Leatherneck Magazine's
Story
They Played "White
Christmas"
As Marine Choppers Flew and Saigon Fell
Story by R. R. Keene
As if conjured by the farsighted imagination of a Greek tragedian, the final
days of the Vietnam War ended in bitter paradox. America's noble ambition at
the war's beginning--to champion democracy and aid a people menaced by
communist aggression--had gradually spiraled into disillusionment and
ignominy.
This sadness which President Ford painfully described, the final brush
stroke to a peculiar masterpiece 10,000 days in the making, intimately
involved men whose duty it was to protect and defend the American Embassy in
Saigon. This burden, arguably the darkest hour in American military history,
was shouldered by a special breed and remains a significant yet overlooked
event in Marine lore.
As enemy tanks rumbled into Saigon, the last vestige of U.S. military
presence in Vietnam was lifted via helicopter from the embassy rooftop 25
years ago, in April 1975. Manning walls much like those individuals who were
immortalized at the Alamo did, these defenders went sleepless and hungry for
days, saving countless lives during an interval filled with chaos and
hysteria. This is their story, their insights and reflections: the Marine
security guards of Saigon.
In the early hours of 29 April 1975, the grim and undeniable reality became
apparent to the highest-ranking American official in Vietnam.
For weeks, an uneasy tension had mounted in Saigon as the North Vietnamese
Army began an aggressive and largely unabated sweep down the coast of the
South China Sea. Da Nang had fallen less than a month prior, prompting a
panic-stricken exodus of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians alike. Two
weeks before that, in neighboring Cambodia, Marines and 7th Fleet sailors
evacuated U.S. personnel from Phnom Penh as communist Khmer Rouge forces
began to overrun the capital. The final South Vietnamese resistance was
overwhelmed by three NVA divisions on 20 April at Xuan Loc, located only 38
miles northwest of the capital city.
As both South Vietnamese defense and spirit crumbled, President Nguyen Van
Thieu transferred power on 21 April to ailing Vice President Tran Van Huong
before the National Assembly. Hanoi's minister of defense and mastermind of
the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu 30 years earlier sensed that this was the
long-awaited sign that victory was at hand. Quickly seizing the momentum,
General Vo Nguyen Giap ordered an all-out assault on the southern capital.
State Department officials, warily monitoring the events from Washington,
D.C., began to realize the situation was untenable. Scores of NVA rockets
and artillery shells began to pound Tan Son Nhat Airbase . Thousands of
desperate Vietnamese were besieging the embassy, with hopes that either
through bribery, sympathy or luck, they too might accompany the retreating
Americans.
Graham Martin, American Ambassador to South Vietnam, finally received the
call he dreaded: President Ford had approved and directed Option IV, the
helicopter evacuation of Saigon. Operation Frequent Wind officially began
shortly before 1100, 29 April, when Armed Forces Radio broadcasted "(I'm
Dreaming of a) White Christmas."
The miracle for which Martin waited--a heroic, last-ditch defense at Xuan
Loc or perhaps a last-minute negotiation with the North Vietnamese to avoid
invasion of the city--had never materialized. His confidence now rested on
the Marine security guards who manned the embassy walls, Marine Aircraft
Group 36 helicopter pilots who would execute the mission, and Marines and
sailors aboard 7th Fleet ships located in the South China Sea just over the
horizon.
Daily flights began evacuating up to 500 U.S. personnel, foreign nationals
and "at-risk" Vietnamese--those who supported the U.S. government--in
early
April when the South Vietnamese collapse loomed. The key to these
large-scale evacuations was Tan Son Nhut, which served as the Defense
Attaché Office (DAO) command center and departure point for large,
fixed-wing aircraft.
As the state of affairs began to deteriorate, 16 of the 45 Saigon MSGs were
siphoned off to assist in processing and providing security at the DAO on 19
April. "I didn't like the idea of splitting my forces," recalled
then-Master
Sergeant Juan J. Valdez, "but we were under the operational control of the
State Department, and what they said was it."
