Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  While Freddy Weyand, Graham Martin, David Kennerly, and a cast of State Department, Defense Department, NSA, and CIA bureaucrats winged their way to Saigon, Secretary of State Kissinger publically laid the foundation for their strategy with Congress and the people of the United States at a press conference.

  While leading off with a bit of hand-wringing about failed Middle East peace initiatives, he led the unaware reporters into the sales pitch of his appearance before their cameras and microphones: America’s credibility’s hanging in the balance of South Vietnam.

  “The United States cannot pursue a policy of selective reliability,” Kissinger told the reporters. “We cannot abandon our friends in one part of the world and not jeopardize the security of friends elsewhere.

  “The problems that we face in Indochina are an elementary question of what kind of people we are. For fifteen years we have been encouraging the people of South Vietnam to defend themselves against what we conceive to be an external danger. Now we stand on the brink of betraying that trust.

  “In the past four years, Congress has dramatically cut aid to South Vietnam, going against a long-standing commitment. As a result, that nation now falters because of a grievous lack of spare parts and replacement equipment.”

  AL DAWSON TOOK a long sip of his beer and then looked at Kennerly.

  “You have your loyalties to the president, granted, and I’ll allow him the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “Gerald Ford is a very nice guy. I have no doubt about the honor of his intentions. He means well. Kissinger, on the other hand, has a few cards up his sleeve. He reminds me of Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s prime minister. Smart to a T.”

  “I read what we carried on the AP wire about Kissinger’s press conference,” Peter Arnett said. “I think that he challenged and chided Congress with his statement that America cannot betray this sacred trust with South Vietnam. However, we had a number of follow-up stories to his press conference, and they contained some very good information from highly placed Pentagon sources. The facts our reporters uncovered literally shatter Kissinger’s spare-parts and grievous-short-supply argument.

  “Most of this year’s allocation, something to the tune of $700 million, has not even left the proverbial barn. The money has yet to be spent! Furthermore, our Pentagon sources report that South Vietnam has ample supply of not only spare parts and equipment, but arms and ammunition. Or I should say, had, considering this morning’s announcement of the loss of Da Nang.”

  “I was leading up to that very point,” Al Dawson said. “Kissinger cares nothing for Vietnam, north or south. This is all about his Middle East peace and what the rest of the world thinks of America after this toilet gets flushed.”

  “So, welcome to Saigon, David,” Dirck Halstead interjected to lighten the moment.

  “Look,” Kennerly said, “I just work for the guy, and I just take pictures. However, I believe that Gerald Ford will do everything he can for these people.”

  “Well,” Derek Williams said, “if that’s the case, where are the Marines?”

  “Sitting off Cambodia,” Neil Davis said. “They’ve been there all month.”

  “The correspondent for Stars and Stripes in Okinawa tells us that the Marines can’t seem to get their act together,” Arnett said. “His last word this morning reported them still trying to load a ship and the Fourth Marine Regiment still sitting on their packs at the navy pier.”

  “Purely an evacuation force,” Dawson added. “Don’t get your hopes up that the war will start all over again.”

  “So, what about tomorrow?” Dirck Halstead said.

  “With all of I Corps now in their hands, who knows what’s next?” Dawson said. “My bet, Nha Trang.”

  “I’m heading up there tomorrow,” Kennerly said. “I wanted to get some shots of the people on Highway 1, and I heard that it is getting very messy just north of Nha Trang.”

  “Phu Cat and Qui Nhon are between there and Chu Lai,” Dawson said. “The evacuation boats have dumped a lot of people at those ports, so I am sure they have already flooded Highway 1 from those points south. Nha Trang might be a good bet for some really nasty crowd shots.”

  Chapter 15

  PANIC SPREADS SOUTH

  DA NANG, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM— TUESDAY, APRIL 1

  A UNIFORMED NORTH Vietnamese captain led the procession of nine men to their final stop. Divided into groups of four and five individuals, the captain’s troop had lashed the men by their wrists to a pair of bamboo poles. The soldiers had used American communications wire from a captured spool to bind their prisoners’ hands, pulling it so tightly that the men’s fingers immediately turned purple. In the blistering midday sun, the nine stood with their heads down, waiting as flies and gnats swarmed them, tracking through the sweat that ran down their faces.

