Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  The normally well-composed consul general suddenly bellowed a war cry and began swinging at the unruly mob with his left fist and lashing at people with the foot-long radio that he clutched in his right hand. As if he wielded a leather-covered brick, he slammed the walkie-talkie against the forehead of one man, who tumbled backward, dazed. Then Francis spun in a circle with his arms whirling to clip his next victims, and the radio’s flat tape antenna, following the spin, snapped with a harsh sting across several offending people’s faces and necks.

  “Where is the mayor of Da Nang? Get me the mayor,” Francis shouted, his anger bulging the veins in his neck like fire hoses and turning his face dark red. “Why isn’t he here, managing this?”

  One of the consul general’s bodyguards then saw the mayor, standing out of the way, horrified at the outburst from the American diplomat. Francis’s security agent grabbed the trembling politician by the arm and dragged him to his boss.

  “Goddamn it, man,” Francis scolded the mayor, “why aren’t you in control here? At least give us a hand. After all, these are your people!”

  Colonel Garvin McCurdy, an army officer from the Defense Attaché’s Office in Saigon, had flown to Da Nang to help Al Francis with the overwhelming logistics problems of controlling the flow of the air evacuation process. He had just arrived on the World Airways 727 that had moments earlier taxied to the gate. The soldier never got off the tarmac when Francis stepped out the terminal door, spun the man in his tracks, and put him back on the same aircraft, sending him immediately to Saigon to plead for more planes.

  The jet engine roar of one after another flight of World Airways Boeing 727 and McDonnell Douglas DC-8 jets had kept rolling day and night, launching and landing around the clock, ferrying out approximately 250 people at a time. Among the jets, carrying smaller loads of a dozen to fifty passengers, buzzed a swarm of propeller-driven, lighter aircraft, mostly Air America Convair 580s, Douglas DC- 3s and C-47s, a scattering of oddball bush crafts and puddle jumpers, and a nonstop flock of helicopters.

  As the city crumbled by the second, overflowing into the terminal at Da Nang Air Base, virtually bringing operations there to a standstill by midmorning on March 27, Air America CH-47 helicopters began ferrying groups of outbound citizens to Marble Mountain’s airfield. The runway there was shorter, primarily used as a helicopter and light-aircraft base, but security seemed much better because of its relatively isolated location. Controllers hoped that from Marble Mountain the airlift could buy time to make a few more hops.

  When MR 1’s commander, General Truong, and his staff fled their headquarters that same day, flight operations at Da Nang Air Base rapidly deteriorated. The ARVN soldiers and police squads who had stood the sentry watch there quickly evaporated. With no reliable military presence or police holding in check the airfield’s badly strained security, the frantic crowds immediately took over the terminal and flight line, destroying everything in sight. A number of panic-stricken soldiers had even tried to fly out some of the several dozen F-5 fighter jets that the South Vietnamese Air Force had abandoned. Anything that anyone could throttle up and steer skyward had either flown south or crashed.

  When the Viet Marine Corps command saw the tents folding and wanted to bug out too, Saigon controllers quickly deemed Marble Mountain no longer safe and cancelled all further flights there as well. Now, for the frantic nearly two million residents and refugees who jammed Da Nang’s streets and byways, embarking on the South China Sea or joining the long slog of humanity packed on Highway 1 snailing southward represented their only routes of escape.

  From March 25 until the morning of March 28, the airspace above Da Nang had swarmed with aircraft like flies around a filthy outhouse on a hot day. When the sun set that final day, the sky lay empty and quiet. The American consulate also stood nearly vacant except for WalterSparks, his crew of five Marines, Al Francis, and a handful of his staff.

  As the evacuation rolled into high gear the first day, American and South Vietnamese staff at the consulate had issued more than four thousand air tickets when they lost count. On the first planes to depart, Al Francis had packed aboard every consulate staff member, dependent, and other American civilian stationed there that he deemed nonessential. If the consulate were to get overrun, he wanted the minimum number of Americans to fall victim to the situation.

