Bob Drury - Last Men Out: The True Story of Americas Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam

Also by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

Halseys Typhoon: The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, and
an Untold Rescue

The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat

Last Men Out

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Copyright 2011 by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Free Press hardcover edition May 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Drury, Bob.
Last men out: the true story of Americas heroic final hours in Vietnam / Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Vietnam War, 19611975VietnamHo Chi Minh City. 2. Vietnam War, 19611975Evacuation of civiliansVietnamHo Chi Minh City. 3. Vietnam War, 19611975Personal narratives, American. 4. United States. Marine CorpsHistoryVietnam War, 19611975. I. Clavin, Thomas. II. Title.
DS559.9.H58D78 2011
959.7043dc22 2010029333

ISBN 978-1-4391-6101-2
ISBN 978-1-4516-1025-3 (ebook)

For dmcd
rfxd

To my children, Kathryn Hamma Clavin and Brendan Hamma Clavin
TC

U.S. E MBASSY S AIGON 1975

Courtesy of the Fall of Saigon Marine Association, Inc. A California Non-Profit Corp.

U nder the terms of the Paris Peace Accords signed on January 27, 1973, the United States and all foreign governments agreed to withdraw their combat troops from South Vietnam within sixty days; the South Vietnamese government agreed to negotiate with the National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnamthe Vietcongtoward a political settlement; and reunification of Vietnam was to be, in the words of the document, carried out step by step through peaceful means. Exempt from the American military drawdown were the detachments of U.S. Marine Corps Security Guards (MSGs) posted at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and at several U.S. consulates in various provincial capitals.

Less than two years later, the North Vietnamese broke the terms of the accords when, in late 1974, the North Vietnamese Armys chief of staff, General Van Tien Dung, began his push into South Vietnam with the intent of conquering it once and for all. To the surprise of most observers, General Dung marched his army though South Vietnams fir-clad Central Highlands nearly without a fight. Dung had expected to triumph, but not against so little resistance. When U.S. forces pulled out of South Vietnam in 1973, they had left behind for their ally $5 billion worth of military equipment, including hundreds of tanks, 500 fighter bombers, 625 helicopters, and enough arms to equip a 700,000-man army. Thus, the initial ease with which his armies progressed south made Dung wary of a trap. Even when Dungs scout units returned to report that the South Vietnamese Army had, in fact, quit the fight for the Highlands, the general moved forward cautiously. It was only after his divisions captured Pleiku that he, as one of his subordinates wrote, decided to chase them as far as we could and as fast as we could.

Within days of Dungs first attacks, South Vietnams president, Nguyen Van Thieu, recognized that he did not have the manpower to defend the Highlands. Instead, he ordered a defensive perimeter formed along the northern border of Da Nang in preparation for a counterattack, sacrificing the ancient city of Hue in the process. But Thieu had not counted on his army collapsing in on itself like a black hole. As Dungs divisions pressed onward, thousands of mauled Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers surrendered or deserted. For those remaining, the orderly withdrawal to Da Nang became a mass exodus, the poets rueful Convoy of Tears.

Ill-disciplined and starving South Vietnamese foot soldiers, many of them abandoned by their commanders, joined terrified throngs of civilians fleeing south. They plundered hamlet after hamlet, clogging roads, raping women, and stealing vehicles. Within days Da Nang was transformed from a once-thriving port city into an armed and desperate refugee camp seething with resentmentagainst the North Vietnamese, against Thieu and his cronies, against the U.S. allies who had abandoned them. In the minds of the 1 million Vietnamese overflowing Da Nang, hate and fear had replaced faith and hope.

On March 29, 1975, artillery shells began falling on Da Nang, in central Vietnam, as 35,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops prepared to attack. It was not necessary. Panic had done their job for them. Two days earlier, plane and helicopter airlifts had been cancelled when American pilots reported taking withering fire from rogue ARVN units; now these same South Vietnamese soldiers turned their guns on civilians as the latter clawed to reach rescue ships. Women, children, and the elderly were trampled in the rush to the sea. Fishing boats packed with civilians were confiscated by South Vietnamese soldiers, who tossed their countrymen overboard before shooting it out among themselves for the precious berths.

The six U.S. Marines detached to the Da Nang consulate, attempting to help people board at the docks, watched in horror as mothers who did manage to reach the waters edge set their babies adrift in small pails, hoping the tide would carry them out to boats, or toss them at already-moving barges. Most fell short and were drowned. One Marine witnessed a South Vietnamese Army officer shove women and children into the space between the dock and a boat, where they were crushed against the pilings as he scrambled aboard. Another Marine noticed several elderly Vietnamese disappear beneath a sea of bodies in an overflowing barge. By the time he dragged them out from the pile, they had been smothered to death.

That night, a deadly face-off between the Da Nang consulates MSGs and an ARVN company was narrowly averted when the Marines, surrounded by their erstwhile allies, joined the civilian consulate staff hiding in the back of a stolen garbage truck that made its way to the docks, from where they escaped on a leaky barge.

The final blow came when Thieus top commander in Da Nang, Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, abandoned his post to swim for the last U.S. naval vessel sailing from port. One hundred thousand of Truongs troops surrendered. With Da Nang gone, the southern coastal provinces soon followed. Within weeks, the North Vietnamese and their Vietcong comrades surrounded the capital city of Saigon and prepared to invade. For all intents and purposes, the long war in Vietnam was about to come to an end.