In the early morning hours of April 29, Captain Arthur Mallano, an American C-130 transport pilot, waited nervously on the ground at Tan Son Nhut for his load of refugees. For two or three days, intelligence sources had warned officials at Tan Son Nhut of North Vietnamese rocket attacks. The pilots, in their few spare moments, maintained a close watch on the horizon. When the attack came, Mallano had a ringside seat for the fireworks.

I’ll never forget that time.. . we thought at first it was light- fling in the background. You know the whole sky kind of lit up and I said to the copilot, “Gee, that thunderstorm is getting a little closer. It’s moving toward the field.” The next thing I know, not only was it white, it was red, blue, green-it had different colored rockets and mortars and it was hitting the field. ... They were not just firing to scare us. When I saw the intensity of the rocket attack and the accuracy with which it was hitting the field, I immediately told the loadmaster, “Let’s get the last passengers on.” We did!

As Mallano took off, a continuous barrage of rockets was devastating the airport. From the Continental Palace Hotel in downtown Saigon, western correspondents listened to the radio chatter from Tan Son Nhut over the UHF frequency used by U.S. officials. “The ICCS [International Commission for Control and Supervision] compound is burning. . .. The back end of the gymnasium’s been hit. . . . My God, control, we’ve got two marine KIAs [killed in action].”

A terse question followed: “Do you know where the bodies are?”

The first voice replied: “Yeah, but that area’s been chewed up real bad. They’re gonna be in bad shape.”

The two KIAs were nineteen-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Darwin Judge and twenty-one-year-old Marine Corporal Charles McMahon, the last Americans to die in battle on Vietnamese soil.

The battle of Saigon was underway. The rocket attacks on Tan Son Nhut prompted a series of emergency meetings in Washington between President Ford and his top advisers. Within hours, they ordered Ambassador Martin to evacuate all remaining Americans in Saigon.

After personally checking the damage at Tan Son Nhut, the ever-cautious Martin agreed with Major General Homer Smith, military commander in Saigon, that Option Four of Talon Vise, the evacuation of the airport and embassy by helicopters, should begin. But despite the fires at the airport and the open rebellion of South Vietnamese army units there, Martin was still reluctant to make a move. Smith’s appraisal of the situation, however, finally convinced him: “Either we go with Option Four or we’re going to look pretty stupid or pretty dead.”

As Talon Vise went into motion on April 29, a fleet of 81 helicopters embarked from U.S. ships near the coast. During the last few weeks of the evacuation the U.S. had stationed 44 naval vessels, 120 air force combat and tanker planes, 150 navy planes, and 6,000 marines in the area.

The airport was also beset by snipers and rioting South Vietnamese soldiers. To provide security, U.S. helicopters landed two at a time on a tennis court near the DAO compound and unloaded 840 marines. Lt. Colonel John Hilgenberg recalled the joyous reaction of the evacuees when the helicopters arrived with the rescue force. “To me the sight was almost too good to be true. ... The crowd broke into a huge cheer with hand clapping and the first smiles I had seen in days.”

By 7:30 P.M. the helicopters, flying in ninety-minute cycles between the ships and Tan Son Nhut, had successfully evacuated almost all of the last few thousand refugees. The marines had intimidated reckless South Vietnamese soldiers who had sniped at U.S. aircraft, disrupting the final stages of the evacuation.

The chopper pilots and their frightened passengers could scarcely relax. The North Vietnamese had already rocked the field with artillery. Everyone expected that heat-seeking missiles would come next. Each takeoff was a nightmare. “As we gained altitude, we held our breaths,” a newspaper correspondent noted. “We knew the Communists had been using heat-seeking missiles, and we were prepared to be shot out of the sky.. . Forty minutes later we were aboard the USS. Denver. . and safe.”

The Embassy Waits

Although the rescue mission at Tan Son Nhut had been completed, the U.S. Embassy in downtown Saigon still awaited evacuation. The city, then in darkness, was shrouded by rain and masses of clouds reducing visibility to less than a mile. To find landing zones, some helicopters had to rely on flares fired by marines inside the embassy compound. Others followed flashlight signals.

The original Talon Vise plan was intended to evacuate only one hundred to one hundred and fifty people from the embassy. When it became clear after the rocket attack that Tan Son Nhut had totally shut down, hundreds more Americans and Vietnamese had crowded into the embassy compound. All during the afternoon choppers landed, loaded, and took off from the former parking lot, now a helicopter landing zone.

Outside the embassy, South Vietnamese authorities had placed Saigon under twenty-four hour curfew. But with police and military security forces disintegrating, there was little hope of enforcing it. Tens of thousands of desperate people roamed the streets, frantic for a way to escape. Some soldiers simply dropped their rifles, discarded their helmets and backpacks, and dissolved into the crowds. Others, angry and frustrated, shot their rifles aimlessly into the air.

An atmosphere of doom lay upon the people, even those hiding quietly in their homes. Many Catholics, for whom suicide was a mortal sin, contemplated taking their own lives. A Catholic mother of nine children, who had moved south when the Communists took control of the North in 1954, explained: “We cannot live with them. Since there is no longer any place to run, the only option is death.”

Saigon’s hostile mobs were beginning to pose a serious threat to the remaining Americans. During most of the evacuation, the Vietnamese had continued treating Americans with their customary politeness. But as things fell apart many Vietnamese vented their wrath against Americans. In some areas it became dangerous for an American to be seen on the streets. Members of the French diplomatic corps started wearing small French flags to avoid being mistaken for Americans.

The French were not leaving. Even after their fall at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the French had never ceased trying to maintain their influence in Vietnam and continued diplomatic relations with Hanoi. It was a strange twist of history: The French, who had been driven out of Vietnam after a century of colonial rule and a bloody war, now enjoyed the most secure presence in the country of all the western powers. The bizarre switch of French and American roles in Vietnam prompted one U.S. Embassy official to say: “It’s so ironic. The French lost to the Communists at Dien Bien Phu, and we took their place here. Now, twenty-one years later, we’re the ones being forced out, and they’re coming back as the most important western political force in Indochina.”

During the evening of April 29, the mob of Vietnamese surrounding the embassy began to grow. The embassy was enclosed by a ten-foot wall with barbed wire strung across the top, but hundreds hoping to reach the helicopters tried to scale it. A U.S. radio operator issued a frantic call for assistance: “Marines to the gate as soon as possible!” Minutes later, the operator called again: “There are some two thousand people in front of the gate. It’s getting hostile.” As the night wore on, exhausted marines struggled to keep order. They had to use tear gas and rifle butts to hold off the surging people screaming and begging to be taken along.

Around 9:30 P.M. an urgent message arrived from Washington instructing Ambassador Martin to “wrap it up and get his ass out of there.” The head of embassy security gathered together all the remaining Americans. When the Vietnamese evacuees saw what was happening, they made a rush for the landing zone. The radio operator shouted: “The gates are open. We’ve lost control of the crowd.”

The marines fell back toward the main embassy building to cover the last American evacuees scrambling up the stairs inside to the helicopter on the roof. After all the Americans were safely on top, the marines followed.

Behind the marines came looters, smashing and ransacking offices. When they reached the roof, the marines lobbed tear gas grenades into the elevator shaft.

By 7:52 A.M. on April 30, the last marines had left the embassy. The evacuation was complete. Three hours earlier, Ambassador Martin, still unwilling to leave, had bid final farewell to Saigon, his helicopter broadcasting the coded message, “Lady Ace Zero Nine, Code Two [Martin] is aboard.”

♦ The End ♦