Escape from Saigon

by Michael Morris

  Hundreds of Vietnamese were still massed in the courtyard, nervously waiting their turn, while others outside the embassy gates threw themselves at the fences and clambered over the compound walls wherever they could find an entry point. With the Marines preoccupied with the airlift, there was no one to stop them.

  The crowd inside the compound again swelled to more than a thousand. Unlike the waiting evacuees, the newer arrivals knew they were not assured of a place on the departing choppers, and a murmur of discontent rippled throughout the compound.

  Carwood went in search of the Marine colonel and found him with Timson, who looked exhausted but was still manning the radio.

  “Colonel, has the ambassador been evac’ed yet? I don’t like what I’m hearing and seeing out there.”

  “No, I don’t like it either. If we don’t wrap this up we’re going to have a real situation on our hands. And, no, the ambassador is still holed up in his office, refusing to get on a chopper.”

  “Well, going down with this ship isn’t an option.” Carwood thought for a moment. “I’ll go see the ambassador. Maybe I can talk some sense into him. One way or another we’ve got to get him—and ourselves—out of here!”

  * * *

  As Carwood made his way to the ambassador’s office, one of the Marine guards ran in from the compound.

  “Mr. Carwood! Mr. Timson sent me to find you. He said the civilian airlift has been terminated—orders from the White House! He told me to give you this.”

  He handed Carwood a note scrawled in Timson’s handwriting. It read:

  The following message is from the President of the U.S. and should be passed on by the first helicopter in contact with Amb. Martin. Americans only will be transported. Ambassador Martin will board the first available helicopter and that helicopter will broadcast “Tiger, Tiger, Tiger,” once airborne and en route.

  * * *

  “Jesus!” Carwood exclaimed, crumpling the note into his pocket. “Go back and tell Timson, and your colonel—don’t let this get out! We’ll have a riot on our hands if those people out there hear about it!”

  He hurried toward Martin’s office. McWhorter was standing outside the door, blocking anyone from entering.

  “No time to chat,” Carwood said, shoving McWhorter aside.

  Inside the office, the ambassador sat at his desk. His complexion was gray, and his lip quivered. He looked like he was on the verge of collapse “Yes, yes, we saw the president’s message, Mr. Carwood,” he said. “But I’m not going anywhere. This is still my mission and I feel there’s still time—”

  Carwood cut him off. “Still time! Time is what we had yesterday! Mr. Ambassador, you have to go now, sir!”

  He ran to the window and pushed open the sash. “Have you looked out there? Do you see all those people? If you’re still here when the North takes this embassy, you will be fine. You will not be harmed. You will be treated as a diplomat and eventually sent home. Not those people. They will be treated quite differently. They will be considered traitors.”

  “Don’t be insubordinate, Carwood. You are on thin—” Outside, a baby began to wail, interrupting him.

  “Do you hear that, Mr. Ambassador?” Carwood didn’t let up. “Do you know why you hear it? It’s quiet out there now—the helicopters have stopped coming for those people. But as long as they know you’re in here they will stay there and hope the airlift will continue. When you leave, they will leave, because they’ll know there’s no one here to protect them. You’ve got to go. It’s all you can do for them now.”

  * * *

  Matt twisted the Yamaha’s throttle to its limit and held it there. The little two-stroke engine screamed in protest and he prayed it would hold long enough for them to reach the airport. TSN was somewhere up ahead in the darkness—not far now, he hoped.

  Though the horizon was still pitch-black, the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, and Matt, Nuoc, and Lisette—the three of them clutched together straddling the motorbike—could see enough to know that the road was littered with burned-out vehicles, broken furniture, overturned straw baskets half-filled with articles of clothing, framed photographs, cookpots, blankets, books, papers, and all the other detritus left behind by what must have been a panicked mob. Few of those people were visible now, but here and there stragglers and a few goats wandered about, aimless and dazed.

  A light in the distance marked the military entrance to Tan Son Nhut. Matt tensed. No telling what kind of reception they would get when they got there. He hoped it wouldn’t be a “shoot first, ask questions later” scenario.

