuong, Ngoc, Dick, Judy, Raymond, Nuong, Nhiem, Van and Ngoc.

Dick and Judy, of Little Rock, were visiting Nhiem and her family in Stockton and Niehm arranged this mini-reunion of veterans (in exile) of the Combined Document Exploitation Center (CDEC), Saigon. I had a chance to visit with both Dick and Nhiem on Tuesday and Nhiem very kindly shared this photo, taken by a restaurant staffer.

It was late fall 1970, I believe, when I stopped for the last time at the office, located in a hidden compound just off a busy Saigon street behind a soccer field and sandwiched between cemeteries on the fringe of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, to finish up some paperwork and say goodbyes. A few days later, I flew out of Bien Hoa bound for Seattle, then Denver, Des Moines and home.

I've written about CDEC before, so there's no need for too much detail. This was a combined intelligence center --- Vietnamese civilian, Vietnamese military, U.S. troops and two wonderful and very tough  Koreans, the Sergeants Kim. We dealt with the documents captured by allied troops across Vietnam. 

Nhiem, Dick, others at the table and myself worked "Evaluation," where documents, as the title suggests, were evaluated for information of immediate or other intelligence value. There also were screening, translation and more sections, most staffed primarily by Vietnamese civilians. U.S. troops were considerably outnumbered and most of us formed close bonds with our Vietnamese co-workers. 

Five years after I left, Saigon fell --- and a majority of CDEC's civilian staff was evacuated to the United States. So that's why there's a "CDEC in exile" here. Nhiem carried with her out of Vietnam the telephone number of my friend and co-worker, Dennis; Dennis and his wife, Betsy, became her sponsors --- in Michigan.

Although Nhiem has lived in California for many years now, Nhiem, Betsy and Dennis continue to provide some of the the glue that holds this loose assemblage of old friends together.

There have been considerably larger CDEC reunions in California --- a majority of its former staffers live there now. But friends and acquaintances from those days actually are scattered all across the United States, including Chariton, Iowa.

In one way, all of this seems a very long time ago; in another, as if it were yesterday. But these faces are so familiar and Nhiem's smile is such a constant --- I'd recognize it anywhere. It all makes me a little homesick ...