Hai Nguyen, 79, of Ellicott City, can still remember sleeping on an oil tanker bound for Guam, as he fled Saigon, Vietnam after communist forces took the city in 1975.

He considered himself lucky. Nguyen and his family fled Saigon April 29; the following day the city fell.

Behind him Nguyen left, he said, "chaos, terrible chaos because so many people would like to leave and they couldn't."

For Nguyen it was the end of a 45-year relationship with his native land that had taken him into the top echelons of South Vietnamese society, only to see the life he had made crumble as South Vietnam fell to communist forces after American forces there pulled out.

On the journey to Guam, Nguyen's six children slept in front of a urine-stained bathroom. Still, Nguyen felt lucky to be alive. Days earlier, he had been regularly hearing the sound of mortars exploding near his house in Saigon as the communists made their way into the city.

Many years later, and in the midst of enjoying his retirement, Nguyen decided that the time had come to write down his experiences. To that end he recently self-published a book entitled "Get Up One More Time" about his experiences.

"I decided to write the book because there's something in me that the people should know," he said.

His story is an important one for all those who believe in fighting for freedom, he said, adding that the Vietnamese people are still struggling for their freedom.

"Freedom is so dear to our people," he said.

Long journey out of Vietnam

Nguyen was born in 1929 in what was then called French Indochina, the son of an engineer and a business woman.

He was educated at military academies in France, where he was trained in logistics and budget administration. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the South Vietnamese army and was appointed as a financial adviser to the country's prime minister, Nguyen Van Loc, in 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War.

Although he was born to Buddhist and Confucian parents, Nguyen was converted to Roman Catholicism by a French priest while studying in France.

He supported the South Vietnamese and U.S. armies during the war because he believed in fighting for religious freedom, which the communists forbade, he said.

"At that time, we were very fervent Catholics and we wanted to continue (as Catholics), but with them there is no freedom in anything," he said of the communists.

While many of his colleagues escaped from South Vietnam through U.S. airlifts in the days before the fall of Saigon, Nguyen said he kept his family in Saigon almost to the day of the fall itself because he believed it was his responsibility to protect his country to the last.

By the time his turn came to be airlifted, mortars had destroyed Saigon's landing strip.

Luckily, a cousin had connections with the owners of an oil tanker that was leaving Vietnam and arranged for Nguyen and his family to gain passage on the ship to Guam.

On the boat, he managed to talk thieves out of robbing him and throwing him overboard by explaining to them that he had no money and volunteered to be searched by them to prove his point.

Upon reaching Guam, Nguyen made contact with an American military official who arranged for him and his family to be flown to the United States.

New roots in Howard

After being sponsored by a church group in Columbia, Nguyen got a job as a budget analyst for the Howard County government and remade his life in the United States.

Raymond Wacks, the county's current budget director, met Nguyen in 1975 while working as a county budget analyst.

"He told an amazing story about how he had escaped from Vietnam," Wacks said.

Wacks and Nguyen became friends and Wacks came to respect Nguyen's way of not stressing over the little things.

"He didn't let the little things bother him because he had been through big things," Wacks said. "I admired the way he rebuilt his life and his family, and how he kept perspective on what was important in life."

Nguyen said that he has no plans to return to Vietnam and believes that the majority of people in Vietnam today would leave the country if they could.

"If the lamp posts could walk, they would try and find a way to get out of Vietnam," he said.

Copies of Nguyen's book can be purchased from H&T Publishers, P.O. Box 6362, Ellicott City, MD 21042. The cost of the book, including shipping, is $4.75.

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