Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  “Tommy-Guns, they would close the church before they let the likes of you inside,” Tingley said with a cackle.

  “I want to catch Sunday brunch before they close the chow hall,” Tompkins said, dropping the van in gear and sending a shower of rocks spewing from the back tires as he rolled onto the highway. “Holiday menu, you know.”

  “Let’s stop at Camp Courtney and see if I can get a better angle on the ship,” Tingley said, still thinking of trying to pull a dramatic shot from the photographically boring event.

  “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” Tompkins growled as he careened through the narrow streets and bustling traffic in Ishikawa, following the road around the crescent shore of Ora Wan Bay. “You got a shitload of pictures back there. What’s wrong with one of them?”

  “You’ll do what I tell you to do, or I’ll write your puke ass up,” Tingley snapped.

  “Fuck you, ass wipe,” Tompkins popped back and smiled. “You taking prick lessons from Sergeant Teeling nowadays?”

  “Tompkins,” Tingley said in a more friendly tone, “I need to get the shot from Camp Courtney. It gives me a better angle with the sunlight. Come on. I’ll spring for yaki soba in terrible Taragawa, at Suzi’s café.”

  “Okay,” Tompkins said, smiling. “Shoot your shit at Camp Courtney, and then we go to eat.”

  “Right,” Tingley said. “After chow, we can go to White Beach and get some pictures of the battalion landing team Marines assembling on the pier and marching onto the Dubuque, when it gets there.”

  “Oh, the fuck you say!” Tompkins howled. “It’s Easter Sunday! Skipper’s going to have to give me tomorrow off then, or better yet, Friday.”

  “I’ll talk to Captain Shelton,” Tingley said. “I am sure he will do what’s fair. This is important.”

  The corporal then turned up the portable radio that Tompkins carried on the van’s console. Elton John played piano and sang “Crocodile Rock” on the American Forces Radio and Television Service’s Far East Network, broadcasting from Kadina Air Force Base in the heart of Okinawa.

  “Here, donate me one of those Winstons. I’m out of my Kools,” Tompkins said to Tingley as the corporal pulled a cigarette for himself from the red-and-white pack that he had carried inside the blouse of his utility trouser leg, tucked above his spit-shined boot. Although the Marine Corps utility uniform’s olive green sateen shirt sported two ample breast pockets, one carried nothing inside either of them, keeping the two pouches buttoned shut and starched flat, especially the left one which had the Corps emblem and USMC stenciled on it.

  “I suppose you want a light too,” Tingley said, handing his driver a smoke.

  “Yeah,” Tompkins snarled, “and you can kick me in the chest to get it started too.” Then he laughed at himself, having cut off the corporal from the tired old joke.

  “Shut the fuck up and listen to this shit,” Tingley said, suddenly drawn to a news report on the radio.

  “This morning at a news conference in Saigon, South Vietnamese Vice Premier Phan Quang Dan had these few words for reporters,” the radio announcer said.

  “It is lost!” Vice Premier Phan said in the recorded sound bite. “The Communists have taken Da Nang.”

  The announcer then continued, “Following the formal recognition of Da Nang’s surrender by the South Vietnamese government, North Vietnamese and PRG spokesman Colonel Vo Dong Giang told reporterstoday at the Joint Military Commission press center at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Airport that the Provisional Revolutionary Government had already claimed victory and had raised its flag over the Da Nang Community Center and Town Hall Saturday afternoon.

  “Press Secretary Ron Nessen today told reporters at an impromptu press conference at Palm Springs, California, where President Gerald Ford has gone to play golf and vacation during the Easter weekend, that the President has reacted to the news with great sadness and has called the loss of Da Nang an immense human tragedy.”

  “Well, no shit! Ford probably missed his putt when he heard about that one,” Tompkins said as he slammed the van to a stop, sliding it across a gravel parking lot overlooking the beach near the Camp Courtney and III MAF Headquarters entrance. “Like it’s a big surprise. So what the fuck are these guys doing out here then?”

