Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  “His voice will fall silent on Wednesday, if he does not flee with the Americans,” Dung said. “Tomorrow night we fly an air attack on Tan Son Nhut, shutting their airport down, and then begin our artillery barragebefore dawn. It will send a clear enough message for the Americans to leave Saigon.”

  “The Associated Press today has reported that now the Americans have forty-four of their warships, more than three hundred aircrafts, and six thousand Marines waiting off the coast of Vung Tao,” Tran Van Tra said.

  “So many?” Dung said, in a voice undisturbed by any real concern with the news. “I had seen reports of their aircraft carriers Coral Sea and Hancock sailing off our shores, but I had not realized that they had involved so many vessels. Well, they will need all that room for everyone that they can carry out before we assume command of Saigon. They have the next two days to get it done.”

  Then the senior general walked to a sofa chair and sat down, stretching out his legs.

  “For now we wait,” Dung said, closing his eyes. “President Huong will resign this afternoon, and Big Minh will assume the title as their president tomorrow. Pham Van Ba, in his illustrious role as chief delegate in Paris, has conveyed to the Americans that we will most willingly negotiate with the new regime. In two days, possibly three, we will convene those negotiations and most graciously accept the new government’s unconditional surrender.”

  AIR VIETNAM FLIGHT FROM SAIGON TO SINGAPORE

  KIEU CHINH FELT a great relief fill her heart as the Air Vietnam Boeing 727 left the runway at Tan Son Nhut Airport, bound for Singapore. Her friend Tran Van Dong, still holding the status as a senator in South Vietnam’s National Assembly, had managed to obtain her passport from the foreign minister, even though his department had now voided it as a diplomatic voucher. It provided Kieu little more than identity and helped a vice president of Air Vietnam brush her past the American air force and South Vietnamese police inspectors at the terminal gate.

  The thirty-four-year-old motion picture star sat on the plane with a one-way ride to Singapore. She had no money nor any sort of renewed visa. She hoped that the one which allowed her to be in Singapore for much of the year might still allow her entrance.

  Early that morning she had kissed her dear friend Mai Thao good-bye. The prior evening, they had eaten dinner together at his villa with Tran Da Tu and his wife Nha Ca, celebrating Kieu’s success in regaining her passport, obtaining a plane ticket from Air Vietnam, and the next day departing to Singapore. As the plane now descended on its final approach to landing, she thought of her friends once again.

  Nha Ca especially feared the Communists because of her condemning books citing the atrocities that the North Vietnamese had committed at Hue in 1968. Tran Da Tu also worried for her, but Mai Thao philosophically suggested drinks all around to sooth those concerns.

  “What is this?” Kieu Chinh cried out as two uniformed Singapore policemen met her as she stepped off the Jetway.

  “Your passport,” one officer said as he opened her purse while the other clasped her hands in steel cuffs behind her back. Finding the black leather-bound document, the officer flipped it open and compared the photograph inside with her face.

  “Very beautiful, Miss Chinh,” he said. “Unfortunately, this document no longer has validity. Your government has cancelled your status to travel. As an undocumented alien, we must take you to jail.”

  NVA FIELD HEADQUARTERS AT LOC NINH

  THE FORMER SOUTH Vietnamese pilot, now a captain in the North Vietnamese Air Force, Nguyen Thanh Trung had found a small roll of cellophane tape and used it to fasten the photograph of his wife and three daughters on the instrument panel of his A-37 attack jet when he launched from Da Nang Air Base on April 26.

  Shortly after his arrival at Song Be Airfield near Phuoc Long City, a staff car carried him to NVA supreme command headquarters at Loc Ninh. There he went over his bombing plan with the deputy commander of the North Vietnamese Air Force, who had flown from Hanoi to congratulate Trung on his mission and to receive final coordinating instructions from Supreme Commander General Van Tien Dung.

  “You have only one day to make your mark,” General Dung explained to the two airmen. “April 28 is your only opportunity because the following morning we commence our full assault on Saigon. The artillerywill prohibit any aerial maneuvering, except to allow the American helicopters to fly out a very narrow corridor to the southeast.”