  They reached the gate and found it wide open, hanging crookedly on broken hinges, its sentries nowhere in sight. Dozens of large, shallow craters in and around the roadway, along with a telltale odor of burned gunpowder, gave stark evidence that the area had been the target of a recent shelling. Just inside the gate they could make out the dark, boxy shape of an armored personnel carrier, twisted and broken almost beyond recognition. Grass still smoldered in a wide circle around it.

  Matt didn’t slow as they passed through the gate and sped toward the helicopter flight line. Ahead of them, fire and explosions lit the night.

  As they approached a row of low corrugated-steel buildings, they could see dozens of helicopters—Hueys, big twin-blade Chinooks, Cobra gunships, diminutive light observation choppers, or “loaches”—all parked haphazardly across the tarmac.

  “Looks like somebody beat a hasty retreat!” he shouted over his shoulder to Lisette and Nuoc.

  Neither answered. Nuoc was focused on looking for anything she recognized. Suddenly she spotted a Huey with a gaping, blood-red shark’s mouth and jagged teeth painted across the nose. “There!” she cried. “Sharks and Dolphins—that’s Phuong’s air cav troop! He must be somewhere near here!”

  Matt turned the motorbike toward the nearest building and pulled up outside. As he neared the door, he yelled, “Hello! Anyone in there? Can someone help us? Chúng ta cần giúp đỡ!”

  The door opened a crack and a chrome .45 pistol barrel poked out, followed slowly by a heavyset Vietnamese man dressed in SVN uniform fatigue pants and boots and a brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt.

  “Who are you?” the man shouted. “This is a military barracks—no civilians here! Go away!”

  Nuoc stepped forward, unafraid. “We are looking for Captain Minh Van Phuong. He’s a pilot with the One-Seven-Four Air Cav—I am hoping to find him here! Do you know him? Can you help us?”

  “Go away!” the man repeated. “No pilots here! Maybe in BOQ hooch—over there!” He waved the pistol toward the next building, then retreated back inside and slammed the door shut.

  Just then a huge explosion ripped through one of the buildings on the far side of the field, followed within a heartbeat by a second blast, then a violent salvo of rounds. Two buildings disintegrated, the others erupting in flames.

  “Mortars!” Matt said. “They’ll be coming here soon—these choppers will be prime targets as soon as it gets lighter and the gunners spot them. Let’s spread out and see if we can find anyone else. We don’t even know if Phuong is here.”

  “He’s here, I’m sure of it!” Nuoc replied, the conviction in her voice tinged with fear. She ran toward the next building. “We have to find him!”

  The first two buildings they tried were empty and locked. The third opened when Nuoc banged on the door. She spoke to the man who answered, then called to Lisette and Matt.

  “He’s here! They’re going to get him!”

  Moments later a uniformed SVN officer appeared. When he saw Nuoc he looked stunned, then the two rushed to embrace.

  Matt waited a few seconds, then interrupted. “We’re happy you found your guy, Nuoc, but we need to get the hell out of here, and quick! Those mortars will be falling on us next! Can the captain fly us out in one of these choppers?”

  Nuoc’s fiancé answered for her. “Yes! Most of our squadron has already gone—heading offshore to find the American fleet. We h
ave more helicopters than pilots now. My men are dividing up the people here to try to take everyone out, if possible. I can fly one of the Hueys but not the bigger Chinooks, so I can only take us and a few more—ten or twelve, maybe, if some are children.”

  More artillery exploded across the airfield, much closer this time. Phuong said, “The women and children are inside. Their husbands were in my unit—many of them killed defending Phan Rang—so we brought their families here, hoping to get them out. We can’t leave them behind.”

  He ducked back inside and emerged moments later with six women. One carried an infant, the others guided a group of children ahead of them. He waved Lisette, Matt, and Nuoc forward and together they hurried out toward the flight line.

  “This is all the weight a Huey can carry, I think,” he said, surveying the group. “Now we need to find a ship with enough fuel—not all of them were refueled after we arrived.” As they approached the nearest chopper he motioned to Matt and pointed toward another of the Hueys. Each had a blue dolphin painted across its nose.

