The Fall and Rise of Saigon : THEN : In Final Days, Fear and the Question: What Price Defeat?

That April in Saigon was nerve-racking. Everyone sensed that, at long last, the South Vietnamese government was going to fall to the determined North Vietnamese attackers. It was a war movie without a plot.

“Anyone here who isn’t scared is a fool,” a veteran correspondent said. “There are some fools, not many.”

It was only a question of how soon Hanoi would order the final attack, though back in Washington, President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger still held hopes that Soviet go-betweens could persuade the Communists to stop short of a total takeover.

That was a vain hope. For decades, the North had been fighting for independence, battling the Japanese, Chinese, French and, in the end, the Americans. Hanoi’s representatives on the Four Party Joint Military Team meeting near Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport were telling the American reporters that a negotiated settlement was a Washington pipe dream.

Unlike the Hollywood depictions, there was no frantic activity, no crazed gambling in those final days in Saigon, no drug-ridden GIs playing Russian roulette. Instead there was a cold fear, almost palpable. And the quiet. The South Vietnamese knew what was coming. The only question--and it was overriding--was how bloody the takeover would be, what price the defeat?

For years, the Americans assured Vietnamese who had worked for them more than 15 years that they would not desert them when the crunch came. It came in the final days of April, 1975, and all too many were abandoned. For many Americans who served or worked in South Vietnam, and flew off to safety in the final days, it was a national disgrace.

Today, 20 years after the fall of Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City upon the North’s victory, Americans are being welcomed back by nearly everyone, former foes and friends, including those who were left behind to face the rigors of Communist re-education camps and worse.

“It is true there were a lot of hard feelings in the years after the Communists took over,” says Thi Thanh Suu, a businesswoman. “My father was an army general who believed the Americans would help him escape. They didn’t, of course. He remained behind and spent 14 years in a re-education camp. But after he finally got out, he was granted an exit permit to leave for the United States two years ago. And he is there now, in Southern California. He likes America, though my mother is lonely for Vietnam.”

Time, the visitor finds, has healed many wounds. But time has not diminished the memories, the images, of April, 1975.

The Final Weeks

The most horrific sight I saw that month was a barge filled with refugees from the fallen central provinces. It had tied up in Vung Tau, the resort town the French called Cap St. Jacques, and had carried desperate, frightened families to an incongruous setting of orange blossoms, crimson bougainvillea and flamboyant trees, a poinciana with mounds of scarlet flowers.

South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu had triggered the downfall of his country that March with his controversial order to abandon the Central Highlands after the North Vietnamese offensive began. An enormous, unruly exodus began: first, east from the Central Highlands down to the coast; then, with the North Vietnamese army in pursuit, south from the coastal cities of Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Nha Trang, Cam Ranh Bay.

Photographs of refugees trying to get aboard planes and helicopters--and being brusquely repelled by crew members--were etched in the world’s consciousness. Many boarded barges in the central port cities and were towed through the South China Sea--thousands of men, women and children, jampacked together under the harsh tropical sun and facing the fierce salt spray of the sea.

The barge I went aboard at Vung Tau was crammed with the bodies of refugees who had suffocated in the press of humanity during the grueling voyage south. They formed a nightmarish carpet across the deck, which was the size of a football field. Bodies were mixed in with pots, pans, blankets, baskets, clothing, suitcases and bicycles in a kind of devil’s layer cake.

Those images are history in Vung Tau today. The port has returned to its pursuit of pleasure, the favorite resort of many southerners with its long sweep of beaches and hundreds of small hotels and guest houses.

“Look around you,” said Nguyen Van Meo, a doctor. “Notice all these children. None of them born during the war. They have only known peace. Children have no bad memories of those earlier times.

“This is a country of the young.”

The Last Big Battle

Xuan Loc, a provincial town 38 miles northeast of the capital, was the scene of last-ditch resistance by the South Vietnamese army that April. In earlier years, before the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from South Vietnam in 1973, it had been a base for the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, and later for a U.S. armored cavalry regiment.

