Sisters mark 50th anniversary of Operation Babylift tragedy
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Adelaide’s Sisters of Mercy are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Margaret Moses and Gyoparka Makk, two Catholic women who were on board an aircraft that crashed while evacuating babies and adults during the fall of Saigon.
Margaret Moses
The tragic accident took place on April 4 1975, five years after Margaret had travelled to Vietnam to assist her friend from Adelaide, Rosemary Taylor, in her work caring for the many orphans who were victims of the war. Both were former Sisters of Mercy and attended
St Aloysius College. Gyoparka (known as Lee), a young Adelaide nurse, had joined them just a few months before the crash.
Margaret, together with her mother who was also helping in Saigon, was to have been on a plane bringing children to Australia as part of Operation Babylift, the name given to the transport of babies and children to the United States, Europe and Australia.
But a plane bound for America was short of escorts for the children so she and Lee volunteered. While Rosemary and others watched from the tarmac, the volunteers boarded a cargo plane with 230 babies or young children deemed to be strong enough to survive the long-haul flight.
Fifteen minutes into the flight the tailgate, missing a vital component, gave way and the plane decompressed. Skillful pilots managed to land the plane but 150 men, women and children died, including 78 children. Miraculously, 150 survived although many were badly injured.
Mercy Sister Mary-Anne Duigan remembers when the news came through to Adelaide that Margaret and Gyoparka were among the dead.
“In my community at Elizabeth was Sr Claudette Cusack whose sister Mary was in Saigon working with Rosemary,” she said.
“I think it was she who received the phone call. The news stunned us. We were numb with grief and fear – grief for all who had died and fear for the others still there and especially for our Sister Doreen Beckett, who had been working there since 1973. We could do nothing but hope and pray, and wait for more news.”
Operation Babylift continued in spite of the major setback and altogether about 2,500 children were airlifted from Saigon and resettled in other countries.
Margaret was born in Launceston Tasmania in 1940, the second of seven children. When her parents separated, her mother brought the children to Adelaide where Margaret completed her education at St Aloysius where she met Rosemary. Both Margaret and Rosemary joined the Sisters of Mercy after school but left in the 60s.
Rosemary, who died in 2019, wrote about Margaret in a book called Turn My Eyes Away – Our Children in Vietnam 1967 to 1975.
‘Margaret knew the plumbers and the politicians, the military police and the milk distributors,’ she wrote.
‘She could lay her hands on surplus food and office equipment or command a plane, helicopter or a fleet of jeeps and knew whom to phone for a fork-lift or a 10-tonne truck.
‘She had the patience to suffer fools gladly but was never deceived by them…She kept vigil with dying babies and suffered in burying them…(Margaret) was for me personally the greatest support. Her friendship and loyalty sustained me through many morale shattering events.’
Gyoparka Makk
Gyoparka was born in Hungary in 1945. In 1956 the Makk family fled Hungary in the wake of the Soviet invasion. After spending time in a refugee camp in Austria the family was accepted for resettlement in Australia and ended up in Adelaide. Lee trained as a nurse, specialising in working with the mentally ill. (Operation Babylift, Ian W Shaw)
She was working at Hillcrest Hospital when she was granted leave to work in Saigon with Rosemary.
In an audio cassette Lee sent to her family in Adelaide, she spoke of her admiration for the local girls she worked with, praising their diligence and their obvious love for the orphans in their care.
She described how, although she liked walking, she usually caught a cyclo when travelling around Saigon as doing so helped the driver support his family.
She also spoke of the staff with whom she worked and how much she enjoyed caring for her little orphans. Finally, she let her family know that she had begun the process of adopting a little girl herself.
Vietnamese children and priests with lighted candles formed the offertory procession at the requiem Mass for Margaret and Gyoparka in St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral on April 8. More than 700 people attended the Mass.
Two of the communion hymns were English translations of Latin motets translated and adapted by Margaret when she was a Sister.
The priest prayed: ‘Rather than their bodies we are left with the names of Margaret and Gyoparka which we now speak with reverence and affection and pray Lord God, remember their names…that you have written on the palm of your hand.’
On May 2 St Aloysius College will host a memorial service to commemorate the deaths of Margaret and Gyoparka. The school wishes to honour the memory of these brave women. Contact Sr Mary-Anne Duigan on 0438 876 128 or email maryanne.duigan@mercy.org.au to register to attend.
