Sgt Major Terry Bennington USMC (Retired)


Picture at Marine Security Guard School on or about April 1975

Sgt. Chet Decker
U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Atlantic

"We held the coastline
They held the highlands
And they were sharp
As sharp as knives
They heard the hum of our motors
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive" - Billy Joel in "Goodnight Saigon."

NORFOLK, Va. (Dec. 21, 2001) - Sergeant Terry Bennington stood atop the U.S. embassy in Saigon, Vietnam with 10 fellow Marines on April 30, 1975, scanning the horizon for a way out - for a chance to live another day and survive a desperate, chaotic moment in American history. 


On roof of embasy

The Marines watched and listened with him, hoping to hear that familiar hum of rotors and both praying to live another day and a helicopter to help make that happen.   They barricaded themselves from the frenzied crowds below and the enclosing North Vietnamese Army (NVA).  They thought it would only be a matter of time until they fell into enemy hands.  The Marines were even considering climbing down a rocket screen covering the outside wall of the embassy for a chance to travel to the South China Sea to link up with friendly forces offshore.

On top of roof on embassy

Then Bennington spotted a helicopter in the distance.
 "We didn't know if it was friendly or not.  Our radios were dead (having long since ran out of batteries)," said Bennington, of Bridgeport, Ohio.

CH-46 Chopper taking off from Embassy roof.

As the helicopter approached the embassy, it became clear the bird was indeed American.  They were free.
Bennington, who retired as a sergeant major in 1995, can claim something absolutely no one else can.  Of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members who fought in Vietnam, he was the last one out. 

Bennington, on his second tour in Vietnam, was an embassy security guard in Saigon as the enemy North Vietnamese Army (NVA) poured into the capital city that day and the U.S. withdrew the last of its forces from the country.  From the embassy's rooftop, he was the last person to board the last aircraft in history's largest helicopter evacuation known as Operation Frequent Wind.

"We sat on the rooftop and barricaded ourselves in," said Bennington, who was a 22-year-old sergeant at the time.  "We watched the craziness going on in Saigon."

The embassy Marines had collected thousands of weapons from the 6,968 service members, American citizens and refugees flown out during the evacuation that had begun just more than 24 hours prior. 

"We had shotguns and even a duffel bag full of grenades," said Bennington. "We had enough weapons to start a small war."

Just hours earlier a helicopter left the embassy's rooftops with the American ambassador and the U.S. flag, symbolizing the end of the end for the United States in the long, and bitter war that took the lives of thousands of American service members.  Other helicopters landed after the ambassador was evacuated to ferry out dozens of infantrymen still at the embassy. 
 

Ambassador Graham Martin, U.S. Ambassador to R. South Vietnam


 

As a CH-46 helicopter pilot during the U.S. with drawl from Saigon, retired Marine Col. Gerry Berry piloted the bird that evacuated Ambassador Graham A. Martin and his staff.

This month Marine Aircraft Group 42, a Marine Reserve unit in Norfolk, Va, rededicated the Sea Knight piloted by Berry during the evacuation.  The unit counts the aircraft among its rolls today, and adds to its 8000-plus flight hours almost daily.  Berry, who retired in 1992, and Bennington were special guest speakers during the ceremony. 

It was an exhausted Berry who flew 18.3 hours April 29-30, 1975, evacuating hundreds of Americans and refugees from the capital city as the NVA closed in and made efforts to knock the American birds out of the sky.

"I had one mission to go in and get the ambassador," said Berry, who was a captain at the time.  "Every time I'd land at the embassy, the crowds trying to get on didn't seem to get any smaller.  You couldn't see how it'd ever end.  You could make five trips and come back, and the compound would have the same amount of people as before.  I thought, 'Gee, this is unbelievable.'"

