Goodnight Saigon

by Charles Henderson

  “I should have died defending my command,” General Truong said to his aide as the two men waded together through the surf.

  “We both would have died then,” the major said. “I am glad that you chose to live and fight another day.”

  ROOFTOP ABOVE FORMER III MAF HQ, DA NANG

  HOANG DUC THE smiled as he saw the rounds striking the swift boat base and the long concrete piers. He could see the people scattering and the boats trying to depart through the barrage. He looked forward to mop-ping up the peninsula once the shelling had done its job.

  Hopefully, most of the two million refugees who had flooded into Da Nang would now leave because of the city’s heavy bombardment, making the job of returning order and discipline to South Vietnam’s second largest metropolis much easier. The gigantic cascade of refugees fleeing southward along Highway 1, and now by sea, also added great momentum to the Communists’ initiative. The people would descend upon Phu Cat and Nha Trang like a great tsunami, overwhelming the defenders long before his army attacked.

  NVA FIELD HQ, NEAR BAN ME THUOT

  “GENERAL TRAN, MY friend, join me for another smoke,” General Van Tien Dung said to Tran Van Tra.

  “We must have won another battle,” General Tran said, drawing out a cigarette, placing it between his lips, and allowing the North Vietnamese Army’s supreme commander to put the flame of a freshly struck match under its exposed tip.

  “For a man who does not smoke, I find myself indulging in tobacco more and more,” General Dung said, now igniting his own cigarette. “Each time I hear good news from the front lines, I feel like lighting up one of these things and celebrating.”

  “I also have good news, from the Ninety-sixth and Forty-seventh regiments and the Forty-fourth Line Front,” Tran Van Tra said, blowing smoke and smiling. “They have surrounded the civic center and now occupy the American consulate. Fires gutted most of the buildings, but they managed to put many of them out by carrying the burning furniture into the courtyard. They also captured the CIA logistics base with many good trucks and warehouse goods. When they opened fire on the ARVN soldiers who were there looting, rather than standing for a fight, the enemy fled like children.”

  “They have run like cowards,” Dung said, laughing loudly. “It is wonderful! I have reports from the 304th Division that tell of our army having to drop their packs and chase after the enemy, quite literally running as fast as their feet could carry them!”

  “Our commandos have now begun to take charge of the northern sectors of Da Nang and have restored order there,” General Tran said. “We encounter some resistance from time to time, but mostly the shooting comes from the ARVN deserters killing their own people.”

  “General Le Trong Tan (North Vietnamese Army vice chairman of the Joint General Staff) arrived in the Da Nang sector’s Fifth Region on Thursday and reports that possibly by tomorrow morning we will hold the entire city secure,” General Dung said, beaming. “He is allowing the refugees to freely go southward along the highway since they provide such an excellent blocking force to move ahead of us. However, he has ordered his forces to stop the people from attempting to leave by sea. Thousands have died in the water trying to escape, and for their sake he said it must end.”

  Then General Dung smiled wryly and chuckled as he spoke, “Our good friend Colonel Vo Dong Giang reported to me this morning that the foreign minister has lodged a formal protest to the Joint Military Council for the American government’s intrusion with their fleet of ships in bay of Da Nang and their shipments of relief goods to Saigon. He has cited that these actions gravely violate the Paris Accords.”

  “Of course,” Tran Van Tra said smiling, “while the foreign minister protests, our tank brigades and artillery have fully engaged what little remains of Da Nang’s defenses. Most resistance now comes from isolated pockets of a few stubborn South Vietnamese Marine battalions.”

  CENTRAL DA NANG, NEAR THE AIRPORT

  UNTIL THIS MORNING, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces had attacked only at night, trying to catch the ARVN defenders asleep. Now they launched their assaults in the daylight, advancing openly in the cool rain.

  Le Cong Than had sent a company of Viet Cong from his Forty-fourth Line Front brigade to occupy the American consulate and try to extinguish the fires there. He had hoped that they could minimize the damage done to the city, but no one throughout the Communist chain of command had imagined that the enemy’s armed forces would fracture and turn on their own people and the city they had fought to defend.

