Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  Jim polled the others in the office. No one doubted Hai’s information.

  We had seven days.

  In the map room I sat down at my desk and began to draft the report of my meeting with Hai. Jim asked that I keep it lean, leading with the general’s statement that he believed Saigon would fall in seven days, followed by the general’s reasoning that the North Vietnamese were preparing to launch from their sanctuaries in Cambodia west/southwest of the city and that they would be moving through an area where they could not hide. Their intentions were clear to Hai. They’d get to Saigon in seven days because ARVN 7th Division forces would not be able to stop them.

  At dusk, after some small changes to my draft, we sent the report to Saigon and Washington.

  We gathered in Jim D.’s office the next morning to receive our work assignments for what we considered to be our last week in Vietnam. Jim told me to continue visiting General Hai until he evacuated his headquarters, which was on the edge of the North Vietnamese advance, and to work out arrangements with Air America to have enough helicopters on hand for evacuation in the event of an attack against Can Tho. The South Vietnamese military’s ability to provide for our safety could suddenly deteriorate. Mac and the Sarge would continue to collect most of the KIP in safe houses around town and in outlying areas.

  Tom was to work on ways to get the KIP out of the country. He told Bill A. to pursue the possibility of a back-door escape route through the island off Rach Gia suggested by the ex-GI and his Vietnamese girlfriend. In developing that option, Bill was to truck the base’s speedboat from Can Tho to Rach Gia and position barrels of fuel on the island for possible use by Air America and boat crews.

  Jim would work with MacNamara to come up with a practical evacuation plan for the remaining Americans at the consulate. We were to stay in contact with Phyllis. It was no time for performing missions of mercy or focusing on anything but the job at hand. Jim wanted us to coordinate with him on everything we did. We were to carry our diplomatic passports wherever we went. We were to leave no loose ends. If we had to go “right now,” we would just get up and go.

  “There is to be no ‘Oh, wait, there’s something I’ve got to do across town,’ ” he said. I thought about the two children.

  Our primary rally point for the evacuation was the CIA housing compound and club, the Coconut Palms. Tom sent a work crew there later in the day to cut down all the trees around the tennis court in order to facilitate helicopter landings.

  After the meeting I helped arrange with O. B., the CIA air operations officer in Saigon, for three Air America helicopters to remain in the delta twenty-four hours a day, with at least two parked on the Coconut Palms tennis court at night. Pilots would rotate back to Saigon every other day.

  I visited General Hung in Can Tho later that day. He reported that North Vietnamese forces had launched across the border near General Hai’s forces early in the morning and were heading toward Saigon. Hung had begun to direct the limited South Vietnamese Air Force and artillery resources available to him in the delta against the advancing enemy, but, as yet, the North Vietnamese advance had not been impeded. He remained calm but kept his family close by.

  Jim D. and MacNamara were not able to agree on a joint evacuation plan for the consulate. Sitting around Phyllis’s desk, we sometimes heard them yelling in MacNamara’s office below us. One confrontation went something like this:

  JIM: “The safest, surest means of evacuation is by helicopter.”

  MACNAMARA (louder): “There are not enough helicopters to go around, there are too many Vietnamese that we must get out.”

  JIM (louder): “What Vietnamese do you have to get out?”

  MACNAMARA (still louder): “I do not answer to you. Listen to what I’m saying. If we have to evacuate, this consulate goes out by boat down the Bassac River. Period. End of discussion.”

  JIM (softer): “That is ridiculous. We might have to fight our way out, and we are not combatants. We get up in the air, and we go out by helicopters.”

  MACNAMARA (softer): “We cannot control the helicopters. I have had my experiences with your Air America helicopter pilots. They have the last say. They could leave us all here. They are wild, uncontrollable animals, the Air America people. We control our own destiny if we go out by boat. I have many, many Vietnamese—and Cambodians—I am obligated to get out, and going by boat is the only way we’re going to do it. I am the senior man on the scene here, do not forget.”

