THE INC REDIBLE JOURNEY
Rescued from brink of death in Vietnam by a famous Daily Mail airlift... raised in rural N Ireland... and now, four decades later, a tear-jerking reunion with the mother he thought he’d never know
IT WAS an extraordinary front page that captured the imagination of the world.
A nurse tenderly holds a baby boy on a plane packed with orphaned children being flown to safety from the chaos of the Vietnam War.
It was 1975 and Operation Mercy Airlift – organised by the Daily Mail – rescued the children from Saigon days before the ravaged city fell to the Vietcong. Makeshift cots were hung from the plane’s ceiling, and the bewildered boy in the front page picture was one of nearly 100 youngsters heading to a new life in Britain.
He grew up in a loving family in Northern Ireland, adopted by Cyril and Liz McElhinney who raised him as their son and called him Vance.
Today he believes that being plucked by the Mail from a Saigon orphanage as the Vietcong closed in – and there were fears they would show no mercy to war orphans – saved his life. ‘It worked, it saved babies’ lives. I’m grateful for that,’ he said of the airlift.
‘I was undernourished. If I hadn’t
‘I wouldn’t have survived’
on that plane I could have died very quickly.’
Vance’s story is remarkable enough as it is – but it has an astonishing and heartwarming twist.
Although he grew up believing he was an orphan, he has now discovered that the birth mother he thought was dead is actually alive in Vietnam – and they have been reunited after more than 40 years.
At their emotional reunion Le Thi Anh, 64, recognised him immediately as her long- lost son and explained that she had never abandoned him.
Her family left her baby at a children’s home while she was ill in hospital, and in the tumult of war he was mistakenly believed to be an orphan after the nuns who ran the home sent him further south to another one in Saigon as the Vietcong advanced.
US president Gerald Ford had warned that children in orphanages – some fathered by American troops – might be slaughtered by the Vietcong and his words prompted frantic evacuation efforts.
Vance, who left Vietnam with nothing but a crumpled photo marked with his Vietnamese name, was one of 99 babies and children flown out on a Boeing 707 chartered by the Mail just as the Vietcong reached the outskirts of Saigon. Hours later they landed at Heathrow. Some were malnourished, others were suffering from serious illnesses which required urgent medical help.
Inspired by articles in the Mail about their plight, youth worker Mr McElhinney and Liz, a curate, travelled from their home in Northern Ireland to offer to adopt a child.
When they reached the children’s home in Surrey, Vance was the only child left needing a family, and the committed Christian couple took it as a sign from God that he was meant to complete their family.
They raised him alongside their other sons David, now a teacher, and Stephen, a Church of Ireland reverend, and Vance said the entire family welcomed him with love.
He said: ‘Had it not been for the Daily Mail and the McElhinneys my life would have been utterly different. There is no saying what would have happened to me, but I would not have had the opportunities I had. I see myself as an orphan who was given a chance. I’m in my 40s now. I was given a chance at life I would not have had.’
Retelling the story of his evacuation, he said: ‘My mum was expecting to come and get me after two weeks in the orphanage. She had put me in there because she wasn’t
‘I couldn’t have had a better family’
very well. We were in the middle of the fighting.
‘From my understanding she was going to pick me up but the war was that bad. The nuns said to her brothers and sisters it would be safer if this baby went to Saigon. They never consulted my mother – she was in a hospital.’
The Mail’s foreign editor at the time was Brian Freemantle and he played a major part in organising the airlift. Vance said: ‘I went to see him three years ago and I thanked him. He literally saved my life.
‘Had I survived as a child in Vietbeen
nam it would have been a very hard road to travel. I wouldn’t have had the opportunities I did. I just think, personally, I wouldn’t have survived.’
Despite the love of his adoptive family, Vance admits growing up in Lurgan, County Armagh, as a Vietnamese-born child in an almost exclusively white town was not always easy.
He eventually left home and moved to England when he was in his twenties.
But when his adoptive mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease he moved back to Lurgan to help care for her.
He decided it was time to try to find out more about his past, and participated in a BBC Northern Ireland project, A Place To Call Home, which saw him meet up with nuns from the orphanage in Vietnam and with key figures from the evacuation.
After the programme was aired he had ‘about 30 Facebook messages’ from people in Vietnam claiming to be relatives.
But one woman, who claimed to be his cousin, stood out. She sent him a photograph of a man who she said was Vance’s father. Struck by the family resemblance, Vance arranged to travel back to Vietnam and met the woman in a café in the coastal town of Quy Nhon, near the orphanage where he was originally left.
He hoped she might have more information about his family, but was stunned when she pointed to a neatly-dressed woman sitting nearby, saying: ‘She’s your mother.’
Le Thi Anh wept as she produced pictures of him as a baby and said she had not wanted to give him up, but her family had left him at the children’s home while she was in hospital.
Vance said: ‘My mum got her bag out and showed me photographs of me, my dad, photographs of her in her 20s. The picture of my dad was the spitting image of me.’
Mrs Anh told Vance his father was a Vietnamese soldier, a gambler and a drinker who abused her, shot her parents, brother and sister and then abandoned her. She has no idea if he is still alive. He hesitated about having a DNA test because his adoptive mother’s health was deteriorating and he wanted to spend precious time with her.
But after Mrs McElhinney died aged 71 in June 2017 he went ahead with a test which came back as an exact match to Mrs Anh.
He plans to return to Vietnam next month and to divide his time between his families there and in Northern Ireland.
Twice-divorced, he works as a sous chef in Lurgan. His adoptive father Cyril, who was awarded the MBE in the 1980s, is now 78. Vance said: ‘The McElhinneys did everything for me. I could not have wanted for a better family.’
His brother David, 45, said: ‘We’ve always been grateful that Vance was brought out of Vietnam. He was a tiny baby when he came over and he had a lovely, happy childhood.’
Vance McElhinney is setting up a charity for disabled orphans in Vietnam, Helping Hand, and the Daily Mail has made a donation for this story.