Weitz sat his helicopter down at Coconut Palms and picked up the base people there. Mac had on the customer headset. He had been working the helicopters over the past few days and suggested that they first try to get fuel at the airport. This idea was discounted out of hand by the pilots because no one answered the radio in the control tower there. There was no telling who was in control of the airport by now. The next suggestion was the Shell compound on the road to the airport. Although neither pilot had landed there recently, they knew it had a pump and a landing zone inside the compound large enough for two helicopters to be refueled at one time.
Weitz’s helicopter, with the people from the Coconut Palms, reached the Shell compound first and made a pass overhead. No one on the chopper saw any unusual activity below, so Weitz brought it around and landed near several rubber bladders of fuel. Within minutes, Hitchman’s helicopter containing Tom, Jim, and the support officer landed behind them.
Once both helicopters were on the ground, a group of armed Vietnamese soldiers came out from behind a building and lined up by the pumps.
“Goddammit,” Mac said, “we were so close to getting out of here.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Weitz, “they probably just want a ride out of the country.”
“They ain’t got no luggage,” Taylor said. “Plus, my bet is people who want out come running up to the helicopter. They don’t stand in front with guns in their hands.”
Both helicopters settled down, although the pilots kept up full power and the battey-de-battey of the blades continued loudly.
Weitz said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Two people go over there beside those Vietnamese and pick up the gas nozzles and bring them back to the helicopters and give us a squirt. We don’t need to top off. Just enough to get us out of here.”
“I’ll go,” said the flight mechanic in the rear helicopter. “Who’s going up there?”
“Mac,” Weitz said.
“Mac?” Mac asked.
“Look, we have submachine guns. You go over there and get the gas nozzle and come back to the helicopter. If they try to grab you, drop down and we blast them with automatic fire.”
“There is no chance in hell we can get away if we start shooting. There must be a dozen of them. You going to kill them all or what? And how we going to get fuel if everyone starts shooting? This ain’t the movies, you know.”
“You got a better plan?” Weitz asked. “We have to have petrol. It’s right over there.”
“Okay,” Mac said, “if they try to get me—shit, look at them, some have AK-47s—if they try to get me, I fall down and you guys blast ’em and then I get up and try to make it back to the helicopter.”
“Right.”
“Okay.”
Mac slowly, awkwardly, got out of the lead helicopter and walked stiffly toward the rack holding the gas nozzles. The flight mechanic from the other helicopter was somewhere behind him. The Vietnamese did not show any expression. Hopefully they were going to ask for a ride out of the country, Mac thought. Please don’t want to capture me. Please don’t want to kill me.
Picking up a nozzle, Mac walked back to the helicopter. He looked one of the kickers in the eye the whole way, as he watched for any sudden movement by the kicker. Anything sudden and Mac was dropping to the ground. But then, he thought, I’ve got to be sure because if I drop, the pilot and Taylor and the kicker are going to start shooting.
The kicker had removed the gas tank cap on the side of the helicopter, and, as Mac walked up, he went back to lean against the helicopter near his gun.
The flight mechanic in the rear helicopter passed him with another hose and nozzle.
Mac starting pumping gas, and he pumped and pumped. Finally he realized that no one in the helicopter was going to tell him when to stop. They were all intent on staring down the Vietnamese in front of them.
The flight mechanic from the rear helicopter had finished pumping and was screwing on the gas cap.
“Hey!” Mac yelled over the noise of the helicopter to the kicker. “Is this enough?” The kicker didn’t hear. Mac stopped pumping and went over and grabbed his arm. The kicker jumped straight up.
“Is this enough?” Mac asked again. When the kicker said that it was, he went back to the nozzle, extracted it from the helicopter, and began to walk back to the nozzle rack. Halfway there, Mac thought to himself, I don’t need to take this all the way over to where those men are standing with their guns. I’ll just drop it here.
And he did.
When he turned to go back to the helicopter, one of the Vietnamese shouted, “Hey you!”
Mac was facing the helicopter and watching Taylor, who was vibrating because of the high torque of the engine. Mac knew that Weitz had an automatic rifle in his lap. The flight mechanic, the gas hose in his hand, stopped, frozen, and looked wide-eyed at Mac.
Should he drop to the ground? Was this it? Mac was rigid, tense. His face was suddenly wet with sweat.
“You. You!” the Vietnamese said loudly behind him.
Mac turned around, ready to drop.
“You have to sign for the gas.” The Vietnamese offered a clipboard. Mac signed it and got back on the helicopter—the last American on the ground in Can Tho, and one of the most thankful to be leaving.
I went up to my stateroom early that night. Captain Flink woke me up around midnight.
“There are planes buzzing my ship,” he said. “Why are there planes buzzing my ship? Do they have bombs? You caused all this. They are North Vietnamese jets and they want to kill you and your people, and they are buzzing my ship.” Outside, I could hear a jet scream by, low.
“Jets?” was all I could think to ask. A lot had happened during the past few days. I was on a merchant marine ship. A strange beefy man beside me was accusing me of something that had to do with jets. I didn’t have a lot of experience with merchant marine ships or jets, and I had trouble putting things into perspective.
