Last Man Out

by James E. Parker, Jr.

  A middle-aged, beefy individual welcomed me aboard the USNS Pioneer Contender. He said he was Merchant Marine Capt. Ed Flink and asked who the hell I was and who were “these people.”

  “They are Vietnamese staffers of the U.S. consulate in the delta,” I said.

  The captain said, “That little four-year-old child down there works for the consulate?”

  “Staffers and their families,” I replied.

  I was very tired and did not want to go through another confrontation. All I wanted was a full night’s sleep and to be up early in the morning so I could get back to the U.S. Navy ship and return to Can Tho. I did not want to make conversation or problems.

  “Listen, my friend,” Captain Flink said, “I was recently told to go up to Da Nang—you know Da Nang—to pick up some Vietnamese staffers of the U.S. consulate there. Didn’t get what I expected. Got Vietnamese Rangers who terrorized my ship. Thousands of them. So I don’t believe you. I believe I’m getting set up again.” He paused. “What am I supposed to do with these people? I don’t have enough food. I don’t have facilities. I’m being told all the time what to do. So you tell me, what do I do? You tell me. What do I do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They probably have some food with them. They can sleep on the deck. They will be no problem. I will be no problem, especially if you have a spare bunk, or, if you don’t I can go down there with my people and sleep.”

  The captain continued to look at me. “Where’s your grip? I’ve got a room for you, but I’m telling you, I don’t want any trouble with those people down there and I don’t have anything for them to eat. Maybe some food for tonight. That’s it. They can stay in this first hold here. It’ll get them out of the weather. And I’ll have the galley make them some food for tonight. But that is all.

  Period.”

  “Okay,” I said. The situation was settling itself.

  “Where’s your grip?” the captain asked again.

  “I don’t have one. It was not my plan to be here tonight. I’m here courtesy of the U.S. Navy.”

  I followed a crewman into one of the forward holds. The Vietnamese followed me. Some were still grumbling. Others were tired, like myself, and just wanted to find someplace to lie down. For all her rust and cavernous space, Capt. Flink’s ship was more friendly than the Navy ship had been, and her crew more accommodating.

  On instructions from the crew, Ros and a few of the other men went to the galley and came back with pots of hot food. I said good night to the group and went up to the mess hall. After a hot meal, I sought out Captain Flink.

  He was standing on the bridge with a cigarette and a cup of coffee. I explained to him about the deteriorating situation in the delta and the danger my people would face when the North Vietnamese took control of the country. I expected the government of South Vietnam to fall within the next couple of days. There was much work that I needed to do, and I had promises to keep. I was anxious to get back to Can Tho.

  He listened sympathetically and then said, “Sure. But like I said earlier, you aren’t the first person from the U.S. government to come to this ship from Vietnam and talk about evacuating people. You all act like you’re on a deadly serious mission. And you are. You all are. I know. But I think it’s beyond you a little bit. Ain’t no one in control.”

  Then he paused and looked toward the ships on the horizon. “I was on my way from Hong Kong to Singapore and was told to lay in near Hue to evacuate some Americans from Hue, only we were too late. So at the end of March, they told us to go on to Da Nang and evacuate some Americans there. Some of your people came on board and said something much like you just did, that they had some people to evacuate because if the Commies caught them they’d be killed. Well, what ended up on my ship were those South Vietnamese Rangers I was telling you about. Wild, crazy people. I took two loads out of Da Nang—thousands of ’em, there were so many they couldn’t all find room to lay down—and the Vietnamese Rangers that second time took over my ship. Took over my ship. Killed, raped, robbed. You could hear gunshots all the time. Soldiers were walking around with bloody knives. We had to lock ourselves in the pilothouse. I only had a crew of forty, plus some security, but there were thousands of those wild, crazy Vietnamese people.

  “They finally shot some of the worst once we docked at that island, Phu Quoc, and the people got off, but I’ll tell you, son, it was hell. We found bodies all over the ship after everyone got off. Babies, old women, young boys. Cut, shot, and trampled to death. And it all started when some of your friends came aboard talking about taking on some good Vietnamese refugees who’d be badly treated if the Commies got ’em. Well, if they were talking about those Rangers, I know why they would have been treated badly. They were crazy.”

  “It’ll be different this time. There are only sixty-seven civilians with me,” I said, aware that I wasn’t the only one trying to find my way safely through this morass. “I’m sorry about your problems before. We won’t be a problem.” Flink rolled his eyes and in short order showed me to my quarters, a stateroom with bunk beds and a shower. He said he had taken the liberty of providing some toilet articles out of the ship’s store.

  I thanked him, shut the door, and fell across the bottom bunk. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  The following morning, Tuesday, 29 April, I was up before 0500 and on the bridge.

  The Pioneer Contender was alone.

  There were no U.S. Navy ships around—nothing but flat sea for as far as I could make out in the half light.

  “Where’s the Navy?” I asked the two men on duty in the control room.

  “Left in the middle of the night, I think. Pulled out to the north.”

  “Oh, give me a break,” I said. “Where’s your radio? How do I call the U.S. Navy?”

