Martyrdom and the Tet Offensive

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits:

“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” -Revelation 12:11

On the morning of January 31, 1968, during the Tet offensive, Viet Cong (VC) troops invaded more than 100 towns and villages in South Vietnam. A platoon of VC overran the missionary station at Ban Met Huot, a small town in the highlands, 150 miles northeast of Saigon, which was operated by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) Church. The CMA had a leprosarium, church, and school at the mission station and when the shooting between the VC and US soldiers began CMA missionaries Bob and Marie Ziemer, Ed and Ruth Thompson, Leon and Carolyn Griswold, and Ruth Wilting took cover in a shallow bunker they had dug earlier. After an hour or so of shooting, Bob Ziemer, age 49, decided to exit the bunker and try to persuade the VC to leave their village. He was shot dead with an assault rifle by a VC. A few minutes later a VC threw a hand grenade into the bunker, killing everyone in it except Marie Ziemer, who nonetheless received eighteen wounds from shrapnel. As Bob lay dying, his wife Marie tried to come to his aid but she was taken as prisoner and Bob was left to die there by himself. Marie was released a few hours later but three other CMA missionaries were taken captive and one of them died several months later from malnutrition. In God’s gracious providence the missionary children, a few days earlier, had all been taken back to a missionary school in Malaysia, so no children were hurt or killed in the attack.

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