The Fall of Saigon

The month of April, 1975 was a pivotal one. It was an historical one for the Second Indochina War, for the Republic of Viet Nam, and the United States of America. On the first day of the month the cities of Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, and Nha Trang were abandoned by the South Vietnamese army leaving the entire northern half of the country to the undisputed control of the North Vietnamese. Between the eighth and the twentieth the ill- fated battle of Xuan Loc raged. From April 11 to April 13, the US Navy evacuated the US embassy staff from Phnom Penh, Cambodia in an operation they named Eagle Pull. The Cambodian president had abdicated two weeks earlier.

On the twelfth of April, South Vietnamese President, General Thieu, resigned. He and his family, carrying huge trunks filled with gold, were boarded on Untied States planes and ferried in grand style to an opulent exile in London. On the fourteenth, the Americans shifted the last of 14,000 South Vietnamese homeless children and orphans to the United States. The desertion rate from the armed forces of South Viet Nam sharply increased.

April 17 saw the surrender of the government forces of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot thereby initiating a period of atrocities that left mounds of human bones in killing fields throughout that miserable country. On April 29, the attack on Saigon itself began. On that second to the last day of the battle, the final two Americans to give their lives for the adventure in Viet Nam, marine Corporal Charles McMahon, Jr., and Lance Corporal Darwin Judge, were killed when they were struck by shrapnel from an NVA rocket.

As the People’s Army of Viet Nam moved inexorably toward the center of Saigon in the last forty-eight hours to get themselves and anything they wished out the country. Frantic preparations were made for the destruction of documents and the valuable hardware of war, neither of which was accomplished with adequate success, and for the evacuation fo the remainder of the US personnel and selected faithful Vietnamese in Operation Frequent Wind.

US aircraft carriers Enterprise and Coral Sea provided air cover. 7,100 American and SVN military and civilian personnel were helicoptered out to Task Force 76 of the 7^th Fleet. In addition, the SVN navy and Military Sealift Command, hundreds of sampans, junks, and almost anything that floated, evacuated 80,000 people to the Philippines.

A few additional Vietnamese who had been promised evacuation as a reward for their faithful service dangled for a short time form ropes hanging from the helicopters until they, too, fell off or were helped off by the marine guards. The rumble of NVA tanks and the roar of their artillery could be heard drawing closer and closer to the bunker of the US Embassy.

On April 30, 1975, Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City there were no longer two Viet Nams, only the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. General Giap’ forces established military enforced order. From the records that were not destroyed before the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the US Embassy, dropping unfortunates who were clinging to the outsides of the helicopter, wee found names, dates, and places documenting activities of the Revolutionary Development Program and it successors, the Phoenix and Phung Hoang activities. Public disclosure of those activities were given little notice in the world’s press, and did not present a picture of the United States of America that it wished to have preserve in history.

At last the awful losses came to an end – thirty billion dollars a year in US treasure, and hundreds of thousands of lives. Two years before, the bulk of the US presence had left with the statement that “We have achieved peace with honor,” by Richard Nixon, the President.