Unarmored Talk

Part 2: From War-Torn Vietnam to Decorated Marine

• Sergeant Major (Ret.) Chuong Nguyen • Episode 124

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What does it take to escape post-war Vietnam and become a decorated Marine Sergeant Major?

Listen to Retired Sergeant Major Chuong Nguyen share the final moments of his inspiring journey from Vietnam to America. Discover how his family's unwavering support fueled a life of resilience and service.

A story of courage and hope!

This episode offers a raw and intimate look at the challenges Chuong faced in his early life and how his military career profoundly shaped him.

Guest Link:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/Sp51OXySV8c
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuongnguyen1/
Watch: https://youtu.be/Sp51OXySV8c


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Mario P. Fields:

Welcome back to Unarmored Talk Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and watching each episode and continue, please, to share with your friends and family members and colleagues, and don't forget to leave a rating or review if you feel this is an awesome show. And you can connect to all of my social media on the parade deck Just look in the show notes. Media on the parade deck just look in the show notes. Or you can put in the search engine Mario P Fields, parade deck and get all access to my social media. Well, let's get ready to interview another guest who is willing to remove their armor to help other people but so I got out, you know, meet my dad.

Chuong Nguyen:

He picked me up and then now, when he picked me up, I see my youngest aunt right, oldest aunt is still in jail. So now I see my youngest aunt and then you know there was another motorcycle and she was on that one. I'm on the motorcycle with my dad and then we drive for about an hour, half or or two hour, got to this temple and my dad say, okay, go in the temple when the sun go down, there's gonna be a guy that come by and when that guy come by, he's gonna, you know, do a couple you know uh, password and stuff like that, then he'll take you and then you guys go got.

Chuong Nguyen:

It exactly happened that way guy can bring me and my youngest in to essentially the holding house, stay there until about one or two o'clock in the morning. He say, all right, you guys have to go to the boat, took us out to the boat, walked through this like rice paddy and you know, at one point the water was like up to my waist at that time. Now by this time you know probably about I'm 11. Now you know time frame wise, um, but yeah, I remember water was getting high and I say I was a city boy, uh, didn't know how to swim very good at the time, but I was getting worried. But we got to the boat, got on the boat and as we were situated in, we heard, hey, the police are coming, they're coming right now. Oh, my God, we all got off and traced our way back and got to the highway and just kind of like, hitch a ride and then go home.

Chuong Nguyen:

So actually my second attempt to escape wasn't all that bad, you know, it went pretty quick, just like that. And when I went home, my dad was like all right, good, come back, good to see you home. And, by the way, you did a good job with your deception plan, because all your friends, when they came back from school that day, they all run right to me and your mom and they say Mr Kent, mr Kent Chong ditched school today. Is he home? He ditched school today. So they pretty much ragged you out. He ditched school today.

Mario P. Fields:

So they pretty much racked you out. But you know what's interesting in just listening to you and you're 10 and to be able to do this you know, I'm just thinking of an average 10 year old in the world and to be able to go to mom and dad, particularly dad, and dad says are you ready for round two? I mean, just think about the emotions. And here you are going. Yeah, I'm ready, at 10. And not even allowing the first experience to be paralyzing, where you look at your dad and go dad, do you not love me, man? And so I just want to, you know, before we go to the last and final, you know attempt. I just want to highlight that to the listeners and viewers. Just think about that. And so you've always been my hero man, and plus we're about the same height. I mean, you got me by a couple of inches. Anyway, go ahead here. It is now the deception work. You kind of made eye contact. Look at me, mario, I'm out in principle. Now what? What's next, man?

Chuong Nguyen:

We'll move to that third escape there. But you know, to capitalize on what you mentioned about how I am able to, you know, at such a young age, just to say, ok, I'll go again and leave my family behind. I like to, you know, essentially, jump forward a little bit. You know, essentially, jump forward a little bit and as doing your service in our core along with me, you know, I honestly believe our country has so much of those men and women as well that have that resiliency right. It's how we was raised up when we was young. I honestly believe that you know my parents how they raised me up until that point. Give me that confidence. Give me that you know comfort to say, hey, if my parents tell me, do this, you know it's for good and they will take care of me. And that carried with me throughout my whole Marine Corps career, or throughout my life up until now. And I, you know I don't think that is unique to me.