“What happens here will determine the fate of the South,” an airborne officer told me in 1975 when I drove out Route 1--almost daily--to monitor the siege of Xuan Loc. “If we can hold out, we have a chance. If not, all is lost.”

Xuan Loc was finally overrun by North Vietnamese troops after a valiant but vain defense against the forces that surrounded the town, infiltrating through the rows of rubber trees on adjacent plantations. On the evening Xuan Loc fell, President Thieu announced his resignation.

Today, the town square is marked by a large monument to the North Vietnamese victory of 20 years ago. It emphasizes the importance of the victory here, and a map in stone shows how Hanoi’s regulars pressed the attack. In front of the monument stands an olive-drab, Soviet-built tank, one of those that overran Xuan Loc.

Standing near a roadside shop selling cigarettes and lottery tickets, Nguyen Long, 52, who once worked for the local American field office, recalled: “The Americans had left us in 1973. We had to defend ourselves as best we could. We lost, and I was arrested and spent five years in a re-education camp. The time you spent was reflective of your rank or position. It was not pleasant.”

Visit to a Cemetery

The little community of Vinh Phu lies south of Bien Hoa, where the South Vietnamese created a National Military Center in 1968--a kind of Arlington Cemetery where fallen army officers and enlisted men, Catholic and Buddhist, lay side by side. On my last visit to Bien Hoa--two days before the fall of Saigon--I knew the end was close, because the bridge over the Dong Hai River was so packed with refugees streaming south--probably 100,000--that even military convoys could not get through.

When North Vietnamese mortar shells began falling on the south bank of the river, it was clear that the northern defenses of Saigon had been breached. It was now only a matter of the speed of the enemy advance.

I stopped off that day at the cemetery, an oasis in the midst of turbulence, and spoke to the widow of a young lieutenant. “A fortune teller told me my husband would be killed in April, 1975,” she said. “He was killed in the fighting round Xuan Loc. Once he said, if he had a child, he would be happy to die. But we never had any children.”

The national cemetery of the South Vietnamese “puppet” government was an affront to the victorious North, and it was leveled, the remains returned to families that came for them. The flat, featureless property is now being offered to foreign investors as a site for a light industrial plant. Not far away, a Japanese firm has built a golf course for tourists. And just beyond that is Long Binh, once the headquarters of the U.S. Army in South Vietnam. It was the biggest complex of its kind in the world, and absolutely nothing remains.

Tan Son Nhut

During the war, Tan Son Nhut, the Saigon airport, was the busiest in the world in terms of landings and takeoffs, with every conceivable aircraft competing for space: jet fighters, propeller-driven bombers, transports, helicopters and commercial airliners.

For many Americans, Tan Son Nhut was both gateway and cultural introduction to Vietnam--crazy, confused and corrupt, like the rest of the country. It remained that way throughout the U.S. involvement.

The airport was perplexing enough in the daylight, and during that April, when U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin refused to allow Americans to evacuate their Vietnamese employees, a secret nighttime operation began. It was organized by the U.S. TV networks to get their Vietnamese employees out--as the CIA was secretly doing with its people--on private aircraft heading for Bangkok, Thailand.

At the end, when the U.S. Embassy finally agreed to find passage for loyal Vietnamese, many left on these “black” flights from Tan Son Nhut. In the final hours, the enemy closed the airport with rocket fire--killing two U.S. Marine Corps guards, Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge of Marshalltown, Iowa, and Cpl. Charles McMahon Jr. of Woburn, Mass. They, along with two Marine helicopter pilots, Capt. William Craig Nystul of Coronado, Calif., and Lt. Michael John Shea of El Paso, Tex., who crashed at sea, were the last of the more than 57,000 U.S. service personnel to die in Vietnam. The first soldier killed was an adviser, Tom Davis, at Christmastime in 1961.

