Honorable Exit

by Thurston Clarke

  The first members of his ground security force landed in the DAO compound at 3:12 p.m. They ran down the ramps of three CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters in full battle dress to cheers and applause from Americans and Vietnamese. Earlier that day, an air force colonel had told Foreign Service officer Don Hays that once the helicopters arrived, only Americans would be evacuated. In reply, Hays had gestured toward fifteen hundred Vietnamese evacuees sitting underneath the raised buildings of the DAO and asked, “What about them?” The colonel had replied, “They’re your problem.” After Gray arrived, Hays approached one of his marine officers and asked if they would be evacuating all the Vietnamese. The marine checked with Gray, who presumably repeated his admonition not to play God, and told Hays, “We’re cleared to take everyone out.”

  Hays, an air force officer, and an American civilian organized the evacuees at one DAO landing zone into groups of seventy before escorting them to the helicopters. He sent the ill, the elderly, and family groups out first. Two women delivered babies while they were waiting. Fearing that they could not board with their infants, they left them on the tarmac. Hays scooped them up and put them and their mothers on a special flight. (One of the children became a U.S. Navy Seabee, and Hays ran into him in Albania years later.) Three ARVN troopers pointed their rifles at Hays and demanded evacuation. He promised to help them if they dropped their weapons. After they complied, he led them into an empty office and locked the door. A marine witnessing the incident said, “That took balls.” Hays replied, “No. I’ve just had it up to here.”

  Between 3:15 and 5:30 p.m., a daisy chain of marine and air force helicopters evacuated almost five thousand Americans, Vietnamese, and third-country nationals from six landing zones scattered through the DAO compound, taking off from its tennis courts, baseball field, and parking lots. The helicopters were on the ground less than three minutes, and there was none of the chaos and mob rule that had marred the evacuations from Da Nang and Nha Trang. Air America and military helicopter pilots reported sporadic ground fire, but none of their passengers were wounded. The widespread attacks on Americans that Martin, Polgar, and others had predicted never materialized.

  The same South Vietnamese MP lieutenant who had refused to allow Moorefield into Tan Son Nhut turned back evacuation buses throughout the afternoon, forcing their drivers to leave their passengers at the docks or outside the embassy. After becoming separated from Moorefield and Maloney, the SPG’s heroic Captain Wood had assembled another convoy, collected more evacuees, and made several attempts to get through the gate. The MPs fired warning shots and shouted, “We want to go too!” He finally called Lieutenant General Carey at the Evacuation Control Center and explained the situation. Carey told him to have his buses fall back and ordered a Cobra gunship that was circling overhead to buzz the gate. Wood told the MPs that unless they let him through, the gunship would level their gate. They capitulated, and why Smith and Carey had not done this sooner, or simply taken control of the gate, has never been explained.

  Instead of monitoring the evacuation from inside the DAO’s Evacuation Control Center, Colonel Gray drove around Tan Son Nhut in a jeep, checking on his men and on the fighting at the northern end of the air base. Whenever he entered the ECC to transmit a report, Kissinger seemed to be on the radio, demanding to know how many more people were left and when the evacuation would end. Gray thought, “We’ll be done when everyone’s evacuated.” He became so fed up that he unplugged Kissinger in mid-sentence and walked out.

  When he and Carey landed, they had assumed that the embassy evacuees either had already been bused to Tan Son Nhut or were en route, except for a hard core of a hundred diplomats and marine guards who could be lifted off the embassy’s rooftop helipad. They did not learn the truth until 4:00 p.m., when Major Kean notified Carey’s deputy that three thousand Americans, Vietnamese, and third-country nationals remained in the embassy compound. They could not reach Tan Son Nhut by road, and would need to be airlifted to the fleet. Kean also requested a contingent of marines from the ground security force to control them and help manage the evacuation.