Mario P. Fields:

I think both you and I probably I know for me have seen so many of our you know many of our warrior that we had the opportunity to serve with that, also have that same sense of resiliency, and I love how you're still the same person, external, about everybody else and I love that about you and that's your belief and I appreciate that. My friend, we're talking about you and you, you know this is the Unarmed Talk podcast is well said and I, you know I don't agree or disagree because you know that's, we all have our beliefs, but, but, but your circumstance, you didn't vote but, but, but your circumstance, you didn't vote, you didn't ask for that and in the way you performed, if you will, is remarkable for you. And so I just want to say I always love your humility. You have not changed since I've known you since 1860. But I just want to share that with you that you had a choice or not, skills to choose to, to, to, to, to, you know, develop your personality, your career, your passion, with the foundation of what your parents taught you.

Mario P. Fields:

Man, that's a choice, and, and, and it's and, it's beautiful, it's remarkable to see it and I've seen it when you're on on active duty and still seeing it on this show. You guys notice he's like first of all, before we even get to the third part. Let me just take a minute. There's 8.5 billion humans, you know? I mean you're amazing man, yeah, so yeah.

Chuong Nguyen:

Yeah, and and again. Thanks you know, keep you know.

Chuong Nguyen:

Your comment is what drives me and you know, we'll move forward here for the sake of Tam here. But yeah, so you know, the third time I tried to escape is we got home, reintegrate with my family, and probably a a couple months, not too long, probably about two months later, one day my uncle just walked in, the youngest uncle that was still in jail. He just walked in and then my parents were like, hey, how did you come home? And they're like, oh yeah, I make friends with the police and one day they take me out to work on the field. And while they wasn't looking, I jumped in the river, swam for like 30 minutes, 45 minutes, however long, get on land, jump in another river, swam again, and then finally able to escape and got home. And so my parents were like, well, you definitely can't stay here because they're going to come and fire you, because they know where we're at, they know the red lift and all that stuff, they're going to come and look for you. And so at that time my dad started planning for our third trip, and our third trip now is my youngest uncle, who just escaped, and then my youngest aunt that are home. The oldest one was still in jail. And so same story, you know, at night, got to the boat, got on the boat, the engine died, like the first time.

Chuong Nguyen:

We were just floating and you know, first day day, second day, third day came by on the morning of the third day start. Early in the morning we looked far in the distance. We saw this shape about this big uh, and when we saw that shape, you know we start putting our clothes or what we can find together and trying to send smoke up and send up distress signal. And so as we was doing that, you know, time clicking and as we look in the distance that shaped, as the day goes by it got a little bit bigger. It definitely is not coming toward us because you know they would move faster, but it got a little bit bigger, but definitely not big enough or fast enough to where we're like, ok, they're going to get to us or we're going to get to them before the day ends. But we keep our hope, keep burning our clothes before the day end, uh, but we keep our hope, keep burning our clothes, uh, and probably about 4, 4 PM, 4, 4, 30 PM, the sun, you know, starts sailing down and all of a sudden I remember, you know, and if you see it, like my face where I look as after you know 30 some years, uh, face where I look as after you know 30 some years, uh, actually, more than that, uh, I I still remember is like just like yesterday.

Chuong Nguyen:

So I remember looking over to the left and we saw this fishing boat, you know, much nicer than ours, right Like speeding toward us, and so we all weighed them down. We all weighed them down. They come in front of our boat and come to the right side. So now we face that way and they face the opposite direction and we was trying to communicate with them. Folks on our boat were like, oh, those are the Thai fishermen, you know.

Chuong Nguyen:

And then so they tried to speak some English or hand and arm signal and stuff like that, and essentially asked for hey, do you have any water or any food that you can give us? And so they would throw the line over. You know, as you remember, during our time on ship replenishing that sea, where they throw the rope over from the other ship. Well, this, essentially, is that version. So they transfer over some water to us and as they transfer some water over to us, we keep saying, ok, hey, you got any food that we can have as well. And their response back was hey, do you have anything to trade? Well, when you leave Vietnam, you don't bring money, because you know we can't trade Vietnam money in any of the other countries, and weren't you?

Mario P. Fields:

guys burning your clothes as signals Right right, yeah, for them.

Chuong Nguyen:

I believe that you know those fishermen probably know that, hey, these are the refugee and they already have that in their mind. So, but, as as we was asking that and some of the older folks, you know, they would have like a gold wedding ring or a small earring or something like that that they would bring with them, uh, and so they, you know, some were like yeah, I can give you this ring, please get up, give us some food, right, and so if I could backtrack a little bit from the time that I see that boat, uh, that fishing boat, to the end scene here that we're gonna to hear about in about two minutes here. It takes probably about 15 minutes, but it seems a long time right.