No longer buzzing with activity like LAX or O’Hare, Tan Son Nhut has settled into its role as a small, local airport. Vietnam Airlines planes run on time; they are even known to load and take off early once all the passengers have shown up. The countryside they cover remains the most dramatic in Southeast Asia. Gaping scars are visible on the emerald green hillsides, and many travelers believe that they were the result of massive U.S. bombing. But the barren slopes in fact were caused by the slash-and-burn farming of the Montagnard tribes.

In Delta Country

The 15-year-long war involving the Americans was fought from the flat and rice-rich Mekong River Delta in the South to the rugged country of the demilitarized zone, the DMZ, the line that split North from South since French control of the undivided country ended in 1954. The North fell into the Soviet camp, while the Americans backed the South, where U.S. advisers worked with southern forces to put down increasing northern-supported guerrilla activity. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson committed large-scale U.S. forces to what had become all-out war.

The first real sign that the war could not be won by conventional means was the Tet offensive of 1968, a nationwide series of Viet Cong attacks during Tet, the Vietnamese lunar New Year. About 70,000 Communist soldiers hit 100 towns and cities, striking the U.S. Embassy in Saigon itself. While the guerrillas were unable to hold ground, they cast deep doubt on the effectiveness of the combined forces of the South Vietnamese and the U.S. forces.

Ben Tre, a Mekong base for the South’s naval forces against Viet Cong junks, was a target in the Tet offensive. In repulsing the assault, U.S. planes bombed Viet Cong positions within the city itself. A U.S. major explained to reporters: “We had to destroy the city in order to save it.”

That ill-phrased assessment received worldwide currency and became a symbol for U.S. frustration in Vietnam.

Today, Ben Tre is a bustling community on a branch of the mighty Mekong, known to the Vietnamese as the “River of Nine Dragons,” whose brown waters carry rich sediment to the delta after a 2,000-mile journey from the Himalaya Mountains in Tibet.

Crossing the Mekong by ferry to reach the city, I came upon the Ben Tre Floating Restaurant and its operator, Le Thi Hoang. The 47-year-old woman wore a blue pajama suit, no makeup and had long, sharp memories of Tet. She fought with the Viet Cong in that attack.

“I was 20 years old,” she said, offering me a Tiger beer. “Then, I hated the Americans whose base here was the target for our attack. I could have personally killed them all. As it was, I spent much of my time removing the wounded from our first wave. Eventually, we retreated back into the countryside.”

For her services, Hoang was made manager of the restaurant. And for her, the past is the past.

“The Americans killed seven members of my family, bombing and shelling,” she told me. “But I no longer have any bad feelings now. That was the past. As for the Vietnamese, the bad ones left our country, and the good ones stayed. We don’t miss those who left.”

The Battle for Hue

The imperial city of Hue was a focal point of the Tet offensive, which changed so many American minds about the war. President Johnson once remarked that, when people like TV commentator Walter Cronkite changed their views of the war, his Administration and its conduct of the fighting were in trouble. Tet and Hue changed many minds.

The Tet offensive, which Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander at the time, declared was an allied success, helped drive Johnson from office: With domestic opposition to the war growing, he decided not to run for reelection.

And if there was a single example of the failure of the U.S. government and military to realize the propaganda nature of the war in Vietnam--that there was more than body counts and firebases--it was the battle for Hue.

I accompanied the Marines as they struggled day after day to root the North Vietnamese forces out of the ancient Citadel on the north bank of the Perfume River. It seemed incredible that, with 500,000 U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, the Americans could not muster enough troops at the sharp end to rout the enemy.

For 25 days, the red field and yellow star of the North Vietnamese flag flew high over the Citadel while understrength Marine units battled against a deeply entrenched enemy.

Were Washington and the U.S. military command indifferent to the battle? To the fact that the historic imperial capital remained in enemy hands? Later, I linked up with a South Vietnamese battalion given the honor of retaking the Forbidden City, headquarters of the enemy forces. We raced through the “emperor’s gate” under drizzly skies to secure the royal pavilion and its throne room.

But the enemy had secretly departed, its propaganda victory secure.