Like many of the senior leaders in Saigon at the time, Valdez was
well-seasoned and had seen many swings of the pendulum in Vietnam. During
the early stages of the war, the San Antonio native served a two-year tour
from 1965 to 1967 with Company B, 3d Amphibian Tractor Battalion, attached
to 2d Bn, Fourth Marine Regiment. He returned once again in September 1974,
this time as the Saigon detachment noncommissioned officer in charge.
Initial embassy estimates predicted that approximately 7,000 Americans would
seek safe passage out of Saigon. "It now seemed virtually impossible to
estimate how many Americans were living in Saigon and nearby Bien Hoa,"
said
Valdez. A sense of uncertainty intensified daily as NVA forces gradually
tightened the noose around the city.
"A Vietnamese marriage certificate, which only a few months before had cost
no more than $20, now cost up to $2,000," said Valdez. "The crowds
never
appeared dangerous, just desperate--begging [to leave] the country or get
their children off to safety."
In many regards, the situation facing the MSGs was a prototype for the
modern battlefield Marines are predicted to inhabit: an uncertain, chaotic
arena where the lines between open conflict, humanitarian assistance and
peacekeeping are blurry at best. How many wolves are among the sheep? Do
sheep left in the wilderness transform into wolves? Valdez was relying upon
many young, inexperienced Marines to act decisively in matters of life and
death--perhaps their own and undoubtedly on behalf of others.
Bill English, one of the young MSGs assigned to the DAO, reported to the
Saigon detachment shortly before the evacuations began. After checking into
the Marine House, the "new guy" remembered trudging up a long flight
of
stairs, selecting a room and looking out over Saigon, "trying to figure out
how I had gotten here and what I was going to see in the coming days."
A lance corporal with seven months on active duty, English suddenly found
himself roaming the compound on night watches. What was once the DAO movie
theater had evolved into an evacuee processing center. As his footsteps
echoed throughout the gymnasium, a staging area where nervous hopefuls
awaited their freedom bird, "One gentleman came out to the hall and told me
how comforting it was to hear, like an affirmation of our presence," he
said. "I realized that these anxious people took comfort out of the
rhythmic
sound of our marching in the halls."
In a 24 April 1995 Time magazine article, one of the architects of the
Saigon assault, NVA Lieutenant General Hoan Phuong, described how the final
nails were to be thrust into the South's spirit. His army "enlisted"
South
Vietnamese air force pilots who were primarily driven to curry favor with
the conquering army, but who partially wanted to strike against the
Americans abandoning them.
Employing South Vietnamese air force, American-produced, A-37 Dragonfly jets
and F-5 Tiger aircraft, the defecting pilots were ordered to strike key
locations in Saigon. "The idea was to bomb the concrete hangars and the
runways at Tan Son Nhut," Phuong recounted. "We didn't think we'd do
much
real damage, but we wanted to have maximum psychological effect. We wanted
to create chaos."
The chaos Phuong's attacks created--both psychological and
tangible--radically altered both the timeline and the strategy in which U.S.
leadership attempted to evacuate its personnel. At approximately 1630, 28
April, the defecting pilots attacked Tan Son Nhat Airbase , targeting the
DAO command center and control tower.
Although a 40-member supplementary platoon composed of 9th Marine Amphibious
Brigade Marines from Okinawa had arrived a few days earlier to help provide
security, the MSGs constantly manned the compound's primary positions. Post
2 was located at the intersection of the main road into the airport, and
Post 1 was positioned 30 yards away at the road leading into the DAO
compound. As the dust from the earlier attack began to settle, it was time
to begin assigning guard watches and dig in for what was expected to be an
uneventful evening.
"I stayed up that night and, at around 0200 on the 29th, walked around to
check on the Marines at their posts," said Sergeant Ted Murray, who arrived
at the Saigon detachment the previous December. "Almost all of them smiled
and asked for some sleep, something that we all needed, but they were
Marines--embassy Marines--and they knew their job." The last MSGs who
Murray
visited were Lance Corporal Darwin Judge and Corporal Charles McMahon Jr.,
who assumed their Post 1 positions at midnight. At approximately 0330, a
series of randomly launched rockets began pounding the air base. As Marines
poured from their quarters and began to assess the situation, it was
discovered that Post 1, the closest position to the main gate, had taken a
direct hit. The two MSGs manning this position, Judge and McMahon, had been
killed during the attack and subsequently became the last U.S.
service members to die as a result of enemy fire on Vietnamese soil. (See
related sidebar below)
As the sounds of artillery, rockets and gunfire echoed throughout the city,
Ambassador Martin wanted to personally inspect the damage inflicted upon the
air base. Martin called upon MSgt Colin Broussard and Staff Sergeant James
Daisey, two of the six-man Personal Protective Security Unit assigned to him
on 29 April.
