Escape from Saigon
Page 20
The tank trained its guns directly at them but didn’t fire. Matt knew the tankers could see them—he could see a man’s head peeking from the turret, his eyes intent, watching silently. Long, breathless seconds passed.
“Nuoc,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what’s going on here but we may be catching a break. Maybe they’re out of ammo. Maybe they don’t want to fire—draw attention to themselves. Whatever. I think it’s our move.”
He bent slowly, never taking his eyes off the man in the turret, and reached for the bike’s handlebar. When there was no reaction, he lifted the bike upright, waited a few seconds, then began to roll it toward the nearest corner. Nuoc followed in silence, like Matt keeping her eyes focused on the tank, while the turret with its big gun rotated to remain aimed directly at them, keeping pace as they walked. They expected the tank to fire with every step.
It seemed an eternity passed before they reached the corner. Finally, they neared the wall of an imposing stone building—safety, if their luck held out a few seconds longer. Matt wanted to say something, yell something, ask the tankers why they were letting them live. He restrained himself, then momentarily thought about throwing a salute before discarding the idea. The NVA was still the enemy. They would have killed them if they wanted to.
When Nuoc reached the edge of the building, Matt hesitated long enough to nod toward the man in the tank, then he too stepped out of sight behind the wall.
Then they ran, pushing the motorbike ahead of them as fast as they could. When they reached an alley, Matt stopped and kick-started the engine to life. They jumped on and raced away, the rear tire smoking.
“Someday when this is over, remind me to ask you what that was all about!” he yelled as he banged through the gears.
“When this is over, I don’t want to be reminded about any of it!” she yelled back over the engine’s whine.
* * *
With Tuan urging her onward, Lisette ran until her burning lungs demanded a halt. The embassy was a few blocks north—they could see the compound’s lights against the night sky and hear the helicopters roaring in and out on short intervals.
As they rested in a doorway alcove, three South Vietnamese soldiers rounded the corner across from them, heading in the same direction. The soldiers didn’t see them in the shadows. At the same moment a half-dozen uniformed North Vietnamese PAVN soldiers, wearing pith helmets and backpacks, materialized less than ten yards from their doorway. Without hesitation the People’s Army soldiers aimed and fired on full automatic at the South Vietnamese trio, who fell where they stood. Two of the PAVN soldiers ran up to the now-prostrate figures and shot each man again at point-blank range.
Lisette’s breath stopped and her legs nearly gave way beneath her. She had seen the aftermath of many firefights and was no stranger to death and corpses. But she had never seen men gunned down at close range. As she watched the PAVN soldiers deliver the death blows, the savagery of the moment made her cry out despite herself.
The soldiers reacted as one, spinning around in a defensive crouch, their gun sights suddenly trained on Lisette and Tuan.
Before they could fire, Tuan raised his hands and cried, “Quyết thắng! Quyết thắng!”
One of the PAVN soldiers—their leader, apparently—ordered the others to hold their fire. Cautiously, he motioned Tuan forward and the two spoke briefly while Lisette stood transfixed, her gaze locked on the other soldiers, their gun muzzles locked on her.
The leader nodded and turned away from Tuan. He ordered the others to move on, but as he began to follow he hesitated, then turned and took three steps back toward Lisette. He raised his weapon and pointed it directly at her. Lisette froze in terror.
“Saigon is ours now,” he said calmly in a cold, flat voice. “Do not be here tomorrow. Your good fortune has saved you this time, but it may not continue.”
Then he spun on his heel and ran to catch up with the others, who were already disappearing into the darkness in the direction of the Presidential Palace.
“We must go, quickly!” Tuan urged, taking Lisette by the elbow. “If we can reach the embassy we’ll be all right, the helicopters are still evacuating people from the compound. This way!”
Lisette tried to catch her breath. “Tuan! What … what was that? They let us go! They killed those soldiers without a word or … or a warning, or anything … but they let us go!”
