Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  “I had not yet heard that news,” Kissinger said, still standing behind the chair, gripping its back. “In contrast, however, we already estimate that our forces succeeded in evacuating more than 150,000 people. The Marines, Navy, and Air Force pilots flying those missions did a remarkable thing. They surpassed even our highest hopes for success. While we mourn the loss of those four Marines, we also need to appreciate what our servicemen accomplished today.”

  “Very true, Henry,” the President said, “and I deeply appreciate their sacrifice. However, it still remains very difficult for me to sit here as President of the United States and watch South Vietnam collapse,” President Ford confessed. “It looks like we just quit and ran. Yet I did all that I could for them.”

  ABOARD THE USS OKINAWA IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

  “WHO DO WE still have airborne?” Ninth Marine Amphibious Brigade commander, Brigadier General Richard E. Carey, asked, now on the captain’s bridge of the amphibious assault and helicopter landing ship USS Okinawa.

  “One bird over Vung Tao, Swift Two-Two, inbound now,” Major Dick Young, the brigade operations officer said.

  “Anyone on deck fueled?” Carey asked.

  “Lady Ace Zero-Nine might get going in fifteen or twenty minutes,” the major said, “but the pilot, Gerry Berry, has already logged more than eighteen hours in the past twenty and has thirty-four sorties to his credit. He would do it, if you asked him, but I think he’s already well outside the envelope. Purely a matter of safety.”

  “What’s the current fuel status on Swift Two-Two?” Carey said, looking at the horizon through binoculars, trying to catch sight of the lone CH-46 Sea Knight as it headed toward the fleet of ships.

  “Getting more critical by the minute,” the operations boss said. “Ships have begun to track outbound, so that’s a big factor. Right now, we’re a good forty-minute flight each leg. He’ll be riding on fumes when he lands. If you send him.”

  “Tell Swift Two-Two that, if able, they should turn toward shore, proceed to the embassy, and extract those Marines,” Carey said. “Given the conditions in Saigon right now, with broad daylight, every second counts. Our guys sitting on that rooftop many not have fifteen minutes left to wait while we refuel another bird.”

  WESTERN OUTSKIRTS OF SAIGON

  “WHAT IS THIS?” Nguyen Sinh Tuan said, raising his Leica M3 camera and focusing on Nguyen Duc Cui as he sat on the ground, massaging the leather of the brown oxford shoes that he had carried in his pack since the day he had made the blood-bound promise to his dying friend.

  “I thought you had no film,” Cui said, smiling as Tuan released the shutter.

  “I had no more film for photographs of darkness,” the photographer said. “They wanted pictures of that battle, and all that my lens could see was blackness and streaks of light. I had no film for that. However, I do have this roll of film to photograph today, Liberation Day!”

  “It has not yet ended,” Cui said. “We still have ARVN entrenched here at Hoc Mon.”

  “In a few hours,” Tuan said and snapped another photograph, “their President Minh will formally surrender. He has already ordered his forces to lay down their arms.”

  “Those gunshots in that village tell me that these ARVN did not hear their president’s orders,” Cui said, still rubbing the leather.

  “Then why do you soften your shoes so that you can wear them when we march into Saigon today?” Tuan said, smiling.

  “I also heard about the trucks taking us into the city, once our troops have quieted these guns here,” Cui said and smiled back at his friend.

  COURTYARD OF THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, SAIGON

  “NEIL!” A VOICE from outside the opened American embassy gates shouted.

  “Here, over here,” Neil Davis said, raising his hand above the back of the couch where he lay, watching the embassy roof.

  “What are you doing lying on that couch in the embassy parking lot when we have ARVN soldiers running in the streets, shedding their uniforms, shooting, looting, burning? Hugh Van Es shot an outstanding still of an Air America Huey on the Pan American building, and a ladder of people climbing up to it. He’ll get the Pulitzer Prize, and you’re out here sleeping,” Al Dawson said, stepping around the leather sofa that the South Vietnamese had dragged from the building after the Marines had locked themselves on the roof.

  “We still have Marines on the roof, and I am waiting to see what happens. They’ll no doubt send a helicopter for them, and I will have film of the last bird to leave Saigon,” Davis said, lying back with his camera poised to shoot upward, should anything break.

