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As I mentioned in a previous post, Fire Road, I recently visited Vietnam and wanted prepare myself for the trip through reading. Whenever I travel, I like to read books that cover the region I’m visiting. Sometimes I choose travelogues (but rarely travel guides), though I generally just want a simple history of the place from some unique angle. It’s also a bonus if the book’s Christian, which both of these books were.
Granted, these two books taught me as much about modern-day Vietnam as Under the Banner of Heaven taught me about normal life in Utah—that is, hardly at all. Still, they were great books set in the area of my visits, and that’s about all I was looking for.
Captive on the Ho Chi Minh Trail is actually not set very much in Vietnam but rather mostly in Laos, where Lloyd Oppel and Sam Mattix served as missionaries. As the Vietnam War worsened and as the North Vietnamese wound their way southward, though, they also swept into neighboring countries and took captive or murdered anyone they deemed a threat. Two white men of fighting age were considered a threat all right, and the Vietnamese soldiers didn’t care that these men weren’t American soldiers but were instead Canadian missionaries. They were captured and sent to travel mostly by foot to the POW camps in Hanoi.
The book traces the men’s brutal hike north and their multi-month fight to survive. We get to witness the soldiers’ treatment of them, at times terrible and at others quite gentle. We see the people’s curiosity about and reactions to their presence as they move from village to village, again sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile. But most importantly we witness their spiritual struggles as they bleed their way along the route. Raw and honest, they battle constantly their swinging inner pendulum between fear and trust, doubt and hope, hatred and love. The author summarized one of their many deep conversations about God’s will this way:
Talking it over [Sam and Lloyd] realized that for some reason the prison cell was God’s will for them. He would deliver them, but it would be in his time, not theirs. They could see how easy it was to be fooled by one’s own thoughts and desires, and there was danger in dictating to God or even in thinking that strong faith is the way out. Simple acceptance of God’s will for the present brought subdued and peaceful spirits and the knowledge that whether they lived or died, they were the Lord’s and He cared for them. (111)
Lloyd, whose personal accounts make up the meat of this book, describes his own growth in prayer this way:
My prayer life at this point took on an added dimension. I was not begging God for release. After all, He had brought me here, and He would get me out. But I needed to pray more earnestly for my own life and relationship to God, and most of all, for others. It wasn’t easy, I assure you. I wanted to run away like a small wounded boy and bury my face in my mother’s apron. But I learned a very important lesson I trust I shall never forget. When the burden seems to heavy and I want to run away—to cop out—it isn’t time for a holiday, or to kick up my heels, or to go to sleep and forget it all. It isn’t even time to take two aspirin and rest in bed! It’s high time to get on my knees… I was still deep in the valley, but I was not alone. (125)
This book had the right balance of facts and internal dialogue, not excessive in detail but definitely taking the reader along for the hike. These non-combatant prisoners often felt confusing on the trail, and we feel it too, and it makes your wonder how you might survive being, like these men, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One other aspect I liked about this book was Lloyd’s missionary heart on full display in the early chapters. Two passages stood out to me:
“To [Lloyd], it was almost as if a Christian should go [into missions] unless the door were definitely closed.” (11)
“His primary interest was still in the area of medicine, but a professional nursing course would take five years. Why not spend a year on a mission field somewhere to find out what skill or training would serve him best? Would he be a better servant of the Gospel and of the people if he had medical training first?” (12)
This book was well-written and exciting, and I feel it’s due for a revision and reprint, since the only way someone’s going to run into it is by perusing their outdated church library (which is exactly where I found my copy!). It’s one of the more joyful POW accounts to come out of Vietnam due to the Lord’s presence and work in the hearts of the captives, and I’m glad I read it in preparation for my trip.
©2023 E.T.
Thank you for sharing your thoughtful reflections on Captive on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. However, I would like to offer a different perspective, one grounded in Vietnam’s historical context.
While you admire the faith of the two missionaries, I can’t help but consider the larger picture: the presence of Western missionaries in Indochina was, in many periods, not purely religious, but deeply entwined with colonial expansion, political intervention, and war.
Historical records show that missionary activity was often used as a soft tool to pave the way for colonial powers—first the French, then the Americans. Even if the two individuals in the book did not directly contribute to violence, they were still part of a system that indirectly caused immense suffering for millions of Vietnamese people.
I understand and respect the spiritual meaning you found in the book. But I also believe that when we read—especially works involving religion in wartime contexts—we should take into account the voices of the oppressed, not just those telling the story from a place of privilege.
A book can be moving and well-written, but it still deserves to be read with historical awareness and moral clarity.
While I appreciate this different perspective, I believe it places too much blame for future oppression at the feet of individuals not in any way tied to the colonial desires of their heritage nations. Simply because they were American (or French or British etc.) does not mean they’re part of an oppressive system or, as you say, privileged. [You can read my review of James Michener’s Hawaii for more on this topic.]
The sacrifice most missionaries make means leaving their home countries, cutting ties from family and governments, and becoming like the people they serve. While there may be examples of bad apples out there, missionaries in general focus on the one aspect of life that can truly end another human’s oppression, introducing them to the love and Grace of Jesus.
It also seems unfair to attack someone in history as “part of a system that indirectly caused immense suffering for millions” in the future, simply because they were expats from America. If that were the case, no one should be allowed to either emigrate or immigrate, lest their home nation do something wrong in the future.
Reading with historical awareness and moral clarity also requires we not bash well-intentioned individuals from the past simply because we might be entrenched in critical theories like Post Colonialism. There’s a little something called anachronism, which imposes modern rules on non-modern players, and it can be the base for rewriting histories. So be careful you’re using your own brain when reading (and writing) so you don’t simply regurgitate what you’ve been taught but actually think for yourself.