The initial plan was for Berry to evacuate the ambassador and his staff, but each time he'd land on the embassy's rooftop, he'd get sidetracked with refugees or was
 unable to find the ambassador, who was reluctant to leave his post in the first place.  When Berry landed on ship each time to deliver his human cargo, Brig. Gen. Richard E. Carey, the 9th Amphibious Brigade commanding general would remind then Capt. Berry of his mission, which was a presidential order.
 

LtGen Richard E. Carey USMC, Retired

 Amongst the confusion upon an early morning landing at the embassy on April 30, Berry decided the ambassador would be leaving with him, despite Martin's objections.

I kept calling (into the embassy), and Bennington did pick up the phone and said the ambassador is going," said Berry.

 Shortly after the call, embassy Marines whisked the ambassador to Berry's aircraft along with his sizeable staff and Old Glory.  The flight out went smoother than others Berry and other Frequent Wind pilots had made.

 "We had a lot of triple A, and a lot of small arms fire," said Berry, who was more worried about desperate Vietnamese allies, who were clamoring for a chance to escape the advancing NVA.  "We only had one or two hits, and only took some small arms fire.  My biggest fear was not the NVA.  We could see them hitting the city.  It was the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) troops, because they were probably thinking 'You're going, and I'm not going.'  We were an absolute beautiful target sitting on that embassy roof."

 Helicopter pilots weren't supposed to stage such a desperate, last minute evacuation in the first place.   The ambassador had other options for the evacuation, such as using military transport planes, but instead chose to wait until the end, said Berry.  One by one, South Vietnamese cities fell to NVA forces.

"There was a sequence of events that transpired," said Bennington.  "The NVA came as a wave in our direction, and the population of the city started to swell.  We knew the NVA was going to take that country.  We weren't supposed to do a helo-borne operation though.  That was a last option."

Sixteen of the 45 Marines manning the embassy were sent to protect the Defense Attaché Office at nearby Tan Son Nhut airport.  Embassy Marines Cpl. Charles McMahan and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge became the last U.S. casualties in Vietnam when they were killed by a rocket attack on the compound, from NVA forces on the outskirts of Saigon.

"At first when the NVA came [near] they thought it was a probing action, but it went so well," said Berry.  "But it went so fast, and they poured everything in. [The U.S.] couldn't believe it was rolling up so fast."

Operation Frequent Wind was underway.
Once the final 11 Marines were flown to ship, Berry and other pilots were exhausted, but it wasn't easy to relax on a ship stretched beyond its capacity with refugees.  Berry even had to kick refugees out of his rack before he collapsed for some much-needed sleep.  Later that afternoon, he was back in the air, ferrying refugees back and forth on the ships in an effort to organize them.

Today Berry, originally from Des Moines, Iowa, runs his own computer-based training company with 150 employees in Orlando, Fla., and has three children. 

Bennington was a JROTC Instructor after his retirement, and is currently an instructor for a simulations technology firm.  He has a daughter and two sons, one of which is in the U.S. Army.
 

Of the last 11 Marines out of Vietnam, 10 are still living, and eight made the Corps a career until retirement.  Bobby Frain, who later medically retired, recently died of cancer.   The Marines meet often with other embassy Marines and workers who were evacuated by pilots like Berry from a country that took the lives of more than 56,000 American service members.
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Sgt Bobby Frain (Deceased)



Berry, a pilot who helped so many escape a war-torn country with their lives, has visited the Vietnam Wall in Washington on several occasions.  Each visit brings back a flood of emotions.  During prior duty in Vietnam, Berry lost a crew chief and once on the Marine Corps birthday in 1969 took more than 70 hits from enemy fire.

"It's so sad for me, because I always look up at the names of those guys I served with in '68, '69 and '70 especially.  I feel so sad for them and their families that this war became kind of a wasted war," said Berry.  "Every time it gets very emotional for me, and I have a hard time dealing with that, and its even worse [having] watched the very end as those tanks rolled into the city after all that Americans sacrificed."

Sgt Terry Bennington (left) after the Fall of Saigon at the American Embassy in the Philippines.