"The streets were lined with Vietnamese," recalled Broussard, who
escorted
the ambassador the six treacherous miles to the DAO. "We didn't know who
was
the enemy. We locked and loaded all weapons and could almost feel an attack
on the motorcade."
Awaiting the ambassador was a smoking, pockmarked air base in flames and
still receiving sporadic rocket fire. Acknowledging that fixed-wing
evacuations from the air base were no longer viable, Broussard said, "The
ambassador saw what he wanted to see and ordered us to bring him back to the
embassy."
It was becoming increasingly apparent to Saigon's residents that the end was
near. As the NVA began its thrust into the city, Vietnamese throngs began
seeking any feasible way to reach the U.S. Navy flotilla, Task Force 76,
positioned 20 miles offshore. South Vietnamese soldiers commandeered
military aircraft, and civilians flocked to all ports along the Saigon River
in hopes of reaching the Americans at sea.
Around 1100, the same time "White Christmas" began filling Armed
Forces
Radio airwaves, Martin requested a security squad to escort him to his
residence, located about two blocks from the embassy. Reports of Viet Cong
assassination squads, snipers and continual rocket fire failed to dissuade
the ambassador, and Broussard and Daisey were once again among those called
upon for a dangerous assignment.
"We brought Uzis [submachine guns], grenades and .357s [pistols] with us
and
went through a secret entrance in the French Embassy," said Broussard.
"We
went into the house and burned classified information and used thermite
grenades to destroy sensitive items."
In the interim, 9th MAB units aboard Task Force 76 ships were gearing up for
yet another historic evacuation. The first wave of Marine Heavy Helicopter
Squadron 462 aircraft, loaded with 2d Battalion Landing Team, 4th Marines,
touched down on DAO landing zones at approximately 1500.
The reinforcements rushed to their assigned positions as evacuees began
boarding the initial 12 Sea Stallions. During the ensuing nine hours, 395
Americans and nearly 4,500 Vietnamese and foreign nationals were airlifted
from the DAO to waiting ships.
The last elements of BLT 2/4 lifted from the DAO just before midnight,
concluding what had been an orderly, well-executed evacuation. The situation
at the embassy, however, was much more volatile as drastically outnumbered
Marines attempted to keep at bay approximately 10,000 frantic Vietnamese
surrounding the embassy walls. The front gate had been secured in order to
keep a human tidal wave from flowing into the embassy grounds, and the MSGs
were finding it extremely difficult to assist those marked for evacuation.
"If there was someone out there that we wanted to bring in," explained
Major
Jim Kean, the Saigon detachment officer in charge, "then we'd put a bunch
of
people on the wall, reach down, grab him by the collar and hair and just
yank him up and over the wall."
The advancing North Vietnamese didn't interfere with the evacuation, but
helicopter pilots received small-arms fire while hovering over the embassy.
This "cowboy-style" shooting by South Vietnamese rogue looters further
complicated an already perilous task. While CH-46s landed on the embassy
roof, pilots of the larger CH-53s were forced to execute a steep descent
into the embassy courtyard. "There had been waves of choppers. One in the
air, hovering, and one on the ground, loading," Valdez recalled.
Vietnamese inside the embassy were assured that no one was going to be left
behind. "We had to run around counting people to see who was going to get
out and who was not going to get out. It was grim," said Kean. "At any
time
during the night, the number of people inside the grounds seemed to remain
steady."
Evacuations began late that afternoon and continued steadily throughout the
evening, but the fate of those remaining inside the embassy walls was
finally sealed when a helicopter with the call sign "Lady Ace 09"
touched
down on the embassy roof shortly after 0530, 30 April. The pilot had
received specific orders that he was to extract the ambassador and his
staff, and that all further flights were designated strictly for U.S.
personnel.