  Some of these embassy evacuees had arrived on Air America helicopters whose pilots had dropped them off on the roof because they wanted to conserve fuel and the embassy was closer to the downtown helipads than Tan Son Nhut. Among these pilots was Marius Burke, who had been collecting people from the roof of 22 Gia Long Street before acting CIA operations officer O. B. Harnage relieved him. Burke then took a mid-afternoon break to return to Vung Tau and search for Jim Collins, the retired American who had come to evacuate orphans from the military academy. He failed to raise Collins on the radio but managed to fly fifteen orphans from the academy to the Blue Ridge. Most Air America pilots stood down at dusk, but Burke kept flying. He finally stopped at midnight after flying for fourteen hours, eating one sandwich, and evacuating over a hundred future American citizens.

  Before Harnage began making pickups from 22 Gia Long Street, Polgar had asked him to go to the Lee Hotel at 6 Chien Si Circle and rescue a group of Polgar’s South Vietnamese VIPs and friends. Harnage landed on the Lee helipad and went downstairs to collect them. His helicopter had attracted a crowd to the street outside the hotel. Desperate Vietnamese mobbed him, tearing his white shirt and begging to be evacuated. A policeman pulled him from the mob and escorted him back into the building. Two South Vietnamese soldiers rushed to the gate and demanded that he open it and fly them out. One pulled the pin from a grenade, pushed it through the gate’s grille, and shouted, “We go with you or I drop the grenade.” Harnage shoved the barrel of his Swedish machine gun into the soldier’s face and said, “Go ahead, you’ll never hear it go off.” They locked eyes for several seconds before the soldier replaced the pin and melted back into the crowd.

  Harnage decided that the crowd made it too dangerous to use the Lee Hotel. He returned to the embassy, and Polgar sent his VIPs to 22 Gia Long Street next. Harnage recruited Air America pilots Bob Caron and Jack Hunter and made four successful pickups from there, his last immortalized by Hubert Van Es’s photograph. After almost being killed by a grenade at the Lee Hotel, Harnage had still ridden on the skids of Caron’s helicopter so he could pack a few more Vietnamese aboard. He had acted instinctively, but upon reflection he believed he had taken those risks because after he had lived in South Vietnam for most of a decade, the country had become, he said, “part” of him. He had developed a father-son relationship with a Vietnamese teenager whom he was helping to earn a pilot’s license, and he owed his life to a South Vietnamese soldier who had held his head above water to prevent him from drowning after a Vietcong assassination team blew his jeep into a drainage ditch. He had also heard about the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia and expected the Communists would do the same thing in Saigon.

  After Air America pilots Joe Weiss and George Taylor had made multiple pickups from Saigon rooftop helipads, their South Vietnamese assistant Cong said, “Would it be OK if we picked up my family?” Cong had been helping them evacuate people for the last two days, and Weiss and Taylor were stunned that he had never mentioned his family. “You’re damned right we can pick up your family,” Taylor said. The pickup proved to be among their trickiest and most dangerous. Cong’s house was three stories high and surrounded by high buildings. The family saw them approach and began waving from a third-floor balcony. Vehicles and people filled the surrounding streets, making a landing impossible. Instead, Taylor and Weiss put the left skid of their helicopter against the side of the steeply pitched red tile roof while suspending the right skid over the balcony where the family was standing. One by one Cong’s family members grabbed the skid so that Cong could lean down and pull them aboard. His mother nearly fell to her death. After everyone was safely aboard, there were smiles and tears. Taylor and Weiss needed to refuel, so they flew everyone out to the fleet. Cong insisted on returning with them to help evacuate more of his countrymen.

  Air America helicopt
ers landed on the roof of Walter Martindale’s apartment building throughout the afternoon. He and his Montagnard guards Kulie Kasor and Nay Ri had counted off twenty-person loads, confiscated large bags, and hoisted women and children into the choppers. He promised two ARVN lieutenants who were brothers seats on the last helicopter in exchange for helping his Nung guards control the front gate and screen arrivals. Because his building was a designated embassy evacuation point, people continued arriving. By mid-afternoon the helicopters had attracted a mob to the surrounding streets, and Martindale looked down to see his cook Tua weaving through it while balancing a tray over his head containing Martindale’s favorite lunch, a chicken sandwich and a glass of iced tea.