  Now, fully armed with rifles at the ready and bandoleers of ammunition draped across their backs, the Viet Cong commander and his black-clad guerrillas moved on to Da Nang Air Base to put down the renegade violence going on there. Ahead of them a company of Soviet built T-55 tanks and infantry from the 304th NVA Division, which had attacked Da Nang from the west, pushed down the high fences, clearing a path for Le Cong Than’s assault troops to follow them.

  Inside the airport terminal, frantic civilians hopelessly waited for flights that would never come. Upon seeing the NVA tanks followed by a horde of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese uniformed soldiers breaching the airport fences, the panic-stricken civilians suddenly erupted out every door, running madly for their lives. They scattered across the tarmac and onto the runways, fleeing to nowhere.

  Beyond the terminal, a company-sized congregation of South Vietnamese Marines had sandbagged themselves into a line of fighting emplacements near a hangar. Their defensive positions butted into the ten-foot high, barbed wire-topped chain-link fence that secured the airport from the outside community.

  When the tanks first crashed the fence, the Viet Marines had opened fire with their 60-millimeter mortars and machine guns. Even though more than three thousand unarmed civilians now scattered across the tarmac and taxiways, the Marines never let up their fire. It cut down men, women, and children with the grazing hail of bullets and barrage of exploding mortars.

  While three tanks pressed forward, sending high-velocity rounds exploding from their main guns and interlacing automatic fire from their machine guns, two tanks veered to the Marines’ right and left flanks. With the tanks shielding two platoons of infantry soldiers who followed them, the Communists then cut the high fence at both flanks and tied the two loose ends of the center span of chain-link to the rear of each of the outside tanks.

  Amazed at the creative genius of the spur of the moment plan, Le Cong Than watched as the ground troops ran for cover and the pair of tanks pulled the fence around the embattled Viet Marines. As the tanks sped forward, dragging each end of the fence toward the three center tanks, the men who fought in its center quickly realized the Communists had ensnared them.

  Crowded together, like a Spartan circle, the Marines kept firing at their armored enemy.

  Slowly the tanks pressed forward, squeezing the trapped men into a tighter circle. Then the infantrymen who had moved into positions behind the tanks dashed forward and hurled grenades into the circle. One after another, dozens of NVA soldiers tossed the deadly explosives among the trapped Marines. In a matter of minutes the several hundred South Vietnamese warriors who made their last stand lay dead on the tarmac.

  With hardly a glance back at the carnage, the tank crews quickly cut the fence loose from their vehicles and focused their work on the terminal and surrounding buildings, which had now gone nearly vacant. Any civilians and ARVN soldiers who now remained stood quietly on the airfield’s tarmac with their hands raised clearly above their heads. At the far end of the field, hundreds of other South Vietnamese clambered over the tall fence.

  HAN RIVER BY III MAF HQ, DA NANG

  “HERE, GATHER WHAT boats you can take from these people,” Colonel The shouted to a captain who commanded one of his regiment’s companies.

  The NVA soldiers fired warning shots over the boats that tried to flee along the river and began turning the dozens of small crafts toward the near shore. Artillery from the captured 105-millimeter howitzer
s and the Thirty-eighth Regiment’s own battery of 130-millimeter artillery, platoons of T-55 and T-57 tanks, and multiple arrays of 122-millimeter Katusha rockets, each system firing forty missiles at a time, pummeled the opposite shore, leaving the fleeing people the option of either dying in the hellish barrage or landing on the docks below the seawall where Hoang Duc The stood.

  “Take those boats and move two companies across to the opposite ferry landings and secure them,” he commanded.

  Within thirty minutes, more than one thousand North Vietnamese soldiers worked their way across the Han River. From the opposite shore, a company of Viet Marines ambushed the waterborne soldiers.

  Colonel The screamed to his artillery liaison, “Open fire across the river. Do not let up.”

  As he waited for the barrage, the colonel saw his reconnaissance commander fall backwards as a bullet struck him in the chest, killing him almost instantly. A second shot then took down the boatman standing at the tiller.