  Dawson sat on the arm of the couch and began watching the roof too.

  “How do you know there are Marines up there?” the UPI bureau chief said.

  “I had lain here to take a snooze about sunrise,” Davis began. “Then I heard five or six shots. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow from up there. So I start looking to see who did it. Once in awhile I get a peek of a head or upper body. They’re not oriental, so they must be Americans, still on their own embassy. You know that the diplomats and brass all left first, so these guys must be Marines. Very simple deductive reasoning, my friend.”

  “What the heck are they still doing up there?” Dawson said, now captivated.

  “You’re the reporter,” Davis said. “Go find the answer to that question. I’ll wait here and film it.”

  ROOFTOP OF THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, SAIGON

  “QUICK, COME HERE, Top,” Jim Kean called, kneeling behind a stack of sandbags and looking at the street beyond the embassy compound fence.

  “Big Minh!” Master Sergeant Valdez said. “Headed to the office to close up, I guess.”

  “What is this, six sedans and an armed escort?” Kean said. “They must be headed to the Presidential Palace to wait for the North Vietnamese to come knocking.”

  “I hope I don’t see that,” Steven Schuller said, now limping as he walked, suffering increasing pain from the wound in his side.

  All the Marines crowded by the boss and watched as President Duong Van Minh and Premier Vu Van Mao drove to the Presidential Palace, where the Republic of Vietnam’s leaders of two days would receive politburo boss Le Duc Tho and formally surrender South Vietnam to the Communists.

  “What time you got, Top?” Sergeant Terry Bennington said, cupping his hands above his eyes, searching the distant horizon, as the other ten Marines kept their focus on the motorcade procession below.

  “Why?” Valdez said, hopefully. “What do you see?”

  “It’s a helicopter!” Sergeant Bennington said, dropping his hands and beaming.

  “Yeah, and the people on the ground hear it coming too. Look at them run!” Sergeant Duane Gevers said, now rushing to the steel door with Gunnery Sergeant Bobby Schlager and Corporal Stephen Bauer.

  “Get deployed for his landing,” Kean said. “Be ready for any ground fire too.”

  Screams and shouts echoed from the concrete stairwell behind the steel door that the Marines had now reinforced to keep shut.

  “Go ahead and pop that big canister of riot gas,” Kean said.

  “This won’t be pretty,” Bauer said as he pulled the pins on two small CS grenades and dropped them inside the broken window in the center of the door.

  Duane Gevers set off the big can of CS riot control agent on the roof, releasing a great white cloud of the irritating fog.

  Swift Two-Two came in hot, dropping just over the deck and squatting on its wheels as the eleven Marines ran toward the open rear ramp. Tear gas spiraled and swirled over the roof and drifted toward the ground.

  Despite its irritating properties, causing a person’s eyes, nose, and sinuses to flood, the gas did not phase the screaming, anxious South Vietnamese who had waited all night for the helicopter and now saw it come. They rushed up the stairs and poured onto the roof just as Swift Two-Two parted from the deck.

  “You getting this?” Al Dawson said to Neil Davis.

  “I waited all night for this,�
�� the Australian responded.

  NGUYEN GIAP TY RESIDENCE IN SAIGON

  THE SUN BURNED Nguyen Giap Ty’s eyes as he looked through the sheer lace curtains that hung over his living-room windows. Outside he saw a group of his neighbors walking toward his door and pointing. Although he could not hear their words clearly, the Viet Cong soldiers that his so-called friends led seemed intense and agitated as they tromped across his courtyard and garden.

  The ARVN officer, recipient of America’s Bronze Star Medal, answered the door when the Viet Cong slammed their fists against it, rattling the windows.

  “Quiet, children,” Ninh Thi Tran whispered, watching her husband unlatch the entrance to their home.

  “May I help you?” Ty tried to say.

  “Stand aside!” the first soldier who seemed to have authority over the troop said and pushed Ty away as he led his soldiers into the house.

  Nguyen Giap Ty looked at the angry faces of his neighbors who crowded outside his front door.