  JIM (even voice, determined): “I have my people to protect, and I have helicopters. My people go out by helicopter.”

  MACNAMARA (screaming): “You will do what I say or, God as my witness, I’ll have you out of here. You—hear—me? [We heard a crash, like an ashtray hitting the floor.] Get out of my office.”

  In normal times the shouting and bitter wrangling would not have happened. But it was a situation of unusual proportions, and in view of the personalities of the participants, it was not unexpected. Jim D. was a large, forceful, competitive Irishman, a Georgetown law school graduate and a world-class tennis player. Two of his sons were All-American tennis players at Stanford University. Terry MacNamara, a career diplomat, had firm ideas of his responsibilities and powers as the senior American official on the scene. He was intelligent and tenacious, and he did not back down. Both men sincerely believed in their separate positions.

  MacNamara’s plan, however, was dangerous. It was sixty miles from Can Tho down the Bassac River to the South China Sea, and a boat filled with Americans certainly would draw attention. It could be overtaken by South Vietnamese forces or, worse, attacked by VC or North Vietnamese who occupied positions along the river. Not long before, a base officer had been shot in the head while riding on a boat near Can Tho.

  Second, MacNamara was not an experienced boatman. He had no idea how to negotiate the navigable channels or of their locations, especially where the river lets out into the ocean. And he didn’t have access to the radio frequencies of Air America, the U.S. Navy, and ARVN units. He would have been completely out of communication during his sixty-mile run down the river. Obviously his plan had not been developed by anyone with a military background.

  Third, MacNamara’s plan did not provide for the safety of the CIA officers. We had no official cover. If we were captured by the North Vietnamese, as was entirely possible, MacNamara suggested we tell them that we were USAID engineers, which would not have held up during any type of serious interrogation.

  Although Jim explained all those points, MacNamara was not to be dissuaded. He approached some of the base officers in an effort to obtain their support for his plan. Each one told MacNamara that his plan was crazy. He did not approach me, but possibly saw me as an extension of Air America and a certain adversary.

  Our original support officer had recently left to take his family out of the country and was replaced by an officer from one of the abandoned CIA bases to the north. When the old support officer departed, he left all the keys to the supply warehouses with Phyllis. She tried to get the new man to take them, but he told her to get rid of them herself.

  “Get rid of them?” she asked, not knowing exactly what that meant.

  “We’re only twelve here now. We aren’t running any operations. We don’t need supplies. I’m busy. Help me here.” And he walked into Jim’s office.

  She was standing by her desk, looking down at the pile when Sarge and I told her we’d take care of them for her. We raked the well-marked rings of keys, plus a book listing safe combinations, off her desk and into a shoe box.

  “Whoever owns these keys,” I said, “owns what’s inside those warehouses.”

  Phyllis said, “I don’t bloody care. I just want to clear my desk. Thank you.”

  There were a lot of keys, maybe a hundred. Glenn, as head of the Delta Club, was aware of an impressive amount of supplies on hand in the warehouses. He was the custodian of a few storage bins which held equipment passed down from club to club. During the height of the war, whe
n hundreds of thousands of American troops, officials, and contract workers had been in Vietnam, there were clubs in every province—USAID clubs, officers clubs, enlisted clubs, Special Forces clubs, MACV clubs, private engineering company clubs, hospital clubs, and so on. As the Americans began to pull out, various clubs were consolidated, and the best items, including jukeboxes, slot machines, bar accessories, restaurant equipment, lights, signs, and stereo components, were turned over to the consulate clubs that remained. As the last club proprietor in the delta, Glenn was now owner of the primo of primo equipment left behind. Other merely very good bar equipment was stored in the warehouses.

  So, if there was so much interesting stuff just from the clubs, who knew what else was out there in the warehouses. We could only imagine all the sexy CIA stuff we would find.