  On the second day, the skeleton crew played things by ear. One staff officer had asked Consul General Francis about some provisions outlined in their revamped evacuation plan, to which the diplomat simply replied, “Improvise.” As the second day of the evacuation wore into the third, events ran pretty much by the seat of the pants of the person in charge of the operation at the time. “Make a command decision” became a common phrase quipped among the staff when anyone raised a question.

  Staff Sergeant Walter Sparks and his Marines excelled at seat-of-the-pants operations. Life in the corps had taught them one thing: Operation plans often make good toilet paper when the soft stuff runs out. They had learned not to fret when events did not develop quite as the planners had envisioned them. From their first days in boot camp, Marines learned profound lessons from harsh teachers on how to improvise. Thus when everything seemed bound for hell in a handbasket, Sparks and his men calmly shifted gears without losing step.

  While the Saigon embassy staff had wrangled every available plane for the massive aerial evacuation from Da Nang, Major General Homer D. Smith, Jr., the defense attaché, had realized early on that despite Ambassador Graham A. Martin’s unflagging optimism, the airlift could not continue if the city’s defenders ran out. Smith and his pragmatic crew reckoned that once the enemy stood at Da Nang’s gates, the ARVN units manning the ramparts would most likely disappear, as others had done since the collapse began in Quang Tri.

  Based on that consideration, as well as others to include expedience and load capabilities, the defense attaché and his staff, even before Hue had fallen, began rounding up scores of merchant ships and seagoing barges and mustered them into an evacuation flotilla, a day’s passage away, should Da Nang need them in a hurry.

  On March 27, as controllers in Saigon realized that the air evacuationfrom Da Nang would soon fail, the embassy staff sent a flash message to Washington, DC, advising Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of the situation. With conditions on the brink in Phnom Penh, the navy had most of its otherwise available shipping and helicopter assets committed to Operation Eagle Pull, providing evacuation support of the Cambodian capital. Therefore, Kissinger sought assistance from the Military Sealift Command, requesting merchant vessels to carry evacuees from Da Nang. However, the soonest any of their vessels could arrive at Da Nang would be late in the afternoon of March 28. Until then, Al Francis and his crew had to deal with life as best they could.

  DA NANG CONSULATE COURTYARD—6:00 P.M., MARCH 28

  “FUCK IT,” Walter Sparks said under his breath, throwing the last of a pile of papers into the burn barrel and watching the flames destroy them. His Marines had spent the past three days shredding and burning the consulate’s mountains of files and classified materials. Today they finished the last of that chore.

  “What’s wrong, Staff Sergeant?” Corporal Leonard Forseth said, tossing in the final batch of papers from the consul general’s desk and hearing Sparks grumble.

  “I guess in the back of my mind I never wanted to admit that it would come to this,” Sparks said. “We destroyed a lot of history these past few days, a lot of stuff. We’re walking out after all these years and all those Marines who got killed and wounded right out there in those hills. Just walking out and burning everything.”

  “Oh,” the corporal said, looking up at the distant mountains. “I thought you were pissed about leaving your own gear behind. You know, your apartment, your clothes and stuff, and all that terrific stereo equipment.”

  “Hell, yeah, that pissed me off too,” Sparks said and laughed. “That’s just junk, though, Corporal Forseth. What really hurts me, and I mean cuts rig
ht into my heart, is the thought of all that our corps spent in lives and sacrifice out here, and we finally end up walking out on it.”

  “I guess that bothers me most too,” the corporal said. “I mean, I hated like hell leaving my stuff at the Marine House and getting locked down in here for the past three days. I would have liked to have gone and gotten my gear too. Then I think about what you said, all the lives we spent for this country.”

  Walter Sparks picked up a broom handle with one end charred and jammed it into the flaming barrel, stirring the ashes to ensure that all the documents had completely burned. Then he put his hand on the shoulder of the young corporal.

  “Let’s go make muster with the boss,” he said. “It’s getting about that time.”