  “Why?” Ty said. “What have I ever done to hurt you? I thought you were my friends.”

  “He was an officer!” one of the neighbors shouted to the Viet Cong. “A criminal who lives on the sweat of our people!”

  “Please simply take me, and do not harm my family,” Nguyen Giap Ty pled.

  “Yes,” the senior Viet Cong said, “you will come with us now. Also, this woman, Ninh Thi Tran!”

  “Why, sir?” Ty said, clasping his hands together in a prayerlike fashion, showing respect and subordination. “She has done nothing but secretarial work all of her life and has raised our five children. Please, sir, she has done nothing!”

  “Quiet!” the senior soldier snarled and then turned to two of his soldiers who now held Ty. “Take him out of here now. You men take her.”

  Two other Viet Cong held Ninh Thi Tran by her shoulders and led her out the door behind her husband through the growing crowd of jeering neighbors. While the people watched, the soldiers tied both Ty’s and Ninh’s hands behind their backs.

  Then the Viet Cong leader looked at Ty’s oldest son, Nam, and growled, “You have two minutes to gather what you want of your personal belongings and leave this house. Don’t come back.”

  Living as homeless orphans on the streets of Saigon for more than a year, Nam and his sister Bich-Van Nguyen took care of their three siblings. Tuong-Van Nguyen, the eldest daughter of Ty and Ninh, suffered most because of her Down syndrome disabilities. Vanny, the youngest daughter, and Son, the younger son, helped Nam and Bich with Tuong-Van, and together the four of them scavenged for food and shelter.

  Eight years of hard labor, so-called re-education, took their toll on Nguyen Giap Ty and his wife, Ninh. Abandonment took its toll on their children.

  Somehow, though, a resilient spirit among the Nguyen family kept them going through it all. Their children grew up and finally managed to escape from Vietnam aboard the clandestine boatlifts. They came to America and Australia. So did Nguyen Giap Ty and his wife and their disabled daughter, Tuong-Van, finally.

  PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, SAIGON

  AT 10:24 A.M., President Duong Van Minh issued a statement, broadcast to the North Vietnamese, offering the surrender of the Republic of Vietnam.

  The announcement seemed to represent the latch on the gate because in a matter of minutes parades of victorious Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers, walking, riding in trucks, and sitting on tanks and armored personnel carriers came streaming into Saigon from every direction.

  Seeing President Minh’s motorcade driving to the Presidential Palace, Neil Davis and Al Dawson ran to the capitol building after they had witnessed the last American forces leave Saigon. While Dawson found a good perch to watch from a distance, the Australian motion picture news photographer set up his camera on the front steps of Big Minh’s headquarters.

  He had his camera rolling when the Soviet-built T-55 tank, with soldiers waving the PRG flag, crashed down the palace gates and rumbled up the wide walkway to the great building’s front steps. The Australian photojournalist stood, waved at the Communists, and kept his camera rolling.

  Safely aboard the USS Okinawa, Major Jim Kean accompanied Brigadier General Richard Carey to the captain’s bridge. As the last commander of American forces on the ground in South Vietnam, Kean signed the log beneath the signature of Graham A. Martin, America’s last ambassador to Vietnam.

  INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, MONTREAL, CANADA

  “HELLO!” KIEU CHINH cried on the telephone. Someone had finally answered.

  “Who is this?” the voice responded.

  “Kieu Chinh. I met you in Hollywood. Glenn Ford introduced us,” the Vietnamese actress said.

  “Oh, you’re the girl from Saigon!” Tippi Hedren said, now recognizing her. “Where are you? In town?”

  “No, oh no,” Kieu said and again broke into tears. She had used her last Canadian dime to dial the telephone in Montreal’s airport, where, with the fall of Saigon, a country friendly to America finally let her past the customs gate, despite her lack of documentation.

  Leaving Hong Kong, Kieu Chinh spent the next twenty-four hours flying to Rome. She could not pass through customs there, but she did manage to call her sister in Paris. Flying to the French capital, the Vietnamese actress soon discovered that her sister’s adopted homeland would not allow her entrance either. Her sister had met her at the De Gaulle International Airport, but could only wave at Kieu through the glass.