Someone came running up to the cabin and told the captain that boats were coming at us from shore.
Still confused, I thought, Boats?
“Goddammit man!” the captain yelled at me. He wheeled around and left.
I dressed and ran outside to the bridge. Standing by the captain, I watched two boats slowly make their way toward us in the dark. The captain ordered the anchor hauled. Jets continued to buzz the ship and the two approaching boats. It was a friendly sort of nuzzling by the aircraft, I thought, and I suddenly realized that the two boats were the landing craft with MacNamara and his staff. I told Captain Flink that everything was going to be all right.
That was clear when I looked at the boats through the ship’s binoculars. They were flying American flags.
“The consulate is coming,” I said. “You’ve got more guests.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” the captain exclaimed. “I think I would rather be attacked by jets.” After a pause he said, “I’ll tell you this, my friend, I don’t know how you’all did this, but I know if you hadn’t been on this ship, I would have been out of here. Those two boats would not have caught me until I reached Singapore. I don’t like jets and unidentified boats that come out of a country the Communists have just taken over. You people don’t understand. This is a C-A-R-G-O ship.”
Talking through a relay, I tried to get someone at Tugboat Control to pass the word to the Navy that the U.S. Consulate group was arriving at the Pioneer Contender. Finally, someone netting with Tugboat Control said they would pass the message.
Sparky tried to raise Sealift Command to get instructions on what to do. In his messages, he said the captain urgently requested permission to get under way.
As the boats approached, the captain threw the rope ladder over the side and ordered his crane in position to take on the luggage.
I contacted Tugboat Control again and asked if they were interested in two landing craft to assist in the evacuation. Otherwise we were going to cast them off. Tugboat Control, usually slow to answer any of my c
alls, immediately came back and said through the intermediary that landing craft were exactly what they needed. They asked if there was any way we could bring them up to Vung Tau, a coastal town near the mouth of the Saigon River.
I remembered that MacNamara had hired some river pilots to drive the boats down the river, so I figured they could drive the boats to Vung Tau. The captain was busy with instructions to get the two landing boats tied up beside the ship near the rope ladder, so I asked someone in the control room, “How far is Vung Tau? How long to drive one of those landing craft there?”
“Eight, ten hours,” the man at the wheel suggested.
I went back on the bridge and stood beside the captain. Borrowing his loudspeaker, I called down to MacNamara and asked if his river pilots were up to taking the landing craft to Vung Tau. He answered through his loudspeaker that he didn’t think so.
Two of the first people up the ladder were Filipino engineers who had maintained the generators at the consulate. I asked them what was wrong with the pilots, and they said the Vietnamese crew had disappeared before the boats left Can Tho. There were no river pilots on board; they had learned how to drive the boats themselves.
“Good,” I said. “We’re going to take those boats to Vung Tau. You guys and me.”
Most of the Vietnamese who had arrived with me were on the upper deck as they watched the on-loading of the consulate crowd. I yelled for Ros, and he walked quietly out of the crowd. When I told him to get his stuff together because we were going for a ride, he turned without a question and went down a ladder to get his gear from the hold.
I went back to the portable radio, called Tugboat Control, and asked them to confirm that they seriously wanted these landing craft. Was it important or just something that would be sort of nice? Tugboat Control responded immediately and said the boats would make a difference in whether some people got out or not. It was important to those people.
I had left Loi and the kids, but perhaps I could help others. Maybe it was a trade-off. Putting the radio down, I told the captain that a Cambodian, a couple of Filipinos, and I were going to drive the landing boats to Vung Tau.
Flink said Sparky had just gotten word that the Pioneer Contender was also to relocate to Vung Tau to help in the evacuation. He suggested that I go in front of him with the two boats. He would hold a straight reading north and pull back to match my speed. All I had to do was keep looking over my shoulder and guide on him.
Ros and the Filipino engineers were on the deck. When everyone had cleared the landing craft except for a couple of men, we went over the side and down the ladders.
The Filipinos got into the rear boat. MacNamara was still in the other boat when Ros and I climbed into it. He put the last items into the net and then motioned the crane operator to lift it. He had the consulate’s American flag with him and was wearing his helmet with the word Congen and a big white star on the front. I welcomed him to the Pioneer Contender and told him of the arrangements to get the landing craft to Vung Tau, but he was exhausted and didn’t care what happened to the boats. He was just glad to get to the ship. Coming down the Bassac River, they had been fired on, he said, but everyone was safely out.
“Good,” I said. “Go up, take my stateroom, take a shower, go to sleep. See you in the morning.”
Ros and I were then alone in the boat, and we didn’t have the faintest idea how to drive it.
The captain yelled through the loudspeaker to untie our lines. While Ros did this, I went into the small pilot area and tried to figure out the controls. Gauges on the console indicated that we had plenty of fuel. The throttles and gearshifts for the two engines were prominent in the light from the gauges. With the steering wheel in front of me, that was all I needed, I thought.
The Filipinos threw off the ropes holding the two boats together at about the same time that Ros untied the ropes holding us to the Pioneer Contender, and we were free.