  Steve Tingley said nothing to the surly lance corporal, but walked to the rocky ledge overlooking the beach and southern shore of Ora Wan Bay and began snapping pictures of the ship and the amtracks from the new angle. As he released the shutter and listened to the camera’s motor drive advance the film, he noticed something curious about the scene. It did look much the same, yet something odd about it struck him. Amtracks swam in the water, the ship sat in the bay, and now and then a puff of black smoke rose from its exhaust stack behind the bridge. Then suddenly the corporal realized what made the picture look strange. The direction the amtracks now migrated. Instead of the amphibious assault vehicles swimming one after another toward the ship, they now maneuvered in a long procession back to shore.

  “Goddamn it, Tompkins!” Tingley shouted, running to the van and jumping through the open passenger door. “We’ve got to get back to Camp Hanson. Something’s gone wrong. All the amtracks have turned around. They’re all headed back to the base! We’ve gotta get over there fast so I can get some pictures and find out what’s going on.”

  AS NEWS OF Da Nang’s loss reached the III MAF command center in Okinawa, the Marine amphibious force’s boss, Major General Carl Hoffman and Third Marine Division’s commander, Major General Kenneth Houghton, halted all embarkation operations and again revised their planning.

  Realizing that now the mission had changed to one of seaborne securityrather than a combat landing, they pulled all the heavy equipment from the ships and sent support elements such as the amtracks, artillery, and heavy mortars back to their respective garrisons. They would now only mount out the First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment’s generic infantry as shipboard security for the now more than twenty merchant and Military Sealift Command vessels that had gathered in the waters off Qui Nhon, south of Chu Lai, still rescuing Da Nang’s refugees from the sea.

  By dusk Easter Sunday, the Marines had off-loaded their heavy combat gear, along with the battalion’s headquarters and service company, but kept the HMM-165 helicopter squadron aboard and embarked the remaining rifle companies of the First Battalion, Fourth Marines. Steering toward the setting sun, LPD 8 USS Dubuque made way for her rendezvous with MSC ships, Pioneer Commander, Trans-colorado, USS Miller, Greenville Victory, Pioneer Challenger, Pioneer Contender, and fourteen other merchant vessels of various flags that swarmed with an ever increasing number of refugees.

  Throughout the day and night, South Vietnamese swift boats and patrol cutters heroically braved heavy Communist artillery fire, venturing back to enemy territory to rescue more people. While the Republic of Vietnam’s army may have run from the enemy, and the South Vietnamese Marine Corps may have disintegrated in Da Nang’s defense, the country’s navy continued to operate with great valor. With quickness and maneuverability their only defenses, the small, speedy vessels returned to Da Nang again and again, plucking people off the shores at Tien Sha, China Beach, and Monkey Mountain.

  SAIGON, ROOFTOP BAR AT THE CARAVEL HOTEL

  “HELLO, BOYS,” White House photographer David Hume Kennerly said as he stepped through the doorway of the rooftop cocktail lounge of the Caravel Hotel and encountered a host of Saigon’s established international press corps seated at several tables shoved together, covered with glasses and pitchers of beer.

  “David, come join us for dinner,” Time-Life photographer Dirck Halstead called loudly, waving his hand to the fellow photographer.

  Kennerly smiled and pushed a chair between Halstead and NBC News contract motion picture photographer Neil Davis.

  “Hey, hey, mate, take it easy on the elbows,” Davis said in his Australian brogue as Kennerly shoved in his seat, jamming Davis into the chair occupied by CBS News sound technician Derek Willi
ams.

  Vietnamese journalist Ha Thuc Can, under contract with CBS News as a motion picture photographer, sat to the right of his colleague, Williams, and Ky Wahn, a Vietnamese still photographer under contract with the Associated Press, sat on Can’s other side.

  The United Press International bureau chief for both Vietnam and Cambodia, Alan Dawson, held the spot at the table across from Halstead, while Associated Press correspondent from the Saigon bureau, Peter Arnett, occupied the chair to the left of Halstead, at the head of the table.

  Dutch still photographer Hubert “Hugh” Van Es sat by Dawson, in the corner by a troublesome, thickly foliated potted palm whose prickly fronds kept drooping over his head.