“Yes, and they told us not to be here if they should come back! We must be very careful now!”
“But …” Lisette’s mind was racing. She found it difficult to breathe. To walk. To think.
“Don’t stop,” Tuan urged, pulling her onward. “We need to find a way to get you out. Now!”
* * *
The streets surrounding the U.S. Embassy were absolute chaos. Thousands of city residents crowded the compound environs, all vying to reach its sanctuary and secure a chance to be among those being evacuated by the big helicopters shuttling in and lifting off from the embassy courtyard and roof. Though dawn was still hours away, big floodlights had been turned on inside the compound and atop the embassy walls, transforming the darkness into day. People ran in every direction, mothers hustling small children ahead of them, men with babies in their arms, old mamasans and papasans with anxious, bewildered looks on their faces. On the side street behind the French Embassy they encountered a group of SVN soldiers tearing off their uniforms and hurriedly donning civilian clothes. A man raced up on a bicycle only to be thrown down onto the sidewalk by another man who pushed a cart overflowing with house furnishings.
As Lisette and Tuan came around to the front of the embassy, the noise of the crowd swelled—a thousand voices shouting as one, pleading, demanding, screaming in fear. Several people had climbed onto the compound fence and were attempting to scale it. Behind the fence, U.S. Marine guards held their rifles ready as they warned the climbers to drop back or be shot. Somewhere beyond their field of vision a shot rang out, causing several of the would-be fence scalers to leap back into the crowd.
“We have to get to the main gate,” Tuan shouted to Lisette. “We don’t know how many helicopters will come or for how long. Do you think they will recognize you?”
“I have my press credentials and passport—the Marine guards will let us in!” she replied, her voice almost lost in the din. “We’ll tell them you’re my husband! They’ll have to get us out!”
They pushed into the crowd but the crush was impossible. Hundreds of bodies stood between them and the gate, no one willing to give way. Tuan shouldered the camera and kept his arm locked in Lisette’s. As they struggled to move forward, a man in front of Lisette turned half-around and screamed at her to keep back. Tuan, tall and athletic, shoved the man away and stepped in front of Lisette to block any further threat. As she recoiled from the man, she felt her shoulder bag being pulled from her arm. She tried to turn but it was too late—the bag and whoever had grabbed it had disappeared into the mass of people behind her.
“My bag!” she shouted. “Someone took my bag! Tuan, all my IDs—they’re gone!”
Tuan tried to turn and push past her to find the thief. It was no use. A hundred angry, agitated, fearful faces stared back at him. The bag was gone.
They had no choice but to continue toward the embassy. It seemed to take forever, but they finally neared the main gate, which was padlocked with a heavy chain. As an added precaution, one of the embassy’s military vehicles was parked hard against the inside of the gate.
It took a full minute for Lisette to get one of the Marine guard’s attention. “I’m an American!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “I’m here with my husband—we need to get in!”
At first the young Marine ignored her. A hundred Vietnamese faces much like hers looked back at him, all screaming for him to notice. Finally, he heard the word “American” and looked toward her.
“ID!” he yelled without stepping forward or moving from his position. “If you’re American, show me your ID!”
“No ID, no entry!” the Marine said, turning away. A fence-climber leaped onto the gate and the Marine shouldered his weapon, pointing it straight at the man from three feet away. The man thought better and dropped back.
“Sir! I need to get in!” Lisette shouted. “The embassy will vouch for me! Please!”
“Not happening!” the Marine said curtly. “No ID, no entry. Now step back! Step away from the gate!” He raised his rifle to his shoulder, his threat clear.
Lisette slumped back against Tuan. As she did, more bodies quickly surged between them and the fence. Within seconds, they were again yards from the gate, as though pulled by a strong riptide away from shore. She knew it was futile to try again.
“If we can find someone from the embassy staff, somewhere around the grounds,” she cried to Tuan. “There must be someone out here that I’ll know and will let us in!”