  Two inebriated American contractors arrived, pushed everyone aside, and demanded to be admitted. After the guards pulled them over the fence, the crowd erupted in fury and tried to push down the front gate. Martindale had stashed the U.S. embassy’s female telephone operators, Vietnamese employees of the neighboring Italian embassy, and some relations of his Franco-Vietnamese fiancée next door at the Italian embassy. When he realized that the crowd would keep them from entering his building, he told his guards to slide a ladder between the second-floor windows of his building and the embassy so they could crawl across it. One of the U.S. embassy’s female telephone operators fell off and impaled herself on the metal spears of the fence separating the two buildings. As blood spread across the front of her ao dai dress, Kulie Kasor had to restrain Martindale from rushing into the yard and pulling her off. He shouted that if Martindale left the roof, they would lose control of the evacuation and no one would escape.

  Moments later Martindale heard a crash. The mob had pushed down the front gate, and people were streaming into the building. He and the lieutenants rushed downstairs but arrived too late to lock the steel shutters separating the stairwell from the roof. The lieutenants drew their revolvers and backed up the stairs. The day before, Martindale had told pilots at Tan Son Nhut, “Boys, don’t forget me!” They had not. Air America had ordered its pilots to fly to the fleet at sunset, but another helicopter dropped from the darkening sky. The pilot opened the door next to his seat and drew a finger across his throat, signaling that this would be his last flight. He pointed at Martindale and yelled, “YOU have to go!”

  Martindale shook his head. He shouted at the lieutenants, “Start organizing another load. We’ll put as many as we can aboard.”

  They led twenty more evacuees onto the roof. As Martindale was loading them, the pilot yelled, “We want you! No more Vietnamese!” Martindale ignored him and began marshaling another twenty for the next flight. After risking his life to evacuate his people from Quang Duc, Nha Trang, and Phu Quoc, he refused to abandon anyone. As the helicopter lifted off, more people burst from the stairway. He retreated to the edge of the roof as the lieutenants fired into the air to prevent the crowd from pushing him off.

  Pilot Joe Weiss had volunteered to make a final attempt to rescue him. As he landed, Martindale could see him mouthing the words, “Come on! Come on!” Martindale decided there was nothing more he could do. He gestured for the two lieutenants to board the helicopter and turned to stare at the people he was leaving behind, searing their faces into his memory. As he took his final steps toward the helicopter, he became temporarily deaf and felt he was moving in slow motion. Once inside the chopper, his senses returned, and he heard the people he had abandoned swearing and screaming. He wept all the way to Tan Son Nhut.

  By the time he arrived, the helicopter evacuation from the DAO to the fleet was winding down. Throughout the afternoon U.S. Marine and Air Force helicopter pilots had braved scattered small-arms fire while navigating through a lowering blanket of clouds. After 6:00 p.m., the Communists resumed their rocket and artillery attack, it began to rain, visibility deteriorated, and there were several near collisions. Don Hays was among the last American civilians to depart. After he had loaded people onto the helicopters all afternoon, the wind blast from the rotors had stripped off his shirt. He had also lost his shoes and arrived on a navy ship with only his revolver, a camera bag, and his State Department identification card.

  Major General Smith and his staff left at 8:00 p.m. Brigadier General Carey departed around 11:00 p.m., and Colonel Gray followed a few minutes later. As one of the last CH-53s was about to lift off, forty Vietnamese broke a hole in the perimeter fence and charged onto the landing zone. Instead of making a quick takeoff or firing warning shots, the pilots and passengers, a mixture of U.S. military personnel and American civilians, encouraged them to sit on their laps or between their legs. By the end of the day, U.S. military helicopters had evacuated 4,829 people from the DAO. Aside from 395 Americans, most of the rest were Vietnamese. Except for the failure to seize control of the Tan Son Nhut gate from the Vietnamese MPs, the DAO evacuation had been almost flawless.