  While Nguyen Thanh Trung led his flight of five A-37 Dragonfly attack fighters off the runway at Song Be Airfield in the fading late Monday afternoon sun on April 28, General Duong Van Minh held up his right hand and swore his allegiance to the Republic of Vietnam as he officially took the seat as South Vietnam’s president.

  At 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, President Tran Van Huong, who held the office for only six days, resigned under direct pressure by United States Ambassador Graham Martin. That night, the South Vietnamese National Assembly voted 134 to 2 to appoint Duong Van “Big” Minh the new president.

  In his inaugural speech beneath the crystal chandeliers of the Presidential Palace, Minh said to the Vietnamese Communists, listening by way of their spies and through the news media in attendance, “We sincerely want reconciliation. You clearly know that. Reconciliation demands that each element of the nation respect the other’s right to live. I propose to you an immediate cease-fire as a manifestation of our goodwill and to quickly end the soldiers’ and people’s sufferings.”

  Almost simultaneously, Radio Hanoi, broadcasting on a wide range of international channels, announced to the world that all “third force” citizens in South Vietnam should rise up against the regime and join the revolution. Contrary to several weeks of diplomatic jockeying by North Vietnamese diplomats in Paris to place Minh in office and oust Nguyen Van Thieu and his regime, Hanoi also blatantly rejected any chance of negotiations with the new Big Minh government.

  Newsmen clambered to Colonel Vo Dong Giang’s door, pleading for a comment. He only said, “Our troops continue to advance,” and closed the door.

  In Washington, DC, Director of the CIA William Colby sent top secret messages to the president, secretary of state, and forces at the battlefront that stated: “We now believe that Hanoi has been deliberately holding back militarily in order to allow time for the evacuation process and for a government of surrender to be established in Saigon.”

  Kissinger reacted by taking the helm of all further communications with Hanoi, via the North Vietnamese and PRG emissaries in Paris. He cautioned Graham Martin and his staff to cut all further communications with the PRG at Tan Son Nhut. He and Graham Martin still stubbornly clung to their convictions of a negotiated cease-fire with the Communists and salvation of Saigon, despite the clearly unambiguous declarations immediately made by Hanoi following Big Minh’s assumption of power in Saigon.

  General Le Truong Tan’s Fourth NVA Corps launched several 122-millimeter Katusha rocket strikes from the eastern suburbs into the center of Saigon as Big Minh and his colleagues celebrated his new office amid the gold brocaded walls and lushly carpeted great hall of the Presidential Palace. To the south, General Le Duc An’s 232nd Tactical Force opened their artillery barrage, closing Highway 15, Saigon’s last remaining overland escape route to the sea.

  Dropping from the increasingly overcast sky, aglow with broad streaks of orange from a breathtaking sunset, Nguyen Thanh Trung hurled his light attack jet at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, releasing the plane’s entire load of a dozen MK-81 250-pound bombs into the flight line of AFRVN F-5A Skoshi Tigers and F-4J Phantom IIs.

  As he flew his popup and looked down toward the earth through the top of his aircraft’s canopy as the bombs struck in a line, demolishing several of the exposed aircraft, the second plane of his flight of five A-37s released its bomb load.

  One after another, the captured South Vietnamese jets delivered a very loud message, its thunder heard at Big Minh’s presidential reception: the end for Saigon had now come. The clock ticked, and soon Nor
th Vietnam’s tanks would roll into the city.

  AMERICAN EMBASSY, SAIGON

  “GUNNY, I AM not authorizing anyone leaving the embassy on some wild adventure like you have in mind,” Consul General Richard B. Peters said to Marine Gunnery Sergeant Robert W. “Bobby” Schlager, his former staff noncommissioned officer in charge of the Marine Security Guard detachment at the United States Consulate at Bien Hoa. “Getting all the equipment shipped out and everything shredded and burned had greater importance than anything else. Also, pulling down the flag when we left would have also incited a panic, and we might not have been able to drive away from the consulate. The flag provided cover for us. So leaving it flying on the rooftop mast has to fall out as one of those matters that we cannot now correct.”

