“Operation Babylift: Courage in the Face of Collapse”
In April 1975, as U.S. forces withdrew and Saigon’s streets turned frantic, Operation Babylift emerged as one final attempt to offer refuge in the face of inevitable disaster. With the city under threat of immediate takeover, thousands of orphans—many of them mixed-race children abandoned by American soldiers—were at risk of being trapped or targeted. The evacuation would become one of the most dramatic rescue efforts in modern history.
In Carried Away: A Memoir of Rescue and Survival Among the Orphans of the Viet Nam War, Ross Meador recounts what it was like to be there—not as an observer, but as someone working in the orphanages themselves. At 19, he had arrived in Vietnam to offer help in whatever form he could, motivated by a deep compassion for the Vietnamese people. His involvement in the evacuation wasn’t planned; it came from being in the right place, with the right instincts, at exactly the wrong time.
This memoir captures the intensity of those days and the quiet bravery of someone who simply refused to walk away.