  “Sparky’s still asleep,” one of the seamen said. “He don’t have no communication with the Navy, though. We do have this,” he said and offered a small portable radio, not unlike a Radio Shack Christmas toy.

  “Who do you talk to on this?” I asked, in an incredulous tone.

  “Ship Control, I think, is the call sign. It’s part of the Sealift Command,” he said.

  The seaman was not used to a lot of questions from strangers in his control room so early in the morning.

  “Yeah, okay, that’s what I want, Ship Control; I want a pickup,” I said.

  I walked out of the room onto the bridge and turned on the radio. The frequency was crowded with transmissions, some weak, some strong.

  There was no Ship Control, although a common call sign was Tugboat Control. I made several efforts to call but got no response. Finally a ship relayed to Tugboat Control that the Pioneer Contender was trying to reach him.

  “Yeah, what does she want?” Tugboat Control asked in a decidedly unmilitary tone.

  “What do you want, Pioneer Contender?” asked the intermediary.

  “I’m an embassy officer on board, and I want a pickup for delivery back to the USS Vancouver so that I can get to Can Tho. Where’s Vancouver?” I asked.

  “We don’t know. Tugboat Control doesn’t know. That’s naval operations.”

  “What does the Pioneer Contender want?” asked Tugboat Control.

  “It’s some guy trying to get on shore. Everyone’s trying to get out. He’s trying to get in.”

  It was hard to tell exactly what was going on with Tugboat Control. Apparently it was involved in a massive way with what we had been doing on a small scale the previous day, getting Vietnamese civilians out to ships, and probably operating some distance from the lonely, empty sea around us. Evacuating people from Saigon, I guessed.

  There was nothing I could do. I was stuck on a merchant ship sitting at anchor.

  I returned the radio to the seamen in the pilothouse and asked them to get me if the U.S. Navy reappeared. I went back to my stateroom, took a bath, and went back to bed. At mid-morning, I awoke, dressed, and went out on deck.

  Ros was standing close by an
d listening to a commercial radio station on a portable AM radio. He said the station was reporting that North Vietnamese troops were entering Saigon. The U.S. embassy was being evacuated. The radio broadcast was crowded with the voices of excited people.

  We swayed at anchor. Seagulls squawked overhead, but there were no ships anywhere in sight.

  Saigon evacuated. North Vietnamese troops entering Saigon. The best and brightest Americans in Saigon said it wouldn’t happen. In the delta we had believed Hai, and he was right, to the day.

  The consulate in the delta was also certain to be evacuated. I thought about Loi and visualized him waiting at my apartment with his family. Loi would be quiet, trying to calm his family, and unsure if he should stay at the apartment any longer. He must be wanting desperately for me to show up.

  Nearby in another part of Can Tho, the mother would be huddled with her two children as they waited for me. She would not go out; I had made that clear. Don’t leave. Don’t go to the consulate. Wait for me. She would be crying. I could almost hear her across the ocean. And cussing me. Right now, I thought, she is inside her house looking at the door and pleading, “Where is he? I have been abandoned again by American men, this one leaving my children behind to die.”

  All those people waiting for me, and I was trapped at sea, sitting at anchor, cut off from the world.

  I sought out Sparky, who said he had only shortwave to the Philippines in addition to the tiny portable used to net with Tugboat Control.

  “This big boat and that’s all you’ve got? Two dinky radios?”

  I ate with Captain Flink at lunch. The evacuation from Saigon was continuing. I suggested that it was an exciting break in his normal routine.

  “I ain’t set up for all this. I can’t take people,” he said. “I’ve got no food, no sanitation equipment. The people making all these decisions don’t know this. I’m supposed to carry cargo. That’s C-A-R-G-O. Your sixty-seven people are more than I can handle. I don’t like people. Especially people who don’t speak English. I don’t want this ship ever again considered as a people carrier. You appear to be a nice guy, all of you people are nice guys, but I don’t want you on this ship of mine. Or those Vietnamese Marines. I want boxes of things that don’t talk some foreign language, carry guns, eat, and shit.”

  Throughout the afternoon we listened to the AM radio station and Tugboat Control. The Americans were on their way out of the country, and evidently thousands of Vietnamese as well.

  My anxieties began to drain out of me. There was nothing I could do. The war was over for me. Thinking back over the past few days, I knew I had done all I could do. I wished that Loi and the woman and her children had not been traumatized, and I hoped they would be treated fairly by the North Vietnamese. I’m sorry, I said to myself a dozen times. I couldn’t help it that I wasn’t there.

  There was a certain peace on the Pioneer Contender. I had been the subject of so much scorn recently—from the woman and from the 7th Division commander. It was all over.

  As dusk began to fall that evening, the newsman on the AM radio station said that all of the Americans had left the country. For the first time in hundreds of years it was under the complete control of the Vietnamese. The Western devils were gone.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Air America to the Rescue

  After supper I looked over the paperback books in the ship’s library, and wandered down to talk with the KIP. By then most of them were appreciative of our efforts to get them out of the country. Still, a few of the older women continued to cry. Some of the men said they would remember the day for the rest of their lives. Ros, as usual, was quiet. He was the only ethnic Cambodian in the group, but that made little difference. He had always been a loner.

