Vietnam wasn’t all bad for Canadians, says Summerside man

By Ryan Ross

When people gather in November to remember Canada’s time at war, a Summerside man reflects on one of the country’s missions of peace.
Alfred Gallant was 38 when he left for Vietnam, leaving his wife and six children behind.
He landed in Saigon in 1965 as part of a Canadian peacekeeping mission where he worked as an accountant in the Forces’ finance branch in the war-torn country.
When they arrived, the Canadians were treated like kings, he said.
“My God they thought the world of Canadians.”
Gallant said one of the reasons the Vietnamese liked them was because the Americans had a lot of money and the Canadians didn’t.
“The Americans are a big bunch of show-offs.”
Despite the war, the Canadians were safe in Saigon, but if they left the city they needed an escort, he said.
“We weren’t allowed out of the city of Saigon single.”
However, Gallant said he did travel to Hanoi, in North Vietnam, three times as a courier.
As he soon as he got off the plane he was met by North Vietnamese soldiers with their bayonets fixed and pointed straight at him, he said.
“I wasn’t all that big I’ll tell you then.”
It wasn’t his only brush with danger during his time there, he said.
Gallant said one of his favourite places to eat was at a floating restaurant and he was on his way there with a friend one day when the North Vietnamese bombed it.
“We heard a big bang and smoke.”
But it was the only time he saw an attack like that, he said.
“We only saw it after it was done.”
Gallant said the hardest part of being there was adjusting to the way people lived in Vietnam.
His driver had 13 people in his family living in a one-room house with no toilets and no water, he said.
“The house was on stilts over water and they had holes in the floor that’s where they used the washroom.”
And Gallant said they ate water buffalo, which he didn’t like.
“Just like mud.”
But because he could speak French it helped him adjust a little easier than some of the other Canadians, he said.
Gallant said he spoke French almost all the time he was out and had to interpret for other soldiers who couldn’t.
“It was great.”
One of the best moments during his time in Vietnam was when a few of the soldiers starting looking after an orphanage, giving a few cents here and there to buy them candy, with each of them chipping in a little more at Christmas, he said.
“They really enjoyed that.”
Vietnam was Gallant’s first posting overseas without his family and with six kids his wife Louise said she was very busy at home.
“The weekends were very long.”
It was hard seeing cars pull into other driveways when he wasn’t there, she said.
“Suppertime was the worst.”
She said she found out he was leaving the same day he found out she was pregnant.
She didn’t cry when she found out he was leaving but did when he left, she said.
“It was some nice to have him back.”