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ML_vietti_bkp.htm
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| Dr. Vietti performs surgery on a patient
at Ban Me Thuot Leprosarium in Vietnam. She was taken prisoner
from there in 1962. (Photo courtesy of Northwestern Veterans Newsletter)
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Dr. Eleanor Ardel Vietti
Went to Vietnam with Noble Intentions
By Bethanne Kelly
Patrick
Military.com Columnist
She
went to Vietnam to heal. She became America's first female prisoner of war
in that country.
Dr. Eleanor Ardel Vietti, known as Ardel, joined
the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1957 and was sent to the Ban Me
Thuot Leprosarium in the midst of tiger-infested jungles. Among the
Montagnards or mountain people of this region, leprosy could reach rates
of 30 percent in tribes. Working with missionary and tribal nurses, Vietti
treated the afflicted and tried to prevent the healthy from contracting
the disease.
From the 1954 division of Vietnam, the
anti-government guerrilla factions under Ho Chi Minh harassed the South
Vietnamese countryside, where millions of refugees from the north had
fled. The minority Montagnards were one of their special targets. Vietti
knew this, and knew that working at Ban Me Thuot entailed the risk of
capture or even death. However, she accepted patients of all political
affiliations, even after the situation in Vietnam worsened and military
operations increased.
In 1962, new hostilities became evident in
Ban Me Thuot. Visiting missionaries were encouraged to leave, but the
existing staff -- including Vietti, Dan Gerber, and Archie and Betty
Mitchell -- were not believed to be in danger. But at 7:45 p.m. on May 30,
12 armed men arrived, tied up Archie Mitchell and Dan Gerber, and ordered
Vietti out of her house. They took the three with them. Although U.S. and
South Vietnamese military authorities spotted the three prisoners the next
day, a rescue attempt was deemed inadvisable.
It is not
conclusively known what became of Vietti, Mitchell and Gerber as POWs,
where or when or how they may have died. In the 38 years since their
capture, rumors that they remain alive have been reported. Stories from
jungle tribesmen who claimed they spotted a white woman with two white men
have never been substantiated. But since 1994, the official position of
the U.S. government has been that no Americans who were captured by the
Vietnamese or who went missing in action during the war remain alive.
The Vietti family requests that no one contact them concerning
Ardel, the only American woman POW from the Vietnam era whose fate remains
unknown.
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