  I wondered how the evacuation had gone in Can Tho. We had been ready. Jim D. and Tom F. had proved themselves to be very capable. In the face of uncertainty, when the safest course would have been to do nothing—no one would have blamed them if the KIP didn’t get out—they had done what they thought was right. Everyone except the base officers and Air America yelled at them. Tough guys, they had probably gotten out without any problems, I thought.

  In fact, I found out later that there had been some problems in Can Tho. Early on the morning of 29 April, both helicopters, which had remained in Can Tho overnight, were dispatched to pickup points to get the last of the remaining KIP and take them out to the Navy. Later, in the consulate, Tom was talking with one of the Marine guards downstairs when someone told him that MacNamara had just received a telephone call from the embassy ordering the evacuation of all Americans in the delta. When he got up to the base offices, Jim was reading a flash cable from Saigon with a parallel message ordering the evacuation of base personnel.

  Tom said, “We were right. To the day.”

  Jim didn’t comment. He told the support officer to bring his money to the logistics compound to pay off the last of the base guards. Turning to Phyllis, he asked her to gather the few sensitive records that were left so he could destroy them and he also told her to advise everyone to move to Coconut Palms to stage for the evacuation. Tom was dispatched to the radio room, where he told the communications operator to shut down and either destroy the coding equipment or take it with him.

  Within minutes the support officer was ready with a large pouch of money, Jim had destroyed the last of the sensitive records, and everyone hurried out the door. Phyllis was the last to leave. She calmly counted people off as they left, reached in and turned out the lights, shut the door, and walked out.

  Jim, Tom, and the support officer went to the logistics compound and met up with the chief guard, who had his supervisors standing by. They all went upstairs in one of the buildings to make the final termination payment. That had been a major concern of Tom—that we maintain a cohesive guard force no matter what happened in the delta. He had had long talks with the chief guard, not unlike my conversations with Loi in Vi Thanh, to get assurances that the Americans would be protected to the end. Tom had told the Nhung that neither he nor his men were going to be evacuated. He had to understand that Tom would not make any provision to get them out, but he would provide adequately in the way of a termination bonus. The guard who, with an agency staffer had received the CIA’s highest award for bravery for their activities during the Tet offensive of 1968, agreed. This would probably mean that he and his family, in addition to his men and their families, would have to go into hiding after the Americans withdrew because they were incorruptible anti-Communists, supportive of the Americans to the end. But the guard didn’t question his role. Like so many other agency men, he accepted his last assignment by saying he would do good.

  At the Coconut Palms, the guards let the base people inside and locked the gates. Phyllis accounted for everyone except the communications operator and radioed Tom.

  While Jim and the support officer were paying off the senior guard people, Tom went down to the dock where several Boston Whalers (stout, flat-bottomed fishing boats) were tied up. The Air America choppers had not been seen since they had departed early that morning with the last load of KIP going out to the U.S. Navy ships. Tom had heard that American officials in Saigon were being evacuated by helicopter. He felt sure that their Air America helicopters had been diverted to the capital. The CIA people in Can Tho would have to leave with MacNamara in his landing boats, which were tied up downriver from the logistics compound, at the State Department club.

  After inspecting the Boston Whalers, Tom called MacNamara to tell him that the base people would be coming down the river in their small boats to join his group. MacNamara said he had already pushed off and would wait for them in the middle of the Bassac River. He said the CIA communicator was with him.

  The group at the Coconut Palms overheard the radio conversation, and everyone moaned. Now their evacuation would involve moving by Jeeps from the Coconut Palms to the logistics compound and then down the small river in the Boston Whalers to the Bassac River for the beginning of what ce
rtainly would be a hazardous trip to the South China Sea.

  Tom was squeezing his eyes shut in anticipation of what lay ahead. Around him in the logistics compound, workers were busy with the end-of-the-month inventory, mechanics were doing maintenance work on various vehicles, and other workers unloaded a truck that had recently arrived from Saigon with supplies. A voice broke in on Tom’s radio. George Taylor, copilot on one of the two Air America helicopters, was saying that both choppers were returning to Can Tho. Tom looked up and, way off to the east, could just barely see them.

  He was almost giddy when he said, “Oh, you are so beautiful.”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said, “we almost ain’t here. On the way back, air ops in Saigon ordered us north to help in the evacuation, but we said we had some good customers in Can Tho and had to return there for one last trip before we headed up. You did want us to come back, didn’t you?”

  “I wish I had as much money as I’m glad to see you,” Tom said.

  The pilots of the two helicopters, Hitchman and Weitz, said that they were low on fuel and needed to gas up before they did any more flying. Mac got on the radio at Coconut Palms and suggested that one helicopter land where they were and the other in the logistics compound, and he would help direct the choppers to a fuel dump somewhere in town.

  Tom ran upstairs to get Jim and the support man. When they left, the chief guard suddenly found himself in possession of all the U.S. and Vietnamese money left on the desk. Downstairs, the CIA men moved to a cleared area in the compound near the front gate, and Hitchman landed—blowing off the roofs of dozens of sheds in the community of lean-tos right outside the fence.