  “Sir,” the balding, blond-headed Marine pled, “if I devise a plan that will work, won’t you at least give me the green light to try? Major Jim Kean, our Marine Security Guard company commander, said he had no problem with me going if I found a good way to do it.”

  “Bobby,” Peters said, “the crowds have become so unyielding outside the gates that your fellow Marines had to pull you over the wall just to get you inside the embassy when you got here from Bien Hoa. How on earth do you propose to try to penetrate through that turmoil, which is now much worse, and even make it across town, much less to Bien Hoa. The Communists now own Bien Hoa. It is simply too late.”

  “If I come up with a way of getting the flag, will you at least allow me the chance?” Schlager again pled.

  “See the deputy if you have a viable plan,” Peters said, exasperated with the argument, and left the marine.

  Deputy Consul General Charles Lahiguera stood in a small circle of other midlevel managers, and Gunnery Sergeant Schlager gave him a polite nudge.

  “I got a green light, of sorts, from Mr. Peters. He said to see you,” Schlager said. “Come on, our ride is waiting on the roof.”

  “Wait a minute, Gunny,” Lahiguera said, climbing the concrete stairs in an outside ladder well hidden behind the embassy’s exterior blast wall. The embassy staff had the lacework of concrete bricks installed across the face of the building after the rocket attacks of the 1968 Tet Offensive. “This adventure sounds a little too simple, and my gut tells me to stop and consider the risks.”

  “I’ve got an Air America pilot sitting on the roof in his Huey right now, and he says he can get us in and out of Bien Hoa, no sweat,” Schlager said, still jogging up the steps. “This time of the day, the NVA will have a hard time seeing us with the sun setting and all. We zip right to the roof, I cut the lanyards, grab the flag, and we zip right off. No sweat.”

  “You cannot go without me,” the consulate deputy said, jogging up the steps. “Someone has to take responsibility. If I stayed here, then I would be alive to suffer the consequences if you get killed. So if I go, and you get killed, I at least die with you.”

  “That’s the way to think about it, sir!” the gunny shouted and banged open the steel door that exited to the helicopter landing pad on the embassy roof.

  Inside the gray UH-1N, twin-turbine Huey utility helicopter, a pilot wearing a blue denim shirt, khaki trousers, and David Clark radio headset over a blue baseball cap with “USS Coral Sea CVA 43” embroidered on its front waved at Bobby Schlager and Charlie Lahiguera.

  “Sir,” Gunny Schlager said to the consulate deputy, “just climb up front in the right seat. You get a real good view there. I’m riding back here where I can jump out and in quick if I have to.”

  “What about the rest of the crew?” Lahiguera said.

  “You’re looking at him, coach,” the pilot said, tapping his chest with his thumb and then pulling up on the collective control handle, turning the throttle, and tilting the cyclic control forward as the young diplomat slipped on a headset with boom mike and fumbled with the shoulder harnesses on the helicopter’s right front seat.

  “Just push those couplings together, and pull the little metal tabs down,” the pilot said on the intercom, trying to explain how the harness’s Koch fittings snapped together. “You gotta get out, just flip up the tabs, and they pop right off.”

  The diplomat sat still, taking special care to touch nothing. Through the green Plexiglas beneath his feet, the tops of buildings and street lamps raced past the speeding helicopter. Ahead, artillery and rocket bursts lit the sky as the sun sank behind the western horizon.

  “Sir,” Gunny Schlager said, plugging his headset into the overhead intercom terminal, “our pilot’s a Marine. Well, former Marine anyway. Flew Hueys with Third Wing and delivered cargo to the Rockpile up on the DMZ by balancing on the skids in a hover while the ground crew grabbed the gear off his chopper’s deck. You ever see the Rockpile?”

  “Pictures of it, Gunny,” the deputy said.

  “Really narrow mountain of rocks, isn’t it?” the gunny then added. “Comes right up to a razorback ridge about two feet wide along the top.”

  “Yes, it looked that way in the photographs,” Lahiguera said. “It did not look like it had enough room for a helicopter landing zone on top.”

