Almost 37 years ago, First Lieutenant Nam Nguyen earned a Silver Star while on a mission into a Vietnamese province near Saigon. But until a few months ago, he didn’t know it.
That all changed when a family friend discovered Nguyen’s name on a list of Silver Star recipients and pointed it out to him. Now, after two months of phone calls and paper chasing, Nam Nguyen of the South Vietnamese Air Force proudly sports the medal on a uniform he wore during the Vietnam war.
“This award is a great honor for me and my family and my fellow soldiers,” Nguyen said in a ceremony earlier today at the Denver office of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall. While family members and fellow Vietnam veterans looked on, Udall presented the prestigious military award to the former helicopter pilot.
“It was a mission of valor and courage,” Udall said of the event that earned Nguyen the award.
In December of 1973 — nearly a year after officials signed the January 1973 cease-fire agreement — Nguyen led three, unarmed helicopters filled with American soldiers into Long An province. The crew hoped to collect bodies of soldiers who had fallen in battle.
After landing, enemies attacked, breaking the cease-fire and killing one American and one Vietnamese soldier. Nguyen ordered the helicopters back to the skies and called for gun ships to rescue the group. He then circled until help arrived, directed the armed aircraft toward the attackers and landed once more to help the rescue team evacuate soldiers still on the ground.
It’s unclear why Nguyen never knew he’d earned a Silver Star, but after the collapse of Saigon many officers spent years in “re-education” camps run by the North Vietnamese.
“They put me in a camp for 6-1/2 years,” Nguyen said.
Heather McWilliams: 303-954-1698 or hmcwilliams@denverpost.com