  Three of the men had served as district police chiefs in Da Nang, and the remaining six had spent careers in the city as public administrators for the region. After two days of sometimes brutal interrogation, followed by a rubber-stamp trial, they had ridden in the back of a truck, traveling west from the city to the mountain that the Americans had numbered 327 and had called Freedom Hill.

  The truck had rolled by the communications and radar facility on the mountain’s summit and had then turned down a gravel road that led to the former United States military prison there. The ARVN had converted the old Freedom Hill Brig to a prisoner of war camp and had kept it filled tight with captured Viet Cong and North Vietnamese until the NVA liberated the place on March 28.

  As the truck passed by the tall, ironclad gates and drove along the edge of the high fence, topped with several coils of razor wire, thousands of shoeless men stared out through the confines at the dusty vehicle rumbling by with its one-way human cargo. Some of them wore uniforms, but most did not. All had served as ARVN soldiers or South Vietnamese Marines. They watched stoically, knowing full well where the dirty green Russian-built transport with the red star painted on its door was headed.

  The truck jerked to a stop a few yards from a six-foot-wide, twenty-foot-long, eight-foot-deep trench that crews of prisoners had dug a few hours earlier in the red clay soil on the north slope of Freedom Hill, beyond the stockade perimeter. Near this filthy gash, a series of half a dozen long mounds of recently turned earth marked other similar digs, filled to capacity only this mornings and then covered with soil. Upslope from this site, a dozen prisoners hacked with picks and shovels, making ready a fresh trench. The haggard bunch kept their heads down as they toiled at the hole. None of the men dared to even raise an eye as the truck pulled past them and halted.

  A growing pile of bloating corpses sprinkled with hydrated lime lay at the bottom of this currently filling human refuse pit. Some of the people dumped there had finally lost their struggles with wounds they had received days earlier, at last succumbing from blood loss and infection in the Freedom Hill prison. Most, however, had died from the telltale single gunshots to the backs of their heads, administered after the Provisional Revolutionary Government and Democratic Republic of Vietnam coalition authority in Da Nang had ordered them executed.

  “Forward!” the captain shouted to the nine men. Soldiers yanked hard at the bamboo, pulling the two lines of prisoners off balance as they stumbled awkwardly toward the edge of the trench, shuffling in a sidestep with their wrists tied to the pole at their backs. By now, all feeling had left their hands, and their heads rang from the boiling heat.

  “For your crimes against the people,” the captain recited ceremoniously, “the council of the people has decreed that you shall be put to death.”

  Then, one at a time, starting from the center, the captain shot each prisoner in the back of the head with his pistol, just as he snipped the bonds that lashed the man to the rail. The officer had developed his timing precisely, shooting each victim at the same instant that he severed the bindings so that the dying, often writhing person fell neatly onto the pile of other dead at the bottom of the pit. In t
he past two days, the NVA officer and several others like him had practiced and honed sharp their death-rendering skills on scores of prostitutes, gang-land cowboys, criminals, and other incorrigibles and crazies that the newly seated coalition government had deemed detrimental to Da Nang’s liberated society and rubber-stamped their condemnation.

  The three chiefs of police and six city administrators died quietly, keeping their dignity and honor intact, even as each of them fell headlong into the mass grave. None of the men whimpered or pled.

  Four South Vietnamese Marines lay still in the tree line a few hundred yards away at the base of Freedom Hill and had watched the truck arrive. They saw the nine men march to the pit and die. Gunshots earlier that morning had drawn them here to investigate. Now they hurried to report what they had witnessed to their leader, who waited in the jungle.