  Then suddenly, identical immense shotgun blasts striking the ground on the opposite shore, one after another forty-round salvos of 122-millimeter Katusha rockets pounded the Thirty-eighth Regiment’s newfound enemy. The explosions immediately suppressed the machine gun and rifle fire coming from behind a stone wall a few hundred yards downriver.

  “I want a constant barrage laid on those positions until I say stop,” Colonel The shouted to his artillery liaison.

  Apparently, when he had ceased his artillery and rocket fire, once he had captured the boats, the Viet Marines had moved into position, seeing the opportunity for their ambush. Colonel The had allowed complacency to influence his decision to save ammunition, rather than maintaining a suppression fire while his men crossed the river’s dangerous open water. The wounded men and the bodies of his dead would remind him to not repeat such a mistake.

  Late that afternoon the sun finally emerged, and a sweltering heat struck the beleaguered city. All three NVA divisions and the two regiments and brigade of Viet Cong finally linked their forces, finishing off what little resistance now remained. Much of the North Vietnamese Second Corps had also now moved from Hue to Da Nang, operating as a massive reserve, enabling the attacking divisions to achieve maximum maneuverability.

  By dawn, on Easter Sunday, March 30, 1975, Da Nang belonged completely to the Communist forces.

  DA NANG, NEAR THE UNITED STATES CONSULATE

  WHILE MANY OF his Viet Cong guerrillas celebrated their victory, Le Cong Than sat with several of his officers at the edge of the Han River, watching as scores of South Vietnamese people continued to crowd on boats farther downstream. On the horizon, beyond the outer bay, he could see the silhouette of the Pioneer Challenger drifting in the haze as it continued to pick up refugees.

  Even though General Le Trong Tan had ordered his army to not allow further evacuations by sea, thousands of people still fled on the water. Thus NVA patrols now worked along the river’s edge, turning people back. Le Cong Than and a battalion from his Forty-fourth Line Front joined the police duty.

  “There, look,” the Viet Cong commander said, pointing to a small tugboat that began drifting away from the opposite shore, several hundred yards downstream, more than fifty people jammed on the deck of the small craft.

  “The current is taking them out,” a soldier in a watchtower above the colonel called down.

  “Fire the mortars across their bow,” Than said.

  Just as the first round exploded in the water, someone on the bridge of the small ship hoisted the yellow and red banner of the Republic of Vietnam above the wheelhouse’s roof.

  “They must have ARVN aboard the ship,” the colonel said. “Keep your mortars ahead of the boat, and call for artillery to open fire on them as well.”

  Although the 60-millimeter mortars that exploded ahead of the tugboat did little to dissuade its pilot, the sudden burst of 155-millimeter rounds erupting only fifty feet away from the vessel quickly sent the craft’s screws into full throttle reverse. Huge geysers of water shot up from the river with each artillery strike, gushing water over the vessel and its passengers.

  “Now, adjust your mortars toward the opposite shore, so that they can only bring that boat to me,” Le Cong Than called to his men.

  Slowly the craft came to a stop at the ferry landing where the Viet Cong soldiers took the passengers prisoner and brought the boat’s skipper to their commander.

  “I can lock you in prison right now,” Than told the boat’s captain, “or you can swear your allegiance to me and act as my pilot. I intend to take command of your ship. We can wait here for my men to bring me a qualified pilot or you can volunteer.”

  In less than an hour, Le Cong Than and a squad of his men, armed with mortars, machine guns, rifles, and grenades, motored downriver in the tugboat, the flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government fluttering on the mast above the wheelhouse. As they cruised toward the open bay, the colonel spotted a long, dark silhouette drifting through the distant haze.

  “Do you see it?” he said, pointing out the object for the pilot. “Steer toward it, cautiously.”

  Slowly the tugboat approached the dark object, and soon Le Cong Than realized that the derelict was a barge. A few people squatted on its deck; most of its passengers lay down.

  “Throw any arms overboard and raise your hands,” the Viet Cong commander shouted over the tugboat’s loudspeakers.