  “I think you know just about everyone here,” Halstead said to Kennerly, pouring him a glass of beer from the nearest pitcher.

  “Nearly everyone,” Kennerly said, “Neil there, and Peter, of course, Hugh Van Es, and Alan.”

  “Well, this is Derek Williams, sound man for Ed Bradley, or is it Morley Safer this week?” Halstead said.

  “Whoever holds the microphone,” Williams said, smiling.

  “I did meet the gentleman at the end of the table, I believe, in the darkroom at the AP,” Kennerly said, smiling at Ky Wahn but not remembering his name.

  “The man next to him is one of Derek’s counterparts with a camera at CBS, Ha Thuc Can,” Halstead said. “Ha Thuc Can can get it done when others can’t.”

  “I think he has special connections with the other side,” Williams quipped and nudged Can on the shoulder.

  “Special relations with the devil, you mean,” Davis said and laughed.

  “Can has covered this war since the beginning,” Peter Arnett said in his crisp New Zealand eloquence. “All kidding aside, this man, Can, is one tough cookie. He is one of the best and most effective Vietnamese journalists that we have over here.”

  “That’s why we buy him dinner and beer every night,” Hugh Van Es said, swatting the palm leaf off the top of his head. “We bribe him so that he will take us with him when the shit hits the proverbial fan.”

  “I am hardly more than an overindulged office boy,” Ha Thuc Can finally said, humiliated from the abundant praise by his friends.

  Ky Wahn looked at Can and smiled at the man’s simplistic identity of himself for the overindulgent Americans and Western newsmen. He sipped his beer quietly and considered the many things that these haughty and often boisterous fellows did not know about himself and his cohort, Ha Thuc Can.

  “So David,” Peter Arnett began, “what can you tell us about this fact-finding mission, of which you are party, for President Ford?”

  “If I tell you, then I have to kill you,” Kennerly joked. “Honestly, I am hardly more than an overly indulged office boy.”

  Kennerly then raised his glass of beer toward Ha Thuc Can, saluting the man while the others at the table chuckled politely at the photographer’s play on Can’s words.

  “Seriously, David,” Arnett insisted, “what is going on with these guys? What do they expect to accomplish?”

  “Political hand-wringing for the President, mostly,” Alan Dawson interjected. “Gives Ford an out with the veterans. He can say, ‘At least I tried, boys.’ ”

  “I don’t think President Ford is looking for a political flag to wave at the vets,” Kennerly said, defending his boss. “I honestly believe he wants to see if there is anything he can do to save what is left of South Vietnam.”

  “Well, I am pissed at you guys, arriving at three o’clock the other morning,” Van Es said. “I got nothing of it, just some very dark frames of Air Force One as it parked in the floodlights at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base terminal and some shadows of people coming down the ladder.”

  “I think our in-the-dark arrival is probably pretty indicative of nearly everything about this visit,” Kennerly said apologetically to Van Es. “I see lots of track covering, and Graham Martin certainly does not want to go down with the legacy as the ambassador who lost Saigon.”

  “This all about appearances?” Halstead said.

  “Smoke and mirrors,” Dawson said. “Ford has his hands tied, double knotted. Case-Church Amendment says that America must do nothing. No military equipment, no American forces, nada, zip. You have the United States Army chief of staff, General Frederick Weyand, holding Ambassador Graham Martin’s hand back to Saigon, with a raft of bureaucrats from the State Department, Defense Department, NSA, and CIA too, I imagine, all coming here to do what? Spend a week touring the bases and then dream up a grand scheme to save the country? No. I call it C-Y-A. Cover Your Ass.”

  Kennerly smiled at his colleague and said nothing. He knew that Al Dawson had tapped the Ford administration’s political pulse, whether or not the President fully realized what throbbed in the heart of that inner sanctum. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Assistant Secretary of State Phillip Habib, who oversaw America’s delegation in Saigon, certainly had a lot of C-Y-A going on.