  147TH VIET MARINE BRIGADE SURVIVORS NEAR DA NANG

  LONG BEFORE DAWN, several boats had made their way down the shore toward Da Nang. Embarking on their journey at sunset, they had oared silently past the rocky promontory where the Hai Van Pass juts into sea at the northern end of Da Nang Bay. In the night, they quietly slid by the Esso depot on Lien Chieu point and then slipped inland at the Nam O Bridge, paddling upstream on the Cu De River.

  Protected by the cover of the early morning’s darkness, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Ngoc Toan bid farewell to the Catholic fishermen who had saved him and his 450 Viet Marines who had escaped the decimation of their 147th Brigade on the beach at Tan My ten days ago. Silently, the gaunt yet still disciplined company followed its leaders southward through the forests.

  As the sun rose, they skirted along the western fingers of Hills 282 and 364. Then they began to edge eastward around the base of Hill 268 and moved toward Da Nang along the northern slopes of Hill 327. Their kindred American Marines had built the compounds on most of this place and had trained many of the Viet Marines in patrolling and ambush tactics in these same grounds and surrounding forests. The lieutenant colonel and his troop of 450 survivors knew this land well and traveled easily through it despite the ever present North Vietnamese troops patrolling the roadways and fringes of the compounds.

  As the Viet Marines pushed forward, Lieutenant Colonel Toan sent scouts ahead of the main body to guide them away from any enemy units. Most of the men still carried their individual light arms, but Tran Ngoc Toan knew well that without heavier firepower and ammunition they stood little chance if they engaged any North Vietnamese units. Their best defense rested with their stealth in movement.

  “Colonel, sir,” the four reconnaissance scouts whispered to Toan, hidden at their rendezvous point. “North Vietnamese occupy Hill 327. Their trucks also move freely to and from Da Nang. Many patrols scout the perimeter. Dead bodies litter the sides of all the roadways in every direction.”

  “As I feared,” Toan said, “Da Nang may well be lost. Rather than risk encounter by trying to get into the city, or back to the sea, I propose that we continue to travel southeast. I know some villages west of Cam Ne. I think that the people there may help us.”

  None of the soldiers argued the colonel’s decision. They knew no one in Da Nang, nor did any of the men have family there. Most of them called Saigon or one of its many surrounding communities home. Moving southward brought them closer to their loved ones.

  UNITED STATES EMBASSY, SAIGON

  “SIR, AMBASSADOR MARTIN and I met with President Thieu this morning, and he has again pled for help,” General Frederick Weyand said to President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a conference telephone call to Palm Springs from the United States Embassy in Saigon. “Given what they have lost in Da Nang, it will require at the very least another $700 million in equipment and supplies on top of what we have already committed to them.”

  “Congress will never agree to more than $1.5 billion after they cut the authorization by half that much last year alone,” President Ford said.

  “Mr. President, Graham Martin here,” the ambassador to South Vietnam interjected. “If we can only reassure President Thieu that America has not abandoned South Vietnam, I am certain he can lead their forces to rally. All of this doomsday reporting by the media has set the South Vietnamese armed forces on their ears. We need to demonstrate some resolve and reassure them.”

  “Shipments of equipment and supplies will go a long way in doing that,” General Weyand said. “When I return in a few days, I will give you a formal report, but for now it looks like they will need at least double what Congress has already allowed them in the current budget.”

  “I still believe that we can negotiate a settlement,” Ambassador Martin said. “With Da Nang now theirs, and the occupation of the northern provinces and Central Highlands taxing their manpower, I think we have a strong hand with the defenses around Saigon. Also, do not give up on the Soviet Union factoring in this deal. They want detente; they need to play ball with us.”

  As always, Henry Kissinger mostly listened and spoke little. He too supported the notion that perhaps the United States, with some pressure brought to bear by the Russians, could reason with North Vietnam to settle on keeping what they had gained in the northern provinces and Central Highlands, and to leave Saigon alone. President Ford shared those hopes as well, but not nearly the optimism of Martin.

  Kissinger and President Ford both knew in their hearts that the odds of their hopes finding fruition dwindled more and more with each day’s events. It seemed that when one thought matters could not get any worse, they invariably did.