  Military intelligence agent Nelson Kieff was among the last to leave. He had been destroying classified files when he looked out the window to see two army officers pouring gasoline into a steel drum and setting it alight. He decided to add his files to their fire, but by the time he got outside, they had left and their fire was out. He lifted the lid and saw bundles of U.S. currency. Most were charred, but some had survived. He returned inside and told his boss, Frank Aurelio, “The government has written it off. Let’s help ourselves to a few hundred for spending money in Manila.”

  He went back, lifted the lid, stared at the money, and shoved his hands in his pockets to keep himself from impulsively grabbing a bundle of it. He walked around the barrel thinking, “What the hell do I need this money for anyway?” The life he had known in Vietnam was over, and many of his Vietnamese friends were dead. Did he want this to be the last thing he did here? He decided he did not. He burned the rest of the money and helped ignite the explosives that had been wired to destroy the DAO. The sprawling building burst into flames at 12:12 a.m. as he and Aurelio were leaving with Bill LeGro and Andy Gembara. As their helicopter rose over the burning building where American generals had managed this calamitous war, Gembara experienced “an overwhelming feeling of shame,” as well as pride at having saved so many Vietnamese.

  CHAPTER 20

  Into the South China Sea

  The CIA agents in Can Tho thought that the rockets the Communists fired into the city early on April 29 presaged an all-out assault. Consul General Terry McNamara thought they were a feint meant to discourage the ARVN high command from ordering General Nam to reinforce Saigon. Soon after 10:00 a.m., Jacobson called McNamara to report that Washington had ordered the evacuation of all U.S. personnel from South Vietnam and that McNamara and his staff should leave immediately.

  “No other instructions, Jake?” McNamara asked, dreading his reply.

  Jacobson sighed. “We want you to go out by Air America chopper,” he said. “Americans only. When you’ve finished, Terry, send the choppers straight back to Saigon. We’re going to need them desperately for our own evacuation.”

  “You know how I feel about taking the Vietnamese with me. If you’re counting on our helicopters to help with the Saigon evacuation, you’re not going to get them quickly if we use them to evacuate ourselves.”

  The line went dead before Jacobson could respond. Although McNamara was determined to evacuate everyone down the Bassac River, with or without Jacobson’s approval, he decided to make a last attempt to secure it. He could not get a call through to the embassy via networks in Thailand and the Philippines but finally reached Jacobson on the civilian system. He argued that if the helicopters brought Americans out to the fleet from Can Tho, they would need to be refueled, and it could be hours before they reached Saigon. “We have the boats ready and waiting,” he said. “The choppers can be dispatched directly to Saigon.”

  After a long silence Jacobson said, “Okay. Go by water. Send the helicopters to Saigon at once.”

  McNamara asked him to alert the navy that his convoy wo
uld be at the mouth of the Bassac by sunset.

  CIA base chief Jim Delaney was in McNamara’s office during this exchange. McNamara repeated Jacobson’s approval of a river evacuation and said, “Jim, all personnel will evacuate by water. There are to be no exceptions. Send the choppers back to Saigon at once.”

  Delaney agreed to load his American agents onto the CIA’s motor launch and its two armed Boston Whalers and meet McNamara’s LCMs at the end of an island facing Can Tho.

  It was just after eleven. McNamara ordered a noon departure and asked his staff to sweep through the consulate and urge everyone to hurry to their embarkation points. Departing at such short notice risked leaving people behind, but unless he left from the Delta Compound by noon, the ebbing tide could beach his LCM. Some Vietnamese working for the USIA would miss the evacuation because they had taken an early lunch. An American Catholic brother who delayed saying good-bye to his parishioners would spend a year in a Communist prison.

  During a last sweep through the consulate Martin’s deputy Hank Cushing found Sergeant Hasty, who commanded the marine guards, and CIA communications officer Walt Milford in the radio room destroying the CIA’s decoding machinery and sensitive files. Both should have been hurrying to the Delta Compound. Milford’s Vietnamese fiancée and her family were waiting for him there, as were Hasty’s wife and her family. Milford and Hasty would reach the dock just minutes before noon.