  When we arrived at the compound, the guard at the gate wanted to see some identification. We showed him our embassy badges, but he said it was a restricted area and that we needed special permission to get inside. We fished around in the box of keys until we found the badge of the departed logistic chief, which satisfied the guard. He waved us through.

  We drove up and down past the warehouses as we tried to reconcile the building numbers with the tags on the keys. Finally we stopped and opened one warehouse with a key that was clearly marked. It was filled with weapons—crates of carbines, M-16s, Swedish Ks, AK-47s. In a fenced-off area were special sniper rifles. There were pistols with silencers, pistols with scopes, and pistols that converted into rifles and concealed weapons. In another warehouse we found knives, machetes, night-vision equipment, more scopes, binoculars, and web gear.

  There were refrigerated warehouses and air-conditioned warehouses. We discovered electronics equipment—what looked like hundreds of different types of radios—projectors, furniture, typewriters, pool tables, linoleum tile, baby cribs, kitchen stoves, furniture, generators, crystal, silverware, maps, uniforms, claymore mines, books, Bibles, and hundreds of unmarked boxes. The motor pool had new Jeeps and cars, some with armor, some with oversized engines, and some with oversized tires.

  “It’s all ours, Sarge, all ours,” I said. “I think that when I was a Boy Scout, if I had known there would be a chance to go through something like this and pick out anything I wanted, I couldn’t have waited. You know what I mean? I would have been anxious all my life to get here. Is this a boy’s dream or what?”

  Eventually we left the complex and tipped our hats to the guard. We had not taken a single thing; there was nothing there we needed.

  Amazing, I thought as we drove back to the consulate. All that money we were told to destroy, all the goods in those warehouses—amazing. The sheer volume was staggering. And all of it would be left behind in seven days.

  TWENTY-ONE

  KIP Collection

  I visited the mother and her kids almost every night. At first the children were suspicious of me because their mother was so distraught when I was around, but the boy’s natural curiosity brought him closer and closer to me until he came naturally into my lap when I arrived. Before long he was taking off my glasses and investigating what I had in my pockets. The girl often sat beside me and held my hand. She examined my fingers and occasionally looked up at me. She spoke some English and usually looked at my lips as I talked.

  The mother always sat in her chair across the room. She had taken the kids out of school and kept small plastic suitcases packed with their clothes by the front door. On advice of the Consular Section, I had her sign a note giving up her rights to the children. The note and the children’s birth certificates were in one of the bags.

  It was clear after a few visits that the mother hated me. My countrymen had gotten her pregnant, twice, and left, twice. Both men had said that they would marry her, but they had dropped out of touch. And now my country had abandoned her country, had dropped out of touch, and broken its promises.

  Her comments were in this vein, “Is this the American way to be a friend? You don’t care about us. You used us. You. Yes, you. You and your countrymen. I cry inside all the time. I will die soon because of you. You have destroyed my life. My country. We trusted you. You used us and now you leave. ‘Good-bye, Vietnam. Sorry.’ ”

  I told her I could not explain how the war had turned out the way it had, but I promised her that, if I had to be evacuated, I would come by for the children. She would probably know if an evacuation was under way. I told her to stay in the house. She was not to try to bring them to the consulate because I could miss them on the way. If we left, I told her, I would have little time. The kids had to be at home.

  Sometimes the girl went over to her mother as we talked and wiped her eyes or held her hand or leaned against her. She looked back at me, confused, unable to understand what made her mother cry, why exactly she and her brother might be leaving with me someday.

  The boy could not remain serious for long, and he squirmed. When he slowed down, his body tiring from a full afternoon of rowdiness, I knew it was time to go home.

  After a while the woman stopped seeing me off when I left. Usually the girl was the last one I saw as I got in my Jeep and left. She stood with her arms wedged in the door frame, her brightly colored suitcase near her feet. She waved as I turned the corner and looked back.