  President Ford and Kissinger also knew well that President Nguyen Van Thieu had lost a great deal of credibility as his nation’s leader, not only with his own people and their armed forces, but with the international political world as well. Backing a loser did not sit well with either man.

  “Mr. President,” Graham Martin said, “one way we can persuade Congress to approve these emergency appropriations would be to gain massive public sympathy.”

  “Are we talking about Ed Daly’s orphan refugee initiative?” President Ford asked.

  “This may have merit,” Kissinger interjected. “Ambassador Martin has already received approval from South Vietnam’s minister for refugee affairs and the backing from President Thieu.”

  “I don’t want Ed Daly out grandstanding World Airways with a bunch of orphan children,” President Ford snapped back.

  “This would be our program, sir, “ Kissinger offered. “Operation Babylift. We will have the USAID spokesman at the State Department announce it to the press in the morning. The public will show great sympathy for our efforts to reduce the suffering of the children in Vietnam with the relocation of more than two thousand orphans to the United States.”

  “This will sway public opinion,” Graham Martin said, underscoring his boss’s comments.

  Within hours of the Operation Babylift announcement, Major General Homer Smith had alerted the DAO staff’s Vietnamese female employees to prepare to depart Saigon as nurses and escorts for the children. The volunteerism served two purposes: It did provide chaper-ones for the two thousand orphans, but it also provided Smith the means of evacuating several hundred loyal female workers who would otherwise not get out of Vietnam.

  Not only did Smith see the writing on the wall, taking the opportunity to help his own staff evacuate, so did many of Saigon’s formerly complacent citizens. As each day rolled forward in April, more people booked flights out of Saigon. Pan American Airways had all its seats booked on its two flights per week through the middle of April. Likewise China Airlines found its flights similarly packed. However, the most telling message came from the six hundred eastern-bloc members of the International Commission of Control and Supervision. Suddenly, they too boarded early April flights out of Saigon.

  OUTSIDE THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, SAIGON

  “AMBASSADOR MARTIN, WHAT is going on here?” Peter Arnett asked as Graham Martin approached him on the front walk at the embassy. “We have had reports this morning that an NVA d
ivision now sits only forty-five miles north of Saigon. We also have heard from intelligence sources that as many as five North Vietnamese divisions have mobilized from the northern provinces and the Central Highlands, also headed this way. Reporters returning from Nha Trang say it is under siege and that the ARVN have fled there. They say the NVA are now heading to Saigon.”

  “Rumors, Peter,” Martin said. “There is no danger to Saigon. At this time we have the greatest concentration of military forces in this nation’s history surrounding the city, heavily equipped and well dug in. The Republic of Vietnam enjoys absolute air superiority. So I assure you that there is no danger to Saigon.”

  Arnett had already met with his “undisclosed sources” within the Defense Attaché’s Office and had heard their spin on the facts. They did not express nearly the optimism that Martin kept trying to peddle. Yes, Saigon had significant ground and air defense forces. However, neither Graham Martin nor the White House had fully applied the refugee factor to the equation. They told Arnett that given the great tide of humanity currently rolling southward on Highway 1, now engulfing besieged Nha Trang, with Vung Tao, Xuan Loc, and Bien Hoa still standing along its route, and with it exponentially increasing in numbers with each city that it swept across, when this refugee flood finally struck Saigon, it would without doubt overwhelm the city.

  When he returned to the Associated Press’s Saigon bureau, he put his story on the wire, with a message to the Washington, DC, bureau. He wanted to hear Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger’s take on Saigon’s situation.

  The following morning, the AP wire carried that interview, and Peter Arnett ripped the canary yellow paper off the teletype machine when the story ran. Schlesinger not only voiced strong reservations about South Vietnam’s future, but bluntly voiced his pessimism. Not only did his lack of faith in Saigon’s future elevate Graham Martin’s and Henry Kissinger’s ire for him, but it raised President Ford’s hackles as well. In the story the pragmatic defense secretary said, “The next thirty days will tell us if South Vietnam in any form will live or die.”