  Al Francis had already gathered with the remaining Marines and his staff when Walter Sparks and Leonard Forseth walked into the courtyard from the rear of the consulate. A string of vans and the consul general’s staff car sat waiting for them, pointed toward the compound’s front gates.

  “Here’s the consulate flag,” Sparks said to his boss, taking the official colors, folded in an appropriate triangle, and handing them to Francis.

  At 6:30 that evening, March 28, the consul general, his remaining staff, including the Da Nang air terminal crew, Walter Sparks and his five Marines, and the squad of ARVN soldiers who had remained to guard the consulate left the American compound for good. One by one the vehicles crept onto the corniche that fronted the Han River and led along Da Nang Bay. When the last van dipped down the driveway, it stopped for a moment so that the four ARVN soldiers standing sentry outside the gate could pile aboard. As it pushed forward, pressing its way through the mob that filled the street, hundreds of screaming people flooded inside the now-abandoned American consulate.

  Staff Sergeant Sparks looked out the front window of the last van as it stopped to take on the exterior guard. His friend Nguyen’s hibachi cart lay cold on its side. Scavengers had already picked the carcass clean, leaving only the metal box of the cart. They had even taken the wheels.

  “Poor old Nguyen,” Sparks said from the front passenger seat.

  Within an hour of their departure, the maddened crowd had ransacked the American consulate. Angry deserters then set the entire compound ablaze.

  Le Cong Than and several of his Viet Cong guerrillas from the Forty-fourth Line Front watched as the caravan left and then stood nearly speechless observing the spectacle of the consulate’s immediate destruction. He had hoped to use the beautiful French citadel for his headquarters once the Americans had departed.

  The American diplomatic caravan drove to the International Commission of Control and Supervision’s landing zone, where Al Francis had arranged for Air America helicopters to evacuate them. At the ICCS compound, away from the bustling traffic that had surrounded the American consulate and jammed the street that ran along the Han River, life relaxed to a remarkable quietness as the sun set.

  In the darkness the small group sat beneath a silent sky. No helicopters, only the distant noise from the traffic-filled streets of Da Nang broke through the quietness.

  “Gentlemen,” a voice announced from the darkness of the open back door of the consul general’s car. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  “Bad news first, sir,” Sergeant Venoy Rogers spoke in return.

  “We have no helicopters,” Al Francis then said, stepping into a dim circle of light cast from a nearby security lamp attached to a utility pole. “It seems that Air America cannot get fuel from the Vietnamese, probably due to the chaos at Marble Mountain. So they cannot come and get us. That’s the bad news.”

  “The good news, sir?” Walter Sparks then asked.

  “We’re going next door to my house, have a cocktail, and plan what to do next,” Francis said.

  The consul general lived a little more than a half mile from the American consulate. His villa with high security walls, however, stood in a relatively quiet neighborhood, off the track of the roaming cowboys, bands of renegades, and unruly mobs that now seemed bent on destroying everything in the city, taking special vengeance against anything or anyone that even looked American.

  Once inside the protection of his home’s gates, the bulk of the group sat down and waited. Meanwhile, Walter Sparks and the others who comprised Al Francis’s Black Box team sat with him at the dining table and considered what options now existed for them.

  “What about getting a small frigate or destroyer in here?” the CIA logistician asked.

  “What if we did?” Francis asked back. “First of all, the ship would immediately get targeted by the NVA. It would have a better chance at Marble Mountain, but not on the Han River, so deep in the city.”

  “How about those barges that what’s his name at the DAO mentioned,” the security boss said. “Alaska Barge and Transport Company. That’s the name of them.”

  “Go on, you’ve got my attention,” Francis said.

  “Have them push a couple of barges into the river, distract the Vietnamese, and then put a little boat at the dock across from the consulate for us to get on,” the consulate security chief said. “There’s a guy I can call.”