  Few people moved, but one man stripped off his white shirt, and waved it as a flag of truce, and beckoned the tug to draw alongside.

  With his machine guns trained squarely on the barge’s passengers, Le Cong Than had the tugboat’s pilot maneuver the small ship to the rear of the barge. Once they had pushed the barge snugly in place, he sent four of his soldiers to immediately begin lashing the two vessels together with several of the two-inch-thick hauling lines stacked on the tug’s deck.

  Slowly the pilot turned the long barge toward the mouth of the Han River and began pushing it toward Da Nang. As the tug’s twin diesels groaned forward, Than deployed his squad of soldiers across the stern of the barge and called for a representative to come forward.

  As the barge and tug cruised toward the city and the docks by the still smouldering American consulate, two men came forward and talked to the colonel.

  More than four thousand people, mostly ARVN soldiers and their families, had crowded on the barge at Hue, just as the city had begun to fall. The tug that had pushed them out the Perfume River and beyond the barrier islands, into the open sea, had abandoned them. The skipper had feared he had too little fuel and moved too slowly, making them an easy target for NVA artillery. So he cut them adrift and proceeded south with a deck full of well-paying and well-armed passengers.

  For five days the people had drifted, riding with the prevailing currents,too far from shore to even consider attempting to swim for land. They had no food and very little water when they began and, after the third day, had no water at all.

  Several hundred of the people had already died from dehydration and exposure. Many more had little hope, even with food and water.

  While Le Cong Than and his Viet Cong soldiers rescued the hapless refugees from Hue, the American merchant ships continued to ferry out thousands of South Vietnamese refugees who still managed to escape Da Nang. The Pioneer Challenger made her last evacuee run on April 2.

  Chapter 14

  HANDWRITING ON THE WALL

  ORA WAN BAY, OKINAWA—EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 30

  SUNLIGHT GLARED OFF the white-capped waves as the distant amphibious assault vehicles danced through them, causing Corporal Steve Tingley to squint as he searched for a decent picture to snap. Staff Sergeant Don Gilbert, the III MAF command newspaper’s senior editor, had sent him to the landing at Camp Hanson to grab a breaking-news photograph for the front page of the Okinawa Marine.

  “Nothing more boring than some specks on the water and a big ship sitting still,” Tingley said under his breath, as he released the shutter on his Nikon F2 camera w
ith its 80-210-millimeter zoom lens pulled fully out to its maximum telescopic power. He exposed several frames of the monotonous seascape, making sure that he had his all-important fail-safe shot in case nothing more attractive appeared. Sergeant Gilbert would at least have a usable, albeit boring, graphic to illustrate the weekly tabloid’s headline, “1st Battalion, 4th Marines Returns to Vietnam.”

  Offshore, the USS Dubuque (LPD 8) lay almost motionless on Ora Wan Bay, taking aboard the heavy equipment of Battalion Landing Team One-Four. An amphibious transport dock and landing platform ship, the Dubuque, and other LPDs like her, featured a large helicopter landing platform designed on her stern and below that deck a set of gigantic sea doors at her waterline, built to allow the Marine Corps’s tracked amphibious assault vehicles to swim in and out of the ship’s massive cargo hauling belly. Inside this great naval vessel, the Marines could transport almost anything that they needed for war.

  As Steve Tingley watched the LVTP-7 amtracks splashing through the whitecaps, shooting rooster tails behind them as they drove toward the ship, he thought of Christmastime and the Nutcracker Ballet. The behemoth ship, sitting in the water as the amtracks disappeared inside her gaping doors, reminded the corporal of the Nutcracker’s Mother Buffoon, lifting her skirts while children skittered beneath them.

  Lance Corporal Donald Tompkins honked the horn of the olive drab green Ford Econoline van.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” he shouted to Tingley. “It’s Easter Sunday, for crying out loud!”

  “What are you going to do?” Tingley called back, looping the camera across his shoulder and walking back to the vehicle. “Go to church?”

  “I might!” Tompkins crowed and then laughed hard. Neither Marine had darkened the chapel door in the entire year they had called Okinawa their duty station and home away from home.