The Ban Me Thuot Five and the Laotian Two

by Michael D. Benge*

Dr. Ardel Vietti, Carolyn Griswold, Ruth Thompson, Ruth Wilting, Betty Olsen, Evelyn Anderson, and Beatrice Kosin.  You won't find their names on the Viet Nam Memorial Wall or on a grave marker at the Arlington Cemetery.  Yet, like thousands of other women, they went to Viet Nam for the same reasons—a sense of duty, love of country, belief in God, an obligation to serve mankind, and a desire to help, in some small way, to keep the Vietnamese and Laotians free from communist oppression.  All seven women were missionaries. 

Ardel, Carolyn, both Ruths and Betty women shared many similarities.  They all served with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) group in Ban Me Thuot, Darlac Province, in the Central Highlands of South Viet Nam.  They all lived at CMA's compound, and they all worked with the Montagnards.  [Montagnards is a term applied by the French to the Malayo-Polynesian and Mon-Khmer ethnic minorities who live in the mountains in Viet Nam.] 

The CMA compound had been established in Ban Me Thuot for several decades, and the missionaries' work at CMA's Leprosarium hospital, located several kilometers below the town, was well known by both the Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese (NVA).  Many of the men from the American MACV unit and the 155 Aviation Assault Company stationed at Ban Me Thuot attended Sunday morning services at the picturesque Montagnard church in the CMA compound or afternoon services held by the missionaries at 155's compound.  Afterwards, the GIs were invited to the missionaries' homes for Sunday dinner and a chance to socialize, a relief from the daily grind of the Viet Nam war.  In turn, the GIs did what they could to help the Montagnards by contributing medicines and other materials to the Leprosarium.

Another similarity that all seven women shared was that they were all either captured or killed by the Vietnamese communists.

Dr. Ardel Vietti had been CMA's Medical Director of the Leprosarium.  She and two CMA associates, Daniel Gerber and Rev. Archie Mitchell, were captured by the Viet Cong during an attack on the hospital in 1962, and disappeared in the jungle, never to be heard from again.

Carolyn Griswold, a linguist and teacher, arrived in Ban Me Thuot in 1953.  Much of her time was spent preparing bilingual elementary school primers in the Rhade and Vietnamese languages.  At approximately 3:30 A.M. Tuesday, the second day of the Tet offensive of the "Year of the Monkey" in 1968, someone pounded on Carolyn's door.  After identifying herself as a missionary to the NVA, they ordered her back into the house and sappers blew it up.  Carolyn's father was killed instantly, and she lay gravely wounded for four days in the rubble.  On Friday, Carolyn was rescued by a 155 Aviation "dust off" and flown to the 8th Field Army hospital in Nha Trang.  She died on Saturday morning.

Ruth Thompson was half of a husband-and-wife linguistic team who worked on the Mnong dialect.  Ruth and Ed joined the CMA group in Ban Me Thuot in 1965 after Prince Sihanouk closed Cambodia to U.S. missionaries.  After Carolyn's dad was killed, the missionaries made several attempts, to no avail, to negotiate with the NVA, who had set up in the Montagnard church on the CMA compound.  Sappers blew up the Thompsons' house at about 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday.

Somehow, the Thompsons managed to flee to a garbage pit that had been converted to a bunker over which a white flag had been raised.  On Thursday morning, sappers blew up the remaining houses and the NVA rushed the bunker, throwing in grenades and shooting into the pile of bodies, killing Ruth, Ed and others.

Ruth Wilting was the fiancé of Dan Gerber, who had been captured by the Viet Cong in 1962.  Besides her work as a nurse at the Leprosarium, Ruth also taught midwifery classes for Rhade women.  She shared a house with Betty Olsen across the road from the main Missionary compound.  During a lull in the fighting on Monday night, Ruth and Betty darted across the road to help tend to Carolyn and the other wounded.  On Thursday morning she and Betty decided that Carolyn had to be taken to the Provincial hospital immediately or she would die.  Betty ran toward a jeep but was stopped by a NVA and led away.  Through a hail of fire, Ruth ran for the bunker only to be killed with the Thompsons.

I was an economic development officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, thus I interacted with both the missionaries and the military frequently.  I was responsible for the evacuation of civilians in case of emergencies, and after rounding up most everyone else that Tuesday morning, I pulled up to the CMA compound.  Ruth Wilting, Betty Olsen and the others saw me and yelled, "Go back! Go back!"  Too late!  They watched as the NVA took me prisoner.

I had little opportunity to get to know Betty before our capture on January 28, during the 1968 Tet Offensive, meeting her only by chance during my infrequent visits to church, the CMA compound, or the Leprosarium.  Betty Olsen differed from the other women in one respect, for she saved my life while we were prisoners of war.

Betty Olsen, after graduating from nursing school, took special training in Hong Kong in the care of lepers.  She joined the Leprosarium team in 1966.  About a week after my capture, I saw Betty and another missionary linguist, Hank Blood, being led in chains to a small cage made from wooden poles.  We had little opportunity to converse for my cage was distant from theirs and we were forbidden to talk.