  “It doesn’t,” the pilot interjected. “That’s the gunny’s point. To deliver goods to the Rockpile, we had to kind of balance the helicopter by a skid, or with our CH-46s, let down the tail ramp and balance on that. We set the bird in a hover and anchored with the tailgate. Marines came on, got off, unloaded cargo, pretty cool.”

  “Amazing,” the midlevel diplomat said.

  “We’re going to do a variation of that drill when we go to get the flag,” Gunny Schlager said.

  “We can’t land anyplace below?” Lahiguera said.

  “Surrounded with VC and NVA,” the pilot said. “I took a dash past the consulate when the gunny asked me to make the trip. Lots of bad guys on the streets. Tanks, troops, lots of stuff. We’d never make it up again.”

  “Won’t they shoot us down hovering over the little rooftop capo where the flagpole is?” the deputy said.

  “I think we got about half a minute to zip on, cut the lanyard, and zip off,” the pilot said. “It’ll take them that long for the thought to register to start shooting. By then, we’ll be saying sayonara.”

  “Oh, you guys have this all figured out, timed down to the second,” the consulate deputy said, sarcastically. “You know we’re going to die!”

  “Some day, coach,” the pilot said. “It happens to the best of us.”

  “Nothing like going down in a blaze,” the gunny said and laughed.

  “Okay, Gunny,” the pilot said, “you got that gunner’s belt on?”

  “Roger, skipper,” Schlager said, sitting on the deck with his feet out the helicopter’s sliding side door.

  “Coming on your side,” the pilot said. “Be quick about it!”

  Just as the helicopter dipped over some high trees, it came face-to-face with the small, square capo that stood on the top of the Bien Hoa consulate headquarters building. Atop the little building, on the short flag mast, the United States flag fluttered, showing the recent tears of many bullets shot through it while it flew.

  Bobby Schlager stepped onto the Huey’s skid and then knelt, pulling his full weight against one of the helicopter’s floor deck rings anchoring the long safety strap of the gunner’s waist belt that he wore. Balancing his knees against the skid and bracing himself against the tension of the safety strap that held him, he took both hands and clasped the flag as it violently fluttered and popped in the wash of the chopper’s main rotor.

  Holding the flag tight with his left hand, the Marine reached down with his Ka-Bar utility knife and sliced through the thick nylon rope behind each of the brass snaps holding the American colors to the pole.

  Just as Bobby Schlager stood up on the rail with the flag in one hand and the Ka-Bar knife in his other, several dozen North Vietnamese soldiers on the ground among a string of their Soviet-built T-55 tanks, momentarily stunned by the surprise of the Air America helicopter stopping at the rooftop just above them, opened fire
on the aircraft. A sudden spray of .30-caliber rounds shot from their AK-47 and SKS rifles popped through the skin and Plexiglas windows of the helicopter.

  At the same time that the Marine had stood on the rail and the Communist soldiers opened fire on them, the pilot dropped the bird’s nose and gave the chopper a full-throttle departure.

  With the consulate’s national colors clutched tightly in his left hand, fluttering in the wind, and the Ka-Bar knife now clamped between his teeth, Bobby Schlager extended to the angry, still-firing Communist soldiers a lasting farewell gesture, shoving his right hand’s middle finger skyward for them to see and appreciate.

  TU DO STREET, THE HEART OF SAIGON’S BAR DISTRICT

  “GET IN, GIRLS, you go stateside, di di mao,” Sergeant Gregory E. Hargis called from the pedestal-mounted driver’s seat of the walk-in style delivery van that he and the other embassy Marines had nicknamed the bread truck. Normally used for performing maintenance around the American compound because of the ease with which a person could simply walk in and out of the vehicle with its passenger door slid open, Hargis had now converted it to a downtown bar-girl evacuation bus.

  “Oh, it’s you, Greg,” sang out a leggy prostitute with long black hair, dressed in tight-fitting denim jeans and a braless, red, slinky silk knit top with the name Amy written in blue sequins across her jiggling breasts. She wore big, round, red Elton John-style sunglasses rimmed with imitation sapphires that covered half her face, and she rocked along Tu Do Street on thick, high-stepping, four-inch-heeled platform pumps. Next to her, two similarly clad playmates of the Saigon bars waved happily at the Marine.