I moved the throttles and rammed back into the other landing craft. After I changed gears and gave the boat more gas, I looked up to see that we were heading straight for the ship’s anchor chain. It was a long way up to the deck. The captain came on the loudspeaker and told us to stand clear of the anchor, which was coming out of the water.
Easy for him to say, I thought. I finally got control of the boat by putting it into reverse again and backing out some distance away from both the ship and the other landing craft. Ros came around behind me and watched as I played with the controls.
I finally stopped backing up, but couldn’t see directly in front of the boat when we were going forward. The controls were in the stern, where all the weight was, and the bow stuck out of the water like a shield. To see straight ahead I had to walk over to the side of the boat while Ros held the wheel, or turn the boat to one side or another. Also, because it was empty and the bow was high, the boat was difficult to drive. Wind and waves turned it from one side to the other. One second I was going due north, then a wave hit the front and I was going due west. I finally moved the boat off the port bow to the front of the Pioneer Contender, which had just gotten under way. The other landing craft fell in behind us.
TWENTY-FOUR
Farewell Vietnam
We were a small parade heading north that early morning—my landing craft in front, bouncing from one side to the other, then the less erratic landing craft, and finally the monstrously large cargo ship. I tried to find a good medium speed. The faster we went, the more our bow stuck out of the water and the more affected we were by the wind and waves. The slower we went, the more we fell under the bow of the large ship behind us. I had to turn every minute to make sure we were staying on line.
When I got tired, Ros took the wheel. He struggled with it, and veered off to one side, followed by the landing craft behind us. As we got on line again, I thought that the crew of the Pioneer Contender surely must be cussing us as unfit sailors.
The wind picked up around 0400, and we were violently tossed from side to side. Every time I turned around, my neck hurt. I tried to motion to the Filipinos to take the lead, but either they did not understand or did not want the point. Doggedly they stayed behind me.
When the sun came up I had a chance to look around the pilot station after being in the dark all night. I found some lights. Why weren’t they on when I got in?
And then I looked at the gear levers. I had only one engine engaged! When I had both engines in gear the boat settled down to the more steady motion I had admired in the Filipinos’ boat.
Around 0800, the Pioneer Contender suddenly accelerated. Despite our best efforts to stay in front, she passed us to the east and was gone. Nice guys, I thought.
I had motioned the other boat to come up beside us and we were traveling along more or less evenly when Ros tapped me on the arm and motioned to the west. My first thought was that we had come in close to shore. Then I thought we were drifting toward an island, because we were going forward, but it seemed that the island was closing.
I tried to increase our speed, but the more I throttled forward, the more erratic the boat became. And the island was getting closer.
The Filipinos’ boat moved ahead, leaving me to fight the back-and-forth motion of our landing boat.
The island kept getting closer and I was unable to stop the drift. Then I noticed boats between us and the island. Ros took the wheel while I reached for binoculars and fixed them on the approaching boats. They were filled with people. And that wasn’t an island behind them, but many more boats, also filled with people.
The boats were overtaking us. What are those Filipinos doing that I’m not doing? I thought desperately, because their boat was moving ahead. They must have a better boat. That was no consolation, because behind me, maybe a hundred boats were bearing down, straight at us. For what? Who told them I was here? I was taking this very personally. Perhaps they weren’t coming at me. Perhaps they were heading to Vung Tau and we were just in the way.
I could barely see the Pioneer Contender on
the horizon. She wasn’t extending the distance between us, and I wondered if I should be so lucky that she was, in fact, at Vung Tau. I had no way of knowing exactly where we were. All I knew for sure was that a haggard Cambodian and I were somewhere off the coast of Vietnam the day after the Americans had been evacuated and that a hundred boats were rushing up to us. Could they be North Vietnamese attack boats? No, they must surely be South Vietnamese boat people heading to Vung Tau, I decided, so I turned the boat southeast to get out of their way. And they turned in my direction. The whole fleet. Why me? The Filipinos’ boat continued to move toward the Pioneer Contender.
The first boat, lightly loaded with civilians, reached us from the rear. We had no weapons, thanks to the U.S. Navy, but Ros had found a knife somewhere. He looked to me for instructions, but I decided that we could not fend off one boat, much less the many others behind it.
I told Ros to yell at them to go on to Vung Tau, that they would be taken care of at Vung Tau. Ros went to the side of the boat and yelled. I had never heard him raise his voice before and was surprised at how squeaky it was.
The people on the boat ignored him, and someone threw a rope over a cleat on the side of our landing craft. Another boat came up on the other side and lashed on. People from both boats began piling into the landing craft. As other boats arrived, they tied onto the first boats, and their passengers scrambled into our craft. Soon the only place where we did not have boats around us was to our bow. The tongue of the landing craft prevented them from making purchase there.
Quickly our landing craft filled with people, settling the bow into the water, and I could see the ocean in front from the driving console.
More boats were coming up behind, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to see them because so many boats had tied up to one another. I told Ros to get four or five men and bring them to me. Within minutes he was back with a dark, swarthy crew. I told him to say that their being on board was no problem and I would look after them once we arrived at Vung Tau, but we could not take on any more passengers. I wanted them to go around and cut the lines holding the boats to our craft.
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