  “We have to take one of these empty slicks—the gunships can’t carry the weight and won’t have room for us. Check the fuel levels in those two—I’ll show you how.”

  The first Huey they checked was low on fuel. So was the second and third. Desperately, they raced from one empty chopper to another. Suddenly a new noise split the air—a deafening, terrifying screech like a Greyhound bus being dragged sideways over concrete. It was a sound Matt recognized instantly from his tour on the DMZ: the distinctive roar of 122-millimeter rockets flying directly overhead.

  Six years of civilian life on the California coast vanished in a flash. Instinct kicked in.

  “INCOMING!” he yelled, diving for cover and dragging Lisette and Nuoc with him. The other women and children ducked back against the outer wall of the building, screaming in terror. Matt watched as one, then another, then several fiery explosions bloomed on the tarmac a few meters beyond the flight line.

  “They’re walking them this way! As soon as their spotters get our range they’ll fire for effect. Phuong, we’ve got to get one of these ships into the air right now!”

  “Over here!” Phuong yelled from a Huey in the next row. The first ships they had tried were newer and in better condition than the rest. This was one of the older ones, a veteran of a thousand sorties into battlefield landing zones. It was still stripped for action—the side doors had been discarded and the interior was fitted with sling seats fore and aft that ran the width of the bird. A bare diamond-plate steel floor stretched across the passenger and cargo area from the engine firewall to the back of the pilots’ seats.

  The ship’s age and worn condition didn’t matter now. It had fuel.

  As Matt and Phuong prepped the chopper, Lisette tried to ignore the artillery raining down across the field and had Nuoc film her while she did a brief report on the events swirling around them. She didn’t know how, or whether, she would ever get the footage into the hands of her network, but she had to try—even if it turned out to be her epitaph.

  Phuong had the blades spinning by the time Lisette and Nuoc finished. They helped the other women aboard and climbed into the chopper. Matt handed the children up to them then released the ground tethers and strapped himself into the co-pilot’s seat. Phuong motioned for him to put on his headset.

  “It’s not fully refueled but it will have to do!” Phuong shouted over the turbine whine. “I don’t know how far we can fly on this—we have to reach the ships offshore, but we don’t know where offshore!”

  “Just go—we’ll worry about that once we’re outta here!” Matt replied.

  Suddenly, an artillery round slammed into the roof of the building that Phuong had left moments ago. Within seconds, the other pilots from Phuong’s unit and dozens of civilians sheltered in the building rushed outside and ran toward the remaining choppers. Several people made straight for the Huey that Phuong and Matt were struggling to get airborne.

  “If they rush us, we’ll never get off the ground!” Phuong yelled.

  As he spoke, two men and a woman reached the door and threw themselves onto the deck. A dozen panicked, screaming people followed on their heels, all desperate to escape the explosions coming closer with every second. Ahead of the group was a young woman carrying a baby and pulling a small child behind her. She reached the Huey as it began to lift off and threw the baby at Nuoc, who caught the infant in her arms while the mother struggled to push the child up onto the deck. One of the men grabbed the child by his shirt and hauled him aboard as the chopper began to pull away with the woman running alongside. “Go!” she screamed. “Go!” Her face was a mask of anguish as she watched the chopper rise, her children aboard but herself unable to catch up. At the last possible second another man on the deck stepped down onto the skid and grabbed the woman’s arm, lifting her up and into the chopper.

  Phuong pulled back on the cyclic and the ship lifted slowly, laboring to get into the air. He tried to tip the nose forward but the controls were sluggish. Too much weight! He looked around and saw there were more than a dozen passengers now crammed in the back, with others still trying to climb aboard. One man standing on the chopper’s skid waved a silver pistol as he screamed something unintelligible over the rotor noise.

  “Somebody push him off!” Phuong screamed. “We’re at our limit now—we won’t get airborne with him or anyone else, it’s too much!”