Tuan looked over the heads of the crowd to the grounds beyond the fence. “I think it is hopeless,” he said. “I see no embassy personnel, only Marines. The embassy people are already being evacuated—they all may be gone by now. We have to find another way.”
* * *
At the other end of the crowd, Matt Moran and Nuoc were finding entry to the embassy and their hoped-for ticket out to be just as impossible. They had come this far but now it seemed their luck had turned against them. As they pushed away from the edge of the melee, Matt thought he spotted a familiar face. He hurriedly pulled Nuoc along as he threaded through the sea of bodies until they were within shouting distance of Lisette and Tuan.
“Miss Vo! Lisette Vo!”
Lisette heard her name called and scanned the crowd. An upraised arm waved frantically, then Matt Moran emerged from the crush of bodies with a young woman in tow.
“Do I know you?” she said.
“We met last week in Saigon. I told you that I came back to Vietnam to find my wife’s sister—this is her, Nuoc.”
“I remember now. Matt, right? What are you doing here?”
“Trying to get the hell out!” he yelled, pushing through the bodies toward them. “I thought you’d be on one of those choppers by now!”
“Not without my ID—someone in the crowd took my bag. Now the Marines won’t let us onto the embassy grounds.”
“We can’t get in either,” he said. “Saigon’s no longer in the government’s control. The NVA are everywhere—we were almost run down by one of their tanks, and we heard there are sapper squads running around targeting all the main buildings. None of us are safe here!”
“We know. We had a close encounter of our own—something I don’t ever want to repeat. The question is, what do we do now? Where can we go?”
“Hello, I’m Nuoc, Matt’s sister-in-law,” Nuoc said, inserting herself between them. “I think there may be another way. My boyfriend—I mean, my fiancé—is a helicopter pilot with the air force. We heard his unit pulled back to Saigon, or somewhere near Saigon, after the communists took Phan Rang. I haven’t been able to contact him and I’m sure he’s trying to get in touch with me somehow, but there’s no way we can communicate with the telephones down.”
“He could be anywhere—” Matt began, but Lisette cut him off.
“No! We were told yesterday that all of the intact airborne units were relocated to Tan Son Nhut,” she said. “If Nuoc’s fiancé is out there he might not be able to get into the city—”
“Yeah, and us getting out there would be just as much of a long shot,” Matt interjected.
“Everyone is trying to get out of Saigon at this point,” said Tuan. “I don’t think the communists care right now where people go—there’s nowhere to run. The soldiers will be concentrating on eliminating any opposition and securing the city’s important buildings and resources. Listen—do you hear any more helicopters landing at the embassy? I think the evacuation from here is already over. Tan Son Nhut may be the only place—the last place—you can get out.”
They looked to each other. What Tuan said made sense.
“Then we have to go now, right now!” Lisette said.
* * *
“No one’s leaving Saigon, not anymore,” Matt said. “Those people trying to get into the embassy? They left their cars and mopeds all over the place. I found a Yamaha with the keys in it and rode it here with Nuoc. I’ll go back around the embassy to see if it’s still there—if not, I’m sure I can find something else that can take us all out to Tan Son Nhut.”
“All right. Take Nuoc and see what you can find,” said Lisette, snapping the lens cover off her camera. “I need to get some of this on film. Tuan and I will wait for you here. Be careful!”
As Matt and Nuoc headed off, Lisette turned to face Tuan.
“Before we do this, Tuan, I need to know what went on back there, when the North Vietnamese soldiers shot those three South Vietnamese troops. What you said—‘Quyết thắng’—that’s the North Vietnamese Army’s slogan: ‘Determined to win.’ Was that your passcode? Are you with them, with the North? Tell me! Who are you?”
“I am your friend.”
“Bullshit! Why did they back off—for you?”
“Please … I am from the South, Lisette. I love the Saigon people. But I have always followed Ho Chi Minh. You could not know. My father was a student in Paris with Uncle Ho before our war with the French. They marched together against the occupation of our country! When they returned to Vietnam, my father introduced me to him. Ho Chi Minh was a great man, a patriot! His vision will unify the country. You’ll see!”