  That night Kieu Chinh had flown to London and found a similar greeting, so she caught the next flight to Montreal.

  This morning she began calling familiar names in her address book. Each call used another handful of change. William Holden had gone to play golf. Glenn Ford said that he could not recall who she was, and Burt Reynolds, the man she kissed for the first time on screen, did not answer.

  She had one name left in her book, a woman she had met only once at a party in Hollywood. They had had a nice conversation, and Tippi Hedren had given Kieu her number in case she wanted to get together when she came back to town.

  Kieu Chinh had come back to town all right, homeless and penniless, except for the last Canadian dime that she had dropped in the coin slot of the telephone to place the collect call.

  “Poor girl,” Tippi sobbed too. Both women had flooded with tears.

  “I have no place,” Kieu said. “I have no job, no prospects of work. I have no passport. I have no money. I only have a suitcase with a few of my clothes.”

  “What do I need to do to get you here?” the Alfred Hitchcock-film actress said.

  “I still have my around-the-world ticket,” Kieu responded. “The Canadian customs officers said that Saigon has now surrendered, so I have refugee status. They told me that I can board the plane to America if I have a sponsor and a place to go. That is what I desperately need.”

  “Kieu, now stop crying,” Hedren said, still sobbing too. “Tell those people that you are coming here to live. We’ll get you back on your feet in no time. Don’t you worry anymore.”

  NVA HOSPITAL, CU CHI BASE

  “HERE, LET ME help you up,” a young boy said to Le Van Reung, who lay on a hospital cot at Cu Chi Base. “I have the radio on, and they are broadcasting our victory!”

  The wounded Viet Cong soldier leaned on his elbow and looked at the stump where doctors had amputated his leg just above his knee. Until now all the wounds he had suffered had only made holes that soon scarred over. He managed to stay in the field with most of them. Now, he could not walk. He hated that thought.

  Growing up, he had seen the men who had fought the French, their legs missing. They begged on street corners and could do little else. He could barely read. He only knew farming rice and fighting war.

  He listened to the broadcast as the Hanoi correspondent spoke of the great liberation victory. Saigon existed no more, but Ho Chi Minh City had been born that morning at eleven o’clock when Le Duc Tho accepted Big Minh’s unconditional surrender and immediately had the former ARV
N general arrested, along with his prime minister.

  The leaders joined members of the National Assembly, who had hoped to avoid prison by now kowtowing to the victors.

  Colonel Vo Dong Giang laughed as he told the reporter how several members of the National Assembly had come knocking on his door with the artillery and rockets first bombarded Tan Son Nhut. They wanted shelter in his basement in exchange for cooperation with the Communists. He laughed long and hard as he told the reporter how he sent them away, cowering.

  April 30, 1975, stood as a great day of jubilation for the new reunited Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Le Van Reung felt joy for his country, but lay on his cot at Cu Chi wishing that he had his leg back.

  Nguyen Duc Cui, wearing the shoes of his fallen best friend, marched down the streets of Ho Chi Minh City that day, tears streaming from his eyes. Huong’s spirit marched with him.

  While the tricolor flags of the PRG flew with the red flags of North Vietnam, decorating every tall building in Ho Chi Minh City, more than 150,000 South Vietnamese refugees crowded into tent cities on Guam, Wake Island, Clark Air Base in the Philippines, and at Utapao Air Base in Thailand. Soon, United States Air Force transports would carry them to America, to improved, hardback tent cities at the Marine Corps’s Camp Pendleton in California, at the army’s Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, and at the air force’s Eglin base in Florida.

  Slowly but surely these broken souls would find resurrection. They would pursue the American dream. They would encounter American prejudice and poverty too. Many would fail, but most, despite the obstacles, would overcome.

  In twenty years’ time their grandchildren would emerge with no knowledge of life in a war-torn state. They, like most of the other Americans around them, would take their liberty for granted.

  On the day Saigon fell, Nguyen Thanh Trung flew his captured American-made A-37 Dragonfly to Ho Chi Minh City and landed it despite the debris-covered and badly pocked runway at Tan Son Nhut. When he parked the small attack jet, he pulled the photograph of his wife and three daughters from the instrument panel and went looking for them.