  Matt turned to follow Phuong’s panicked gaze and found himself staring at the man with the Hawaiian shirt. Without thinking he threw off his seat harness and launched himself at the man. The two grappled as Phuong put the barely airborne chopper into a spin, hoping to throw the man off-balance. The ship pitched wildly as they struggled. Cursing hysterically, the man tried to aim the gun at Matt, who was quicker and grabbed at it, gripping it tightly around the hammer to prevent it from firing. Finally, Matt managed to free his other hand and punched the man as hard as he could, hitting him square between the eyes, knocking him back out the door. The man disappeared from view.

  Exhausted, Matt fell back onto the deck, when suddenly a pistol shot exploded right outside the door. The shot was wild, the bullet ricocheting off the door frame.

  He rolled toward the doorway and saw the man clinging to the starboard skid, eyes bulging with fear. With his legs wrapped around the skid, his weight was enough to keep them from lifting more than a few feet off the ground. Matt didn’t know if the gunshot was deliberate or accidental, but he knew that another round in the wrong place would spell disaster.

  Beyond the door, the mortar and rocket fire leaped closer with each explosion. As they watched, one of the big Chinooks at the back of the line took a direct hit, erupting in flames.

  Before Matt could move, Lisette reached across him toward the doorway and grabbed the camera by its long telephone lens. Wielding it like a baseball bat, she swung with all her strength. The camera smashed hard against the man’s head and burst open, spilling out a four-hundred-foot-long streamer of exposed movie film. Stunned, the man on the skid dropped the gun, then lost his grip and fell to the tarmac.

  The chopper lifted like a balloon that had been held under water. Phuong powered up and the ship careened across the tarmac, at first low to the ground, struggling to rise, then swiftly gaining altitude as the big rotor blades clawed at the air. Fiery explosions surrounded them on all sides as Phuong pointed the nose toward the rising sun beyond the coast.

  When they cleared the airfield, with the sounds of war receding behind them, the people packed into the crowded Huey breathed a collective sigh of relief. They had escaped. With little more than each other to cling to in the open cargo area, those who had managed to make it aboard at the last moment looked silently at Lisette and Nuoc with smiles of gratitude.

  “That was nice work—nailing that man with the gun,” Nuoc said to Lisette over the noise of the wind and rotors. “You saved us!”

  “Yeah, but I wish I could have saved the film,” Lise r
eplied. “I had some good footage on that reel.”

  As the chopper raced toward the sea, cool air swept the open cockpit. The infant in the woman’s arms, who had somehow managed to sleep through the last hour’s chaos, woke up and began to cry.

  Everyone cheered.

  * * *

  At 0430 hours, under a still-black sky, Carwood stood on the embassy rooftop awaiting the ambassador. With him was McWhorter, who fussed with the luggage and the numerous boxes his aides had carried up during the past hour.

  “You know, we made the Vietnamese abandon their luggage in the courtyard,” Carwood said, “so we could put more people on the helicopters. They had to leave their country of birth with nothing. Nothing! You could probably take a dozen of them with you if you leave all that behind.”

  McWhorter avoided Carwood’s gaze. “This is all diplomatic stuff. High priority. We can’t leave it behind.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Especially this ceramic elephant.” Carwood toed one of the boxes with his shoe. “Leaving that here could be a real security risk.”

  “Look, Carwood, the ambassador is exiting a wartime post—under duress—that he has fought to maintain under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Do you want to tell him he can’t take any personal items?”

  “There are still four or five hundred embassy-credentialed Vietnamese down there in the courtyard, by my count. Do you want to tell them that we’re not evacuating them, too?”

  “I told you—the choppers are coming back for them. We spoke to CINCPAC and they’re waiting for the ships to refuel. They’ll be here.”

  “Sure they will. But you won’t. Vaya con Dios, McWhorter. I’ll be sure to look you up when we all get back to The World.”

  The rooftop door opened and Ambassador Graham Martin slowly stepped out onto the helipad. He didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes a Navy Sea Knight helicopter appeared out of the dark sky and quickly set down on the roof. Carwood offered his hand and Martin took it and held it briefly, then without a word he turned away and climbed aboard the chopper with McWhorter and the last of his personal staff.