“All this time—when you would disappear and go off on your own—taking care of family, you said! I never suspected.”
“Listen to me, I beg you.”
“No! You lied to me. Now Sam is dead, and you’re on the side of the people who killed him. You killed him. You may as well have pulled the trigger! Damn you! No—fuck you! Fuck you, you bastard!”
Tuan shook his head. “No. No. No Lise … Miss … Lisette. Please. I would not let that happen! If I knew, I would have stopped it. I would have stopped you and Sam from going.”
“Get away from me, you son of a bitch!” Lisette screamed, pushing Tuan away, her tears mingling with the sweat and dirt on her face.
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way now. I had to keep the secret from you. It was not easy! But I never let harm come to you.”
“Harm? What do you call lying to me for ten years?”
Tuan looked at her with a mixture of pity and regret. “Now you must go, and I stay. Perhaps one day you can forgive me. If not forgive, at least understand.”
He took a brightly colored cloth from his pocket and unfolded it so she could see. It was an armband made from a small flag—a red and blue flag with a bright yellow star in the center, the banner of the Viet Cong National Liberation Front. Lisette had seen those flags many times before, scattered across battlefields and hidden in tunnels from the Mekong Delta to the DMZ.
Tuan pulled on the armband and pinned it to his sleeve. “Good-bye, Lisette. We have waited and suffered many years for this day. Now I must go and join my comrades.”
“Viet Nam cong hoa!” he shouted as he ran off into the dark.
* * *
Lisette wordlessly watched Tuan go. She wanted him to leave, but now she felt abandoned and alone. First Sam … now Tuan. She couldn’t think. How could she have been so blind?
Matt and Nuoc roared up on a motorcycle, breaking her spell.
“I couldn’t find a car,” he said, “but there are lots of motorbikes lying around. This is the bike that Nuoc and I rode over here. I’ll find another for you and Tuan. Where’s your buddy?”
“He’s not coming with us,” was all Lisette could say. There was an awkward moment and Matt could see she didn’t want to discuss it further,
so he let it go.
“Look, we can take time to find another ride,” he said, “or we can all go now on Nuoc’s bike. It’s fast and there’s plenty of room for the three of us, and it’s still got gas in the tank. I say we dee-dee the heck outta here before we find any more trouble—or it finds us!”
Shouldering her camera, Lisette squeezed onto the motorbike behind Nuoc.
What’s done is done, she thought. Who knows what’s next?
“I need to get to the airport in a hurry, driver!” she called out, gripping Nuoc by the belt.
“Okay, then. Hang on, ladies!” he shouted back as he dropped it into gear, and together they sped off toward Tan Son Nhut.
* * *
Official White House text of President Ford’s April 29 statement on the U.S. evacuation from Vietnam:
(From the White House, 29 Apr. 1975)
During the past week, I had ordered the reduction of American personnel in the United States mission in Saigon to levels that could be quickly evacuated during emergency, while enabling that mission to continue to fulfill its duties.
During the day on Monday, Washington time, the airport at Saigon came under persistent rocket as well as artillery fire and was effectively closed. The military situation in the area deteriorated rapidly.
I therefore ordered the evacuation of all American personnel remaining in South Vietnam.
The evacuation has been completed. I commend the personnel of the armed forces who accomplished it, as well as Ambassador Graham Martin and the staff of his mission who served so well under difficult conditions.
This action closes a chapter in the American experience. I ask all Americans to close ranks, to avoid recrimination about the past, to look ahead to the many goals we share and to work together on the great tasks that remain to be accomplished.
* * *
The helicopter evacuations at the embassy continued into the night. By midnight, nearly two thousand Vietnamese, American, and allied civilians—including most of the Saigon press corps—and almost all of the embassy personnel had been ferried out to the ships offshore.