Chuong Nguyen:

So, as folks were trying to give them their ring and through that line, I remember vividly looking over and then I started seeing some of them like cover their face, some had their ski masks on and stuff like that. Them like cover their face, some had their ski masks on and stuff like that. And as all this unfold, the older people on our boat was like, hey, those are the pirate, those are the pirate. So of course the whole commotion was going on and all that stuff and as all this was going, if you recall, during our time in service, the, the were show of force, right, show of force with our military aircraft so that the bad people know that, hey, the US military is here, right, I didn't know it at that time, but as that was going on, I remember hearing and looking that it was a short flight, it was that low, that loud, and I remember looking up I see two jets and it was kind of turned down so the pilot can take a look down. Two jets, just like real loud, come by, spin so they can see, go far a little bit, turn around, gone, and then as soon as we see them, and by the time that we don't see them no more, probably within about a minute. And I'm sure that boat, which now we assume are the pirate, they probably are thinking the same thing what the heck was that? And we was like oh wow, what was that? And so, probably about a while on this, what's going on? Trying to figure out what happened. About a minute later, the two jets come back again and did the same thing. And as soon as they done that, turn, go away. Spin left us. That turn, go away, spin left us. Now the pirate was cutting the rope on their side just so they can sped away. So they just throw the rope down, and then they left. And so as they sped away, our boat would just keep floating, still seeing the ship far in the distance grow a little bit bigger. No more aircraft. And then I remember telling myself, I'm pretty sure the folks on the odd boat was thinking and saying well, that's probably was fortunate. You know, we almost got pirated, but now at least we have some water and we still see that ship in the distance. So hopefully good thing will happen. And so we're floating, floating.

Chuong Nguyen:

Maybe 45 minutes later, if you recall, and if the viewer on the channel here recall watching the movie Cast Away, and at the very end, where Tom Hank was just laying on the raft and just pretty much give up, and then here comes, you see, like this big old hole that just come by to his left side.

Chuong Nguyen:

I believe that's exactly how, when I watched that movie, it brought me back to that scene at that time. So after about 45 minutes we was floating and I remember, austin I looked to the left, uh, I saw this bigger gray hole was just coming toward our boat. Our boat is probably about that big of my pinky and this thing is about this big and it was coming. And then finally it's kind of like hit, uh, just in the horn up, I think it was coming. And then finally, it's kind of like just in the horn up I think it was they planned it out and intentionally doing it, because I'm pretty sure the engine already turned off but kind of hugged us. And then, when they hugged us, our boat went to the far side of this. Now it's a ship, it's gray color and I remember, you know, when it's hugging, and I remember looking up and as soon as I look up I see your own glory, our flag our country flag waving, wow.

Chuong Nguyen:

And every time I share this story and when I get to this part, I always get, you know, a little bit emotional. And it is that way, as you know, for us, as as Marines and service members in our country, how we fight, how we fight and and defend our freedom. And for me, at that time, uh, you know, although I did not know what my life would be like you know, 30 years, 30, 36 year afterward, um, that I would be, you know, retired from serving our country as a U S Marine, inside me I was like, wow, that's the symbol of freedom, that's what I've been doing, that's what I've been looking for, that's what my parents want me to look for. And although they probably didn't know that we would be meeting a US Navy destroyer ship that way, they probably think that we would go to Malaysia or Singapore and then seek asylum. But we saw, you know, that's how we met.

Chuong Nguyen:

And for us, when I looked up, I see own glory and then I hear all this funny voice, you know, a sailor was running around wearing the uniform and they were speaking language. And I'm like, oh, oh, man, that's English. You know, I like man, that sounds so cool, but of course I didn't understand what they were saying. You know, and your listener might be saying right now, I don't even know what you're saying, right?

Mario P. Fields:

now you say but there's one thing for sure that is not the Vietnamese police. Yeah right, for sure, that is not the Vietnamese police. Yeah right, absolutely. He said I don't care, I don't care what language they could be speaking alien for all I care, wow.

Chuong Nguyen:

So you know, seeing the freedom at that time and you know they obviously pulled our boat to the side and then picked us up. There was 126 of us total on that boat and how can I give the listener here imagine how big is that boat? I would say envision a semi-truck length of that. You know the container of a semi-truck length, but probably about three-fourths of the length. The width is about that big.

Mario P. Fields:

But what we do know, what I do know, is thank God for your parents who created the opportunity for you. You know they didn't have to do it. Your dad did not have to do it. You know I'm a father, You're a father. That's a tough choice, you know. To be able to go, we're going to have to potentially lose our 10 year old for freedom. And then what I do know is out of service, joining the United States Marines, and then having an amazing career giving back, giving back to a country that he wasn't born in, giving back to a place of democracy that you had to escape three times. Now I have to play the lottery with you man but you know what I'm saying.