Groups of tourists, mainly French, fill Hue today, visiting the royal tombs, temples and palaces of Vietnamese dynasties. Above the Citadel on that tall staff, the massive red banner still waves. It can be seen from almost anywhere in the city.

I entered the imperial throne room we had rushed into 27 years ago. The shell holes had been patched, debris cleared from the marble floors and the maroon lacquer restored.

But there was that small chair--the throne--on the triple dais where the battle for Hue had ended. Vietnamese tourists from Hanoi, in austere dress and wearing pith helmets, seemed disapproving over the trappings of imperial days.

The sole American tourist was Tom Simmons, 24, from Los Altos Hills, who, after graduating from the University of Colorado, was backpacking through Southeast Asia. The tall, golden-bearded young man told me: “I can’t get over how pleasant the Vietnamese have been to me, an American. I was too young to remember the war. But I thought the Vietnamese would remind me of it--with negative feelings.

“Instead, they have been surprisingly friendly--very, very friendly.”

Siege at Khe Sanh

The U.S. Marines’ combat base at Khe Sanh, in a highland valley surrounded by higher hills, was the focus of the most famous siege of the war. It stood close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North’s primary supply and infiltration route, and was often obscured by fog and mist. By early 1968, Gen. Westmoreland decided to augment the original U.S. Army Special Forces camp with a sizable Marine force to occupy the position. Comparisons to the reinforced French base of Dien Bien Phu, whose fall finished France’s role in Vietnam in 1954, become inevitable. In order to avoid a similar defeat, the Marine force was beefed up to 6,000 troops.

The 75-day siege began in late January, and during the next two months Khe Sanh was attacked repeatedly by ground forces and pounded by Communist artillery. The Americans were outnumbered at least 3 to 1. More than 200 Marines were killed in the fighting, but an estimated 10,000 North Vietnamese died in the surrounding hills

I flew in aboard a Marine C-130, running just behind a transport that was shot down by North Vietnamese gunners. I found the defenders a grim, determined lot, ready to fight to the end.

One Marine cheerfully told me: “Old Vic is out there in the fog, trying to cut our wire. I couldn’t even see him to shoot at him. That Old Vic is out to scarf me up. I got two (Purple) Hearts, and I don’t want a third: It might be my last.”

But the long-awaited North Vietnamese attempt to overrun Khe Sanh never came. U.S. Army troops pushed up Route 9 and ended the siege. In June, U.S. war plans suddenly shifted. The base was secretly abandoned. The high command had realized the futility of placing bases in remote locations. As a Marine officer said at the time: “When you’re at Khe Sanh, you’re not really anywhere.”

Now the Khe Sanh Valley is an empty plain, with no activity except the nearby coffee plantations. All that remains of the sprawling base is the deep hole of the former medical bunker dug in the red, laterite earth.

There’s a small stone marker erected by the Vietnamese that says Khe Sanh was liberated from the Americans and their “Saigon puppets”--a “second Dien Bien Phu.”

Saigon, the U.S. Embassy

Never in the war was the focus on the U.S. Embassy as tight as in April, 1975, with Communist forces ringing Saigon. Any Vietnamese who believed that he had a claim on a precious U.S. visa lined up at the consular section, orderly at first, but as the days went by and the noose around the South Vietnamese capital tightened, more and more desperately.

At the end, Vietnamese in mortal terror attempted to climb the embassy walls, but they were pushed back by armed Marines.

Throughout the month, the mood at the six-story, concrete building in the center of Saigon, where policy had been conducted for eight years, was one of near despair. Ambassador Martin insisted that no major evacuation of Vietnamese loyalists could take place, fearing that any hint of escape could panic the populace and trigger a collapse of the South Vietnamese government.

On April 17, the U.S. Senate rejected an Administration request for $722 million in emergency aid for the Saigon regime. Diplomats and CIA personnel were despondent that they would be forced to abandon loyal Vietnamese who had worked for them at great risk. But Washington would not give the official word to help, persisting in the ill-founded belief that a negotiated settlement could be reached.

