Peter Arnett - Saigon Has Fallen

For my news colleagues during the Vietnam War who risked death to get the story

Contents

Saigon Has Fallen.

Artillery explosions sound a fearsome 4 a.m. wake-up call, but Im already awake. Impatient for victory, the attackers waiting at the gates of a vanquished Saigon have been warning they would act, and now with each thump of the Soviet-made 130 mm guns, their shells landing a mile or so away, sound waves rustle the curtains of my open seventh-floor hotel window. As I reach for my water glass, it trembles, and me with it. The final full day of the Vietnam War is beginning.

Streetlights shine below as I look out toward Tan Son Nhut airport, once described as the busiest in the world when America was waging war here. Now it is burning from one end to the other, the flames brilliantly lighting up the sky. There will be two more hours of the darkness, but this seems like a new dawn rising, an appropriate description, I think later, of the intentions of those wreaking havoc on the airport. The commanders of North Vietnams military juggernaut, pressing for victory after a 50-day rout of their South Vietnamese opponents, are pushing open the gates of the capital. They will force a new dawn on South Vietnam, Americas once favored ally, as it loses its 20-year struggle to remain an independent, pro-western state. As I write these still vivid memories of the end of the war, and the role that my reporter colleagues and I played in covering it, I find it hard to believe that four decades have passed since April 1975.

After watching the destruction of the airport, I phone the Associated Press office a few blocks away, and my colleague Ed White answers. He and George Esper, the bureau chief, have been up all night working the telex communications link with our New York headquarters. Our editors are anxious for the latest developments in a story that has gripped the world. White tells me the American Embassy confirms major damage at the airport with the runways probably unusable. American planners have been intending to airlift out of the country several thousand more vulnerable Vietnamese allies today, but what can they do now? The popular adage, Murphys Law, which warns, Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, will be proven time and time again today, in the final hours of bitter defeat for the losers and a historic victory for the winners.

Knowing this will be a long day, I take my time as I shower and dress, then go upstairs to the hotel dining room, which is serving hot coffee, and walk out to the balcony for a better view. Daylight is approaching, and I can clearly see thick black smoke hanging over the airport like a funeral shroud. Im joined by a few news colleagues, chatting animatedly, in awe of what is happening, knowing we are watching momentous history unfold right before our eyes.

As the sky brightens, we see a Vietnamese air force transport plane, a De Havilland Caribou, rise sharply into the air high above Tan Son Nhut airport. Suddenly, it seems to break in half, bursting into flames and falling in pieces to the ground. Stricken silent by this horrifying spectacle, we see a second aircraft following the same path soon afterward and suffering the same fate, like the first undoubtedly a victim of ground fire. It seems therell be no escape for anyone from the airport today.

At the American Embassy, Ambassador Graham Martin is in disbelief, committed as he is to evacuating as many vulnerable Vietnamese as possible before the communists arrive. He insists on personally checking the airport tarmac, alarming those who warn of great risk from approaching enemy. After the war, Martin would tell me, It didnt make sense to me that we couldnt physically come in with transport planes. I wanted to check it for myself, to make my own judgment. It would have made a difference. We could have gotten five or ten thousand more people out.

Martin has another reason for the airport visit, a token of respect to what he views as hallowed ground. An earlier offer from Washington to send in a small U.S. Marine detachment to secure the airport evacuation area was turned down, and some members of the embassys own Marine guard are used. In the early morning shelling, two of the Marines are killed, Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge, the last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam. Martin knows them both well. And he thinks of his foster son, First Lieutenant Glenn Dill Mann, killed in action in Vietnam on Dec. 8, 1965, when hit by machine-gun fire while flying his armed helicopter against an enemy position south of Chu Lai.

Reaching the airport, Martin finds a usable runway amidst the still-burning buildings, but little security. He worries about a repeat of the earlier airport panics in Danang and Nhatrang that had hundreds of desperate people fighting with soldiers and police to get on departing rescue aircraft. He tells me, I decided it was not worth the risk. I picked up the phone and I told Secretary Kissinger to inform the president that we have to go to Option Four immediately, to the helicopter airlift for the remaining Americans, and as many Vietnamese as we can take. But Martins urgent instruction is lost somewhere down the line. The airlift does not begin for several hours.

Option Four is code for Operation Frequent Wind, planned to be the biggest such evacuation in history, moving people to American Navy ships off the coast. Most of the passengers for the final helicopter lifts have been chosen in advance, alerted to keep listening to Armed Forces Radio. When the time comes to move they will hear the signal, Bing Crosbys song White Christmas, playing continuously, with an occasional break for the Sousa march The Stars and Stripes Forever. Thirteen helicopter pickup points have been selected around Saigon, using the small UH-1 Huey ships for the tops of tall buildings and the much bigger CH-53 Sea Knights for the American Defense Department compound at the airport and the embassy grounds.

The essential personnel waiting to depart include the large contingent of international journalists covering the story for the worlds media. During the past week some have considered the possibility of remaining behind and seeing what transpires, but their home offices expect them to leave with the last Americans because of the uncertainty of the future. I know that Esper wants to stay. Hes been here too long to miss the final moments of his most important story. Me too, and I message AP president Wes Gallagher, explaining that because I was here at the wars beginnings its worth the risk to document the final hours. Gallagher is less supportive of the presence of Matt Franjola, an AP reporter in the region for several years. Esper sends a message to his boss: Request you please reconsider Gallagher does. The three of us will stay.

As I drive through the city, I see that crowds are gathering at intersections and arguing. Several million people are now estimated to be living in Saigon, many of them recent refugees from the countryside. Not everyone wants to leave, but several hundred thousand believe their lives have been compromised in the eyes of the Communists by their association with America and its policies, and are desperate to get out. I drive by Saigons port and see small ships crowded with people setting off down the river.

The former CIA analyst Frank Snepp remembered that time in an interview with me after the war: The city was holding its breath. We had always feared that the Vietnamese would mob us if we ever tried to leave. But they realized on that last day that we were their last hope. If they turned against us, there was no way out of the country.