  We had four days to go. All of our delta KIP were identified and in separate areas. Bill A., assisted by Larry D., an officer from a closed base to the north, had visited the island off Rach Gia several times and made a convincing case to Jim D. that it was ready to receive our KIP if evacuation through Saigon or by boat out to sea was not possible.

  Jim sent Glenn to Saigon that day with what turned out to be three missions. One was to arrange for the evacuation of fifty delta KIP who had homes or families in or near Saigon. He was to try to put them and their families on aircraft leaving Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon. His second mission was to arrange for a U.S. Navy ship, with a landing platform, to position itself off the coast somewhere near the mouth of the Mekong as a receiving station for Air America helicopters shuttling people out of the delta. The third mission was to talk with CIA management in Saigon and, if possible, Ambassador Martin, in an effort to get permission for us to evacuate our KIP to the Navy platform, to the island, or through Tan Son Nhut.

  The same day, I went out to the 7th Division area on an Air America helicopter. General Hai’s headquarters had been evacuated. The tents and building of the command complex had been torn down. All I could see on the ground were scars from the old structures. Deserted bunkers ringed the area. Off in the distance, near the North Vietnamese line of advance, I saw large dust columns like those made by armored vehicles crossing open fields.

  Returning to General Hung’s headquarters at Can Tho, I found the general serene, as usual. He said that the 7th Division was mobile and that the North Vietnamese forces were large and not temporizing. They were moving aggressively toward Saigon.

  Glenn telephoned Jim from Saigon. He said there was bedlam at the embassy. Everybody was talking; no one was listening. No one, other than a few close associates, was able to see Ambassador Martin. Word was that he was not acting rationally; he was walking around in a daze and unresponsive. His secretary had been asking people for amphetamines. No one wanted to make decisions, so the ambassador’s existing orders not to facilitate evacuation of Vietnamese civilians by any element of the embassy had not changed. People were getting out, however, through Tan Son Nhut, Glenn said, and he had been successful in getting the fifty delta KIP placed on a nonscheduled flight that would leave the country within the next couple of days.

  Jim told Glenn to continue working on getting a Navy platform and permission to evacuate our KIP. He added, “Oh, and Glenn, don’t let them forget about us down here.”

  Early the following morning, Sunday, 27 April, the few of us who were left gathered in Jim’s office.

  He began by saying, “Things are deteriorating as fast as we predicted. Cable traffic this morning indicates to me that no one know
s what’s happening. Everyone in Saigon is breathless, confused. As far as I can tell, here, we’re ready to go. We’ll have two Air America helicopters working for us today, and Parker says we have good pilots. If we get the word to evacuate right now—Parker, Mac, Sarge will work on sending the KIP out of the country by helicopter. Everyone else goes to Coconut Palms.” He paused and looked around the room. “We assemble there and we go out with MacNamara by boat. That’s the plan for now. We send the KIP out by helicopter and we go out with the Congen by boat. He has a couple of landing craft tied up at the State Department compound that are ready to make the trip down the Bassac. He’s got the Marines and boat pilots, and God knows he needs our help. That’s what happens if that telephone rings right now with orders to get out of Dodge.” He looked down at a pad on his desk and made a check mark.

  “Number two. But we can’t wait for that telephone to ring to do something. We got to decide what to do with our KIP, and we gotta do it. Our options are: One, we can move them to the island off Rach Gia. Two, we can send them out to the U.S. Navy. Or three, we can send them to Saigon in hopes of getting them out through Tan Son Nhut. We can just start doing one of these three things or we can try again to get Saigon’s permission. What do you think?” he asked the group.

  Tom suggested that sending the KIP to the Navy ships immediately was best, going to the island was number two, and sending them through Saigon was a distant, improbable third. He agreed that doing nothing—waiting for the evacuation order—was waiting for events to overtake us. Mac suggested that we get Glenn in Saigon to try one more time to get permission to move the Vietnamese out to the Navy and, if he couldn’t, that we move them to the island.