Poignant salute to tragic heroes of historic 'babylift'

Perth Now

02-05-2025

It was a moment of great hope - hundreds of babies and children loaded onto planes, plucked from the chaos and despair of the Vietnam War, bound for new lives in Australia and America.
In an Adelaide school chapel half a century later, it's been remembered as both a prelude to unimaginable tragedy and a symbol of the remarkable heroism of a group of Australian women dedicated to saving the lives of war's most vulnerable victims.
Among the estimated 320 people crammed into a US military cargo plane at Tan Son Nhut air base in Saigon on April 4,1975, were Australian aid workers Margaret Moses and Gyoparka (Lee) Makk.
They were meant to be boarding one of the two RAAF Hercules flights bound for Bangkok that day, also carrying hundreds of babies, but amid the chaos, the US flight was short of escorts, and neither woman hesitated to volunteer.
Margaret, 35, had joined her friend Rosemary Taylor in Vietnam in 1971 to help her run orphanages in the war-torn country.
The Adelaide women had much in common. They were schoolmates from St Aloysius College and former Sisters of Mercy nuns, sharing a strong sense of social justice that compelled them to help abandoned and orphaned children in Vietnam.
Rosemary had spent years in Saigon setting up nurseries in large rented houses and establishing the adoption assistance agency, Friends For All Children.
"She was a force of nature," says writer Ian Shaw, who interviewed Ms Taylor weeks before her death in 2019, aged 81.
"Her credo was that every child who's born into this world has an equal right to life."
An American volunteer in Vietnam wrote at the time that "Rosemary's task is enormous, overwhelmingly complex, completely impossible and never-ending. Her spirit is remarkable, her methods courageous, breathtaking, hazardous and dictatorial."
Adelaide Sister of Mercy nun Mary-Anne Duigan says Rosemary and Margaret "were kind of opposites".
"Rosemary was formidable, Margaret was a peacemaker. They worked really well together," she said.
Hungarian migrant and Adelaide nurse Lee Makk, who turned 30 on the day of the flight, had travelled to Saigon in February, also determined to help save young lives.
"Lee was the life of the party, she loved singing and dancing and had a smile that would light up a room," said Mr Shaw, who documented the women's story in his book, Operation Babylift.
The day before the flights, US President Gerard Ford had announced the American-led mission to rescue more than 3000 children from Saigon, before it fell to the rapidly advancing communist forces.
Rosemary accepted an offer from the Americans for 230 babies and children to travel to the US aboard an airforce Galaxy C-5A.
Children in more fragile health were to be sent to Australia via Bangkok on the two RAAF flights.
With mounting fears of a bloodbath when the communist forces arrived, tensions were high as armed American convoys picked up the children from the orphanages.
Desperate locals tried to board the trucks, and at the airbase, others tried to smuggle their children aboard.
There were "very ugly scenes", Mr Shaw said.
"The little kids were hysterical, they were scared out of their skins," he said.
A RAAF Hercules was the first Babylift aircraft to depart, carrying 87 babies bound for Bangkok.
On board the US aircraft, the tiniest infants were strapped to the crew seats in the top of the plane, while the older ones were loaded in the cargo hold with adults, including Margaret and Lee.
About 14 minutes into the flight, as the plane climbed to 23,000 feet, an explosive decompression blew out the rear cargo doors and damaged flight controls.
It crash-landed in rice fields about 8km from Tan Son Nhut, sending up a pall of black smoke that could be seen from the air base.
As well as 78 babies and children from the orphanages, Margaret, Lee and four other staff were among the estimated 138 people killed.
Despite the chaos of the ensuing search and rescue operation, another 107 babies were loaded on to a second RAAF Hercules late that day.
RAAF pilot Geoff Rose recalled that the smallest were placed in cardboard boxes, packed side by side on the floor and secured with a tie-down strap.
"It was such a sad and pathetic sight to see so many tiny, helpless babies and young children crammed into the back of our aircraft," he said.
As dusk approached, the aircraft departed on a tense flight that took them over the crash site.
Both Hercules arrived safely in Bangkok, where the babies and their carers were transferred to a Qantas 747, which took them to Sydney to begin new lives with adoptive families.
Before the fall of Saigon on April 30, Rosemary gave away all their property to other orphanages.
She was on one of the last flights out of Saigon on April 29 with two of her team, after climbing the walls of the US Embassy and being evacuated by helicopter, before flying to Colorado to finalise the adoptions of the latest arrivals.
At St Aloysius College on Friday, a memorial service honoured the women's sacrifice and dedication, and guests included Sister Ruth Egar, who also worked in the orphanages, and Margaret's sister, Miriam (Mim) Morrison.
Mary Cashmore, who has written a biography of her former teacher Margaret Moses, said she was "a highly idealistic and kind person, who also had a clever and witty side, a great sense of humour and a joyful laugh.
"But most of all, Marg deserves to be remembered as a person who lived her tragically shortened life with integrity, passion and courage," she said.
It's been written that 'war is the tragedy of what might have been', Mr Shaw said.
"And I think particularly of Margaret and Lee, and of what they might have been," he said.
"They showed the best of us at a time when it would have been easy to show the worst of us."