Of the refusal to order evacuation of Vietnamese most at risk, U.S. Army Col. Harry Summers, a member of the international negotiating commission in Saigon, said: “You saw betrayal at its worst.”

That April, I reconnoitered the embassy grounds to find the best place, a back gate, to enter when the balloon went up, which was to be announced by the playing of “White Christmas” over the Armed Forces Radio Network.

Then I went to see Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, the former vice president, at his villa at Tan Son Nhut, where he warned us that the government was unraveling, that Thieu was about to flee with his ill-gotten gold. And then he nodded pointedly at his own personal helicopter in the front yard.

Gen. Duong Van (Big) Minh, who was to take over as chief of state, dithered--as if he still had any cards to play. The North Vietnamese no longer found it necessary to pretend to negotiate a settlement, which would have meant leaving some South Vietnamese in nominal charge.

Finally, the Americans got a major evacuation going with U.S. Air Force transports at Tan Son Nhut. Women and children with U.S. connections were ferried out, though not those stuck in outlying towns. Reporters were trying to decide whether to stay behind: How would the North Vietnamese react? Would there be a massive, bloody attack on the capital? Reprisal killings after the years of bloodshed? I was directed to leave and flew out from Tan Son Nhut on April 28.

What happened was relatively calm. The North Vietnamese army stormed into Saigon on April 30 with a minimum of casualties.

Their T-54 tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace, the official seat of government. Hanoi’s leaders and soldiers announced the end of the war.

Now the old embassy building stands shabby and deserted, its concrete protective shield unpainted. It was taken over by the government-owned Oil Exploration Corp., but has fallen into disuse because the elaborate U.S.-made cooling system has broken down.

Occasional tour groups pass by and gaze in the iron entrance gate. You can still see the helicopter platform on the roof where the last choppers departed, one carrying Ambassador Martin and the U.S. flag.

“A lot of tourists remember scenes at the embassy, from the Tet attack in 1968 to the final evacuation in 1975,” said John Marquis, an Australian guide with Travel Indochina.

“Some American tourists come by with our group.” he said. “They have invariably studied the subject and seem to know a lot about what happened in Saigon. They are all very serious about what they are seeing, as if they remember the past.”

On Mac Dinh Chi Street, alongside the embassy, painters are preparing signs and banners for the April 30 reunification parade down tree-lined Le Duan Boulevard around the corner. Another banner stretches across the boulevard announcing a marathon run on the anniversary day. It carries a Pepsi logo.

Today, Vietnam seeks U.S. investment and a total end to various sanctions imposed by Washington. In Ho Chi Minh City, the hotels are booming, including the Caravelle where, in the rooftop bar in the early 1960s, American journalists were accused by unhappy American officials of plotting the downfall of various Saigon regimes. Now atop the Caravelle, hostesses minister to karaoke-loving Japanese businessmen.

Across the street at the raffish Continental Hotel that figured in Graham Greene’s novel “The Quiet American,” the famous terrace, where Viet Cong grenades once were aimed, has been glassed in. It seems antiseptic.

On the roof garden of the Rex Hotel, once an American officers quarters, Ray Hughes, a British accountant based in Hong Kong said: “This country could be a gold mine. You construct your light manufacturing plant here, say pharmaceuticals. You have a young, easily trained work force at the cheapest rates in Asia.

“The government gives you a huge tax break and you are allowed to repatriate all your profits. It’s an enormous opportunity, and you don’t even have to worry about selling in the local market.

“So everyone is waiting for a green light from the Americans. With the Americans officially back, everything will take off.”

Indeed, an American returning to Vietnam is struck by the welcoming attitudes on all sides, from a poor nation that suffered huge wartime losses, for citizens of the great power humbled in the war.

For any of those 3.14 million Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces here and who need to exorcise ghosts from the long, national nightmare called Vietnam, a trip back could be in order.

For the simple, surprising message is: “Come back, Americans. You’re welcome.”