  ONE OF THEIR more important C-Y-A maneuvers brought a sore and groggy Graham Martin off sick leave to Washington, DC, to attend the skull session on the Weyand trip. Martin had gone home to North Carolina after he underwent significant dental surgery at Walter Reed Hospital and had hoped to recuperate there for several days before returning to South Vietnam. Kissinger and Habib wanted Martin back on the job in Saigon so that he could absorb the blame, in case the worst did happen.

  For the Ford administration, the fate of South Vietnam did not rank nearly as high on the scale of importance as did the world’s opinion of America and how it regarded whether the nation did or did not keep its commitments, especially those made to smaller, struggling countries fending off the dogs of Communism.

  Long ago, under the watch of President Richard M. Nixon, American political interests had already written off South Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords stood testimony to that fact, virtually selling the highly United States-dependent nation down the proverbial river. The Case-Church Amendment of 1973, specifically banning all bombing in Cambodia and further banning all American military intervention by land, sea, or air anywhere in Southeast Asia, underscored that write-off. Kissinger had simply engineered a so-called decent interval to distance America from its South Vietnam commitment. Given an adequate passage of time, the world would not hold America accountable. Unfortunately, Kissinger’s decent interval had not nearly run its course.

  High on the agenda of foreign policies that rested in the balance came Kissinger’s Middle East peace. He had spent the previous ten days there, hammering out a new plan between Israel and its warring Moslem neighbors. Ruins still smoldered in Egypt and on the Gaza Strip. The day after he had returned from his Middle East mission, March 25, Kissinger and President Ford held a meeting to finalize their plans for the Weyand fact-finding mission.

  Their meeting included attendance of national security expert General Brent Scowcroft, General Weyand, and Ambassador Martin. It did not include attendance or even notification of Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, even though their discussions and planning heavily involved Department of Defense assets, personnel, and one of its most high-ranking military officers, General Weyand.

  Secretary of Defense Schlesinger and Secretary of State Kissinger stood at direct odds when it came to handling the latest events in South Vietnam. Schlesinger had told President Ford when President Thieu had begun to panic and the Central Highlands fell that he believed this represented the final Communist offensive and that South Vietnam had little hope of surviving it. He told President Ford, “The handwriting is on the wall.”

  While Secretary of State Kissinger and Ambassador Martin spoke with great optimism for South Vietnam rallying and even toyed with the notion of using detente with the Soviet Union as a hole card to encourage Moscow to stop the North Vietnamese short of Saigon, Schlesinger voiced caution. Kissinger had urged the President to empty the warehouses of South Vietnam’s allocations of war supplies and to expedite those shipments, while Schlesinger wanted them
held back. Pragmatically, he reasoned that with South Vietnam now a lost cause, anything America sent to the country would wind up in the hands of the Communists.

  Schlesinger’s pragmatism stood in direct contradiction to Kissinger’s foreign policy strategy, America’s not losing face with the rest of the world should South Vietnam fall. As it stood, the secretary of defense found himself standing on the outside of the President’s inner circle.

  During their March 25 meeting, President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger mulled over an inventory of more than $300 million worth of war goods sitting in James Schlesinger’s warehouses, ear-marked for South Vietnam. They could send them now, tagged as emergency relief, or they could hold off until after General Weyand had made his assessment of the situation. With the Weyand report in hand, they could then ask Congress for much more than the current Saigon-destined stockpile and the nearly $700 million in not-yet-spent South Vietnam aid budget authorizations still sitting on the books.

  Based on those budget authorizations, Major General Homer D. Smith, Jr., the defense attaché in Saigon, had already put together a sizable shopping list on behalf of the South Vietnamese. Kissinger and President Ford agreed that Schlesinger’s top logistical genius, Eric Von Marbod, could tweak that shopping list and give them even more ammunition to lay at the feet of Congress.

  If the House and Senate would approve a massive emergency infusion of war goods to South Vietnam, based on the Weyand assessment, then in the worst case, if Saigon fell, the world could not blame America for it. The United States had the goods on the way. The failure of South Vietnam’s resolve would then have to shoulder the blame. America had not, after all, run out on a friend.

  It was a very neat C-Y-A strategy. It would allow America to retain the respect of those other nations who also looked to the United States for a commitment to their protection.