Last Days in Vietnam

As we began to contemplate evacuation,

the question, the burning question was,

"Who goes,

and who gets left behind?"

I borrowed a truck

and I basically sent the signal to my folks,

and this meant a group of South Vietnamese majors,

lieutenant colonels, colonels and their families

to muster at an address in downtown Saigon.

I drove down there, they loaded up onto the truck,

and I drove them to the airbase.

And I had told them, "When you hear three thumps,

"that means hold the babies' mouths.

"Don't breathe, don't talk, don't make any noise

because we're going through the gatepost."

I saluted in uniform

as a captain of the United States Army.

The guard waved me through,

and I drove straight out to the flight line

to an aircraft that was awaiting.

One Vietnamese colonel that was putting his family on the plane,

he had wanted to stay in Vietnam to defend the country.

And this full colonel had, like, eight kids and a wife.

And he was in tears, the family...

The family were in tears,

and I said to him, "Get on the plane.

"Just... go.

Go."

It was a terrible, terrible, terrible moral dilemma

for everybody.

We today have concluded an agreement to end the war

and bring peace with honor in Vietnam.

We have adopted a plan for the complete withdrawal

of all U.S. combat ground forces.

We are finally bringing American men home.

We who made the agreement

thought that it would be the beginning

not of peace in the American sense,

but the beginning of a period of coexistence

which might evolve as it did in Korea into two states.

Reconciliation between North and South Vietnam

we knew would be extremely difficult.

But I was hopeful.

Because of the Paris Agreement,

American soldiers were going home.

But I was on my way back to Vietnam.

I was assigned to Saigon

in the first week of August 1973,

so about six months after the ceasefire.

I would say that between the State Department people

and CIA people,

the contractors who were there to maintain infrastructure,

maintain aircraft,

as well as people like me,

we had 5,000 to 7,000 Americans in country.

A lot of the guys had Vietnamese girlfriends and wives,

in many cases with children.

In general, things were eerily calm

and in many ways normal in Saigon.

My sense was that we were gonna be there,

you know, pretty much for a long time to come.

I was assigned to the American embassy in Saigon.

I was in charge

of the 84 Marine security guards that were there,

making sure that they kept up

with their physical fitness training.

We were there to protect American lives

as well as American property.

It was just a day-to-day job.

The Ambassador there was a guy named Graham Martin,

a North Carolinian, just as I was.

He spoke with a slow Southern drawl.

He was a great gentleman.

He was a cold warrior in the old stripe.

He'd lost an adopted son in Vietnam to combat.

And he was not gonna give up South Vietnam to the Communists.

He was determined to keep U.S. aid

flowing into Saigon.

When the ceasefire occurred in 1973,

everybody toasted it with Bloody Marys

in the U.S. embassy.

It was a grand party.

We thought peace was at hand.

But the Paris Peace Accord was a masterpiece of ambiguity.

In order to get President Thieu and the South Vietnamese

to go along with the Paris Agreement,

President Nixon pulled out all the stops,

and in a letter to President Thieu,

he promised that if the North Vietnamese

were to substantially violate

the terms of the Paris Agreement,

the United States would respond with full force.

In other words, reenter the war.

The North Vietnamese viewed Nixon as a madman.

They were terrified of him.

They believed that Nixon, if necessary,

would bring back American air power.

But in August 1974, he was gone.

Nixon resigned because of Watergate.

And overnight, everything changed.

Hanoi suddenly saw the road to Saigon as being open.

The South Vietnamese population

had ample reason to fear the Vietnamese Communists.

The Communist conduct throughout the course of the war

had been violent and unforgiving.

For example, when the city of Hue

was taken over by the North Vietnamese,

several thousand people on a long blacklist

were rounded up...

School teachers, government civil servants,

people who were known anti-Communists...

And they were executed,

in some cases even buried alive.

So panic was but a millimeter away.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees

are in a blind rush to flee even further

from the rapidly advancing Communists.

Bruce Dunning reports.

President Thieu broadcast a strong appeal

to the soldiers and the people of Da Nang,

urging them to stay and fight.

As the enemy approaches, the panic has swept

from the coastal city's crowded backstreets and pagodas

onto runways at the airport.

Our plane is surrounded here.

I don't know how the hell we're gonna get out.

We're racing down the runway,

leaving behind hundreds and thousands of people.

Another dozen of them running along,

grabbing at the air stair.

We're pulling them on as fast as we can.

There's a sea of humanity jamming on.

Impossible to stop the crowd.

We're pulling away.

We're leaving them behind.

We're pulling up with the...

People are falling off the air stairs!

The plane is taking off.

It was every man for himself.

So you saw the World Airways flight

being mobbed by South Vietnamese soldiers.

You saw ships with thousands of refugees,

including lots of soldiers.

You saw out-of-control panic.

Basically any boats, trucks, airplanes,

or anything going south

were besieged by people wanting to get onboard.

The Americans were gone,

and as a result, the house of cards began to collapse.

The North Vietnamese decided to escalate,

escalate, escalate, escalate at every turn

to see if the United States would react.

In April of '75, I was with President Gerald Ford,

and we were flying across the country on Air Force One

when one of the airplane's crew

comes and hands me a note,

and it says, "Da Nang has fallen."

Ford was bombarded by questions from the press

after he got off Air Force One.

Around 150,000 to 175,000

well-trained North Vietnamese regular forces

in violation of the Paris Peace Accords

moved into South Vietnam.

We have objected to that violation.

It's a tragedy unbelievable in its ramifications.

We are now in a crisis.

We had a wave of humanity:

500,000 refugees rolling, rolling south towards Saigon,

and 160,000 North Vietnamese troops moving right behind them.

I had become so concerned,

I decided to pull our best Vietnamese agents in

out of the woodwork

to try to see what they could tell us

about Communist planning, which obviously was rapidly evolving.

On the 8th of April,

I met with one of our best agents,

who said, "The Communists are gonna drive on Saigon."

They're gonna be in there by Ho Chi Minh's birthday,"

which was May 19th, literally a month away.

Communist forces in South Vietnam,

already solidly in control of 11 provinces,

began working on yet another one today: Binh Dinh.

I kept a map every day

on the progress of the North Vietnamese onslaught.

By the 5th of April,

the North Vietnamese had 15, even 16 divisions

heading in the direction of Saigon.

They were bringing SA-2 missiles down

to provide anti-aircraft cover for their forces.

There were people who were saying,

"Look, we've gotta do some heavy, heavy planning here

"because depending on how this goes,

and it doesn't look good now, we may all have to evacuate."

And Ambassador Martin

wouldn't tolerate or countenance such thought.

That was defeatism.

That was poisonous to the prospects

of the people we're here to help.

But people could see what was going on

and they started leaving, especially the Americans.