Every month, we were moved to a new camp.  We were given little food, and survived mostly on a starchy root called cassava (a relative to tapioca), some salt, and what edible leaves we could grab when our captors weren't looking.  While in our second mountain camp, we came down with what we determined was dengue, with burning fevers, cold chills, and bone wrenching aches. It lasted for about a week.  On the way to our next camp, I came down with what was later diagnosed as cerebral malaria.  I would be walking along and suddenly everything would turn a blinding white and I would pass out.  I was delirious for the better part of five weeks, and remember little other than Betty trying to wake me up so she could force me to eat some rice gruel, drink some water, or clean me up.  She berated the NVA for not giving me any medicine, and finally cajoled them into cooking me rice gruel, which I could keep down.  She was one brave and feisty lady, and she saved my life! 

In the latter part of June we were moved again.  This time to a campsite near a large cave.  It was the rainy season, and rather than sharing the cave with us, the NVA forced us to sleep on the ground in the open, with only a small plastic for cover.  We put Betty in the middle and Hank and I were soaked most of the time.  Hank came down with pneumonia, and Betty harangued the NVA for some medicine.  Even though the NVA had a field hospital nearby, they refused him medicine, so he died.  It was July 4th.

When we weren't picking lice out of our clothes and our minds weren't dwelling on food, Betty and I shared experiences.  As the daughter of missionaries, she had led a pretty sparse life, but she had a vexing streak of rebellion.  Quite a lady!  I promised her that when we were released, I would take her out for dinner at a restaurant of her choosing.  She chose "The Pit," somewhere near Chicago, which had red decor, and we would have sirloin steaks, with a little wine.  Wine was verboten in her fundamentalist upbringing, but she reasoned that at if Jesus could turn water into wine for a feast, it was ok to for her to drink some in moderation.

By then, we were both were covered with puss-oozing sores from leech bites, exacerbated by malnutrition.  I showed her that by lying in a stream, the minnows would clean the sores and they would heal quicker.  By November 1968, the lack of food and our constant moving wore Betty down.  One day, the NVA separated us, and at the end of the day, we were reunited.  Betty said they had been kicking and dragging her the whole day and she couldn't go on.  I told the NVA officer in-charge, that we refused to go on any further until Betty was given some good food and allowed to rest.  They jacked shells into the chambers of their AKs, put them against our heads and threatened to kill us.  They said that as civilians we were of no value as POWs and only took rice from the mouths of their soldiers.  Betty's retort was that it was up to God, not them, to decide when we would die.  It seemed to confuse them.  They lowered their weapons and said we were crazy.  We had called their bluff, and thought we had won. 

We were allowed to rest for a couple of days near a supply depot.  They prepared us a meal of rice, corn, mung beans, a little meat, and cooked some bamboo shoots I had been allowed to gather.  We were ravenous, wolfed down the food, noticing that the bamboo shoots were more bitter than usual.  It was meant to be our "last supper."  Before we could finish, we had severe stomach cramps and dysentery.  They had poisoned us by not boiling the bamboo twice to remove the cyanic acid.  Unable to get out of her hammock, Betty lay for three days in her own defecation before she died.  They wouldn't even allow me to clean her up.  Miraculously, I survived, and for Betty I swore, Illegitimate non carborundum--No, I wouldn't let the bastards grind me down!  I helped bury Betty near the Cambodian border in South Viet Nam in November of 1968.  Last year, I was contacted by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting in Hawaii, and was told they had found Betty's gravesite.  However the North Vietnamese had dug up her remains, which they still hold for ransom.  May she someday rest in peace! 

Evelyn Anderson was a 22-year-old nurse from Quincy, Michigan.  Beatrice Kosin was a 34-year-old schoolteacher from Ft. Washakie, Wyoming.  Both were with the Christian Missions of Many Lands and served in the southern Laotian town of Kengkock, about thirty-five miles from Savannakhet.  They were in Laos not to kill but to help.      

In the late hours of Saturday, October 27, 1972, a small group of North Vietnamese soldiers invaded Kengkock and took Evelyn, Beatrice, and two other missionaries, Lloyd Oppel and Samuel Mattix, captive.  Several other Americans managed to escape.  Although there was a plan to rescue the missionaries, reports indicate that on orders from Washington the American Embassy in Vientiane squelched the plan.  The Paris Peace Negotiations were underway and it was feared that a rescue attempt would compromise the sustained level of progress of the talks.  This proved to be a death sentence for Evelyn and Beatrice.

On November 2, 1972, American Intelligence intercepted a North Vietnamese radio message ordering that the two women be executed.  A captured North Vietnamese soldier later told U.S. military intelligence that after their capture, the women were tied back to back and their wrists wired around a house pillar.  The women remained in this position for five days.  After receiving orders to execute the two, the communist North Vietnamese soldiers simply set fire to the house where they were being held and burned the two women alive.  Like Betty and the other women, Evelyn and Beatrice were of no value as hostages to the North Vietnamese, for their release and would only create adverse publicity for the communists.  Oppel and Mattix were released with seven others in Hanoi in 1973 as the "token" group of American POWs supposedly captured by the Pathet Lao.  “NOT!”

*From Vietnam Women’s Memorial: A Commemorative. Article reprinted in its entirety with permission from Turner Publishing Company, Paducah, KY.