  “Let’s do this,” Francis said. “There is an entire ARVN company squatted up the street from the consulate. The minute they see the barges, they will want on the first one and will probably start shooting their way aboard if we don’t let them. So we put a big barge in the wide open water, up the street, where they’ve bivouacked along the seawall. Get their attention by setting it way out in the open water where they can see it and have it start working toward them. That will keep them busy, guarding the docks and keeping a lot of people out of our way too. Meanwhile, we have a smaller, less attractive barge pushed to the dock across from the consulate. We jump aboard and shove off immediately.”

  “Better than sitting here, waiting for the Viet Cong to knock on the door,” Walter Sparks said with a smile.

  One of the CIA operations agents tapped Al Francis on his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

  “Where are they now?” Francis said.

  The agent shrugged. “Probably still out around Marble Mountain someplace. Somewhere they came up with a couple of choppers and some planes with fuel to do a round-trip from Nha Trang, so they’re getting the people out on them.”

  “We couldn’t use them?” Francis asked.

  “Not a chance,” the agent said. “These are deep-cover people that if we don’t get them out, the NVA will kill on the spot. You know these guys. They’d tell you to piss up a rope quick as look at you.”

  “The NVA would just as quickly kill these guys too,” Francis said. Then he turned to the six men seated at the dining table.

  “Gunny,” Francis said, looking squarely at Walter Sparks, “you will take charge of getting this motley crew aboard the barge.”

  Then he looked at the others. “These vessels are really not much more than big, long Dumpsters. They normally use them to haul stuff like pipe, lumber, dirt, and rocks, not a very hospitable place for people to ride. However, they have fairly high steel gunwales that will offer some protection against shoreline gunfire. Everyone going aboard must bring ample water and whatever material they can use for shade. There is no telling how long you will be on the water. With the afternoon sun, those cans will get awfully hot.”

  The consul general then tossed a one-page teletype message on the table and said, “State Department has dispatched a couple of MSC ships our way, big deep-draft cargo vessels, the Pioneer Contender and the Greenville Victory. They should arrive on station at 0800. Instead of those barges trying to work down the coastline, they will navigate straight out to sea and rendezvous with these two.

  “Questions?”

  “Sir, by you putting me in charge of getting this motley crew aboard the barge, do I gather you have other commitments?” Walter Sparks asked.

  “I have a couple of operators out of pocket at the moment, and myself and Bwana Jim over there will have to go
tend to that bit of business,” Francis said. “All hush-hush and shush-shush, you know.”

  “You know, sir,” Sparks said in a low voice, looking straight at Francis, “I am charged with your personal safety as my primary mission.”

  “Gunny,” Al Francis said and put his hand on Sparks’s shoulder, “I very deeply appreciate your concern for me. Placing your life on the line for me means a great deal. I don’t forget things like that, or people like you. There is a living room and front yard full of people out there who need your leadership now. So I am making this an order. You will see to it that these fine men get to the barge, out to sea, and aboard one of the MSC ships safely. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sparks said and smiled. “Understood.”

  “Besides, Gunny,” Francis said, now standing and putting his arm over Walter Sparks’s shoulder, leading the Marine toward the living room, “it’s not like I will be alone. I do have my sidekick with the thick neck standing over there and our two wayward pals in the bush for company. Don’t worry. I intend to see you in Saigon in a day or two.”

  “IT’S LIKE WE’RE the Dirty Dozen, except dirtier,” Corporal Ronald Anderson whispered to Staff Sergeant Walter Sparks and the other four Marines. “Hiding in the back of a trash truck, sneaking out in the middle of the night, all pretty damned theatrical if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” Sparks grumbled from beneath the canvas that covered the vehicle’s staked bed, hiding the consulate’s last batch of evacuees from Da Nang.

  Two of the ARVN soldiers had stripped off their uniforms, borrowed clothes from an unsuspecting neighbor of the consul general, and ventured off into the night in search of a vehicle that could carry the company of people to the consulate dock unnoticed. At 3:00 a.m., the two thieves returned with a long, flatbed truck topped by a heavy green canvas, under which rode a load of garbage.

  Although they dumped the thirty-foot long pile of trash on the consul general’s lawn, they could not dump the dankness of the truck bed’s interior, nor its smell.