Mario P. Fields:

And I tell you the other thing I do know about Chong Nguyen is it doesn't matter where you are in the world there's roughly about 8.5 billion humans but you can't go to any institution, any college, any academic entity and take a program of caring, get a certification of Empathy, and that's, that's what we see.

Mario P. Fields:

And I tell you, for me to be have been blessed to have met you, to have followed you for years before physically meeting you you know you are my West Coast hero and then now for you to you know, for you and I to finally connect, at least share your story of resilience, your story of a lifelong commitment to serve people, is remarkable. And I would tell you, chong you know, just so everyone knows, he just got off of work and I'm not going to be selfish and keep him any longer, because I will. He knows this. We'll talk until midnight, but what I want to offer you because I don't want to be selfish, my friend, looking back on that particular journey, if you had to give a piece of advice to anyone who is currently struggling in the world, who believes there's no hope, what would you give them? Struggling in the world, who believes there's?

Chuong Nguyen:

no hope. What would you give them? Yeah, so my advice and offer to anyone as far as how I was able to get to where I am today and continue to be successful, really it's come down to two things. Number one embrace the opportunity that is given to you and I just given that's probably not the right word but embrace any opportunity that come across you and treat it as if it was the first time that you ever seen that opportunity. And and you know, I know, mario, you're going to tell me stop it again, but I will bring it back to bring. Bring it back to when I had the opportunity to serve with you in in uniform. You give me the opportunity to.

Chuong Nguyen:

In uniform, you give me the opportunity to be a battalion sergeant major who fall under your charge, to say you run your unit and when you need help, just know I'm here and I will fully support you. And there are other things that I still remember that you helped my career with. That. You didn't have to, and those are opportunities that you gave me and many other people gave me. So embrace the opportunity.

Chuong Nguyen:

And with that, I feel bad when I cannot turn those opportunities into success. Those opportunities into success. That's just how I do it. Hey, if people give me an opportunity and I don't make it into something, I'm going to go back and tell that person I'm sorry, I'll do better next time. Which leads me to my second point. For anyone that would like to hear is you know, personal responsibility. You have got to be the one that say, hey, this is my responsibility, I asked for this. So, be it as hard as it can be or as challenging as it can be, just realize that, hey, nobody pushed you to do it, definitely out here in the civilian industry, you know at any day and I share this.

Chuong Nguyen:

I know this is going to be posted to the World Wide Web, so I know folks are going to hear. My boss might even hear it. I share it with him. I say, sir, I have a choice. I have a choice now that if I don't want to do what I have told you that I'm going to do in my position as an air manager, then one or two things I need to leave or you need to fire me. You know, and I'll leave before you fire me, if I don't want to do the job.

Mario P. Fields:

Well, I'll tell you what if I was your boss, neither one of those are options. Well, we got to go back to the table because you're missing some additional options. Everyone you know again, chung the wind, an amazing human being, human being. And the last thing I want to add before before I let uh, you know, not even let you go to go back to work, but to let you go to continue to do great things in life and spend time with your family, is what people don't know is when we were on camp Schwab.

Mario P. Fields:

He was the only Sergeant major that I have witnessed in my life that inspired and motivated. That there are two separate things, right. And he motivated first, that's temporary. And then he threw some inspiration on top where he had a couple of Marines that pulled a Humvee, a big old vehicle probably weighs I don't know how many tons of pounds, and they pull that thing. And then he runs after them, grabs like the rope or something and starts to cheer them on. They won everything. I've never seen anything like it in my life, but what I do know is that is the power of the human dynamics when people know you care about them. You mentioned it. Personal accountability care about them. You mentioned it personal accountability. You took that opportunity. You didn't have to do it and your legacy will continue to live on, my friend, even through me. Thank you so much, brother. I love the heck out of you, chong.

Chuong Nguyen:

I really do. Thanks, mario, and thank you to your guests. Definitely an honor for me to be here with you.

Mario P. Fields:

Yeah, same here. Well, everyone, thank you for tuning into this special episode, and you guys know the deal. The reason why this podcast exists since 2020 is because of your support, and I'm going to keep doing this until the good Lord upstairs says you're fired. So I want everyone to continue to be safe, and may God bless you. May God continue to bless your friends and may God continue to bless your families. See you later, my friend.

Chuong Nguyen:

Thank you, bye-bye.

Mario P. Fields:

Thank you for listening to this most recent episode and remember you can listen and watch all of the previous episodes on my YouTube channel. The best way to connect to me and all of my social media is follow me on the parade deck that is wwwparadecom, or you can click on the link in the show notes. I'll see you guys soon.

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