"Martin looked over at me for a moment. He didn't say anything and he
didn't
show any emotion. He just looked tired," Kean described. "He knew that
this
sad moment would be coming sooner or later. Then he went upstairs and got in
the bird and left Vietnam. He was carrying an American flag with him."
As the Marines began to withdraw from the perimeter, cautiously backing
toward the embassy door in an effort to "button up" inside, Vietnamese
who
had been promised liberation suddenly realized they were about to be left
behind. The Marines barricaded the doors, froze the two elevators on the
sixth floor and made their way to the rooftop landing zone.
"Then everything came to a standstill and we just sat," said Valdez.
"All
the Marines were up there. No birds in sight. But I never thought for one
minute that the choppers would leave us behind."
Marine pilots accumulated 1,054 flight hours and flew 682 sorties throughout
Operation Frequent Wind, evacuating 5,000 from Tan Son Nhut and more than
2,000 from the embassy. At its apex, America's military presence in Vietnam
numbered 500,000 personnel. It was now reduced to BLT 2/4 reinforcements and
MSGs--60 isolated Marines on a rooftop overlooking a city under siege.
One by one, the final series of helicopters touched down and evacuated the
infantry Marines, until 11 MSGs were all that remained. "Some time just
before 8 a.m., I saw the bird off in the distance--one unescorted CH-46 out
of the sunrise," said Kean.
The largest helicopter evacuation in history, as well as America's 25-year
struggle to keep South Vietnam free, ended a few moments later as the last
Marine CH-46 lifted from the embassy and headed out to sea.
Editor's note: The author wishes to express his appreciation
to
Colin Broussard and the Saigon detachment Marine security guards for their
assistance.
Sgt Davis works in the media section of the Marine Corps Air
Station, Miramar Public Affairs Office. In recognition of his writing
abilities, he received Leatherneck's Ronald D. Lyons Award in 1998.
"Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Vietnam's Gen Vo
Nguyen Giap" by
Cecil B. Currey and "U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Bitter End, 1973-75"
are
excellent references on the fall of Saigon and are available through the MCA
Book service.
The Last Casualties
Since arriving at the Defense Attaché Office on 16 April
1975,
Marine security guards Lance Corporal Darwin Judge of Marshalltown, Iowa,
and Corporal Charles McMahon Jr., Woburn, Mass., were primarily responsible
for assisting evacuees during processing and manning security posts. A
steady stream of American, Vietnamese and foreign national evacuees had
passed through the DAO compound, but as the advancing North Vietnamese Army
gradually tightened the noose around Saigon, the pressure was beginning to
mount.
Sergeant Doug Potratz and his family were among the
multitudes
seeking safe passage to American soil. Throughout his last month in-country,
Potratz displayed an unerring knack for making crucial decisions on
particularly ominous occasions. He married his Vietnamese girlfriend on 4
April--the same day Da Nang fell to the communists. He then arrived at Tan
Son Nhut air base with his wife and 4-year-old stepdaughter the same day
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned from office, 21 April.
Frustrated by red tape, endless hours of waiting and
fruitless
attempts at securing a flight out of the country, "I was ready to
scream,"
Potratz recalled. "Judge came up to me and said, 'Sergeant Potratz, I know
the guy who fills out the plane manifest. Give me your paperwork, and I'll
get your family on the next flight out.' "
Displaying typical Marine resourcefulness, Judge returned a
few
minutes later, picked up Potratz's stepdaughter and a suitcase, and escorted
the family to the plane. "That was the last time I saw Darwin Judge
alive,"
Potratz said. "He was my hero that day."
The days and hours leading up to 29 April were becoming
increasingly
tense and as one MSG described, "full of action, boredom and turmoil."
Responsible for posting the guard that night was Sgt Kevin
Maloney,
who, like McMahon, spoke with a thick Bostonian accent. The two
Massachusetts natives were originally scheduled for the midnight watch at
Post 1--a position at the DAO compound's outer gate--but buddies Judge and
McMahon requested to be posted together. "I reasoned that no real action
would occur until morning [and that] I should be where the action was,"
said
Maloney.
At midnight, McMahon and Judge relieved LCpl Bill English,
who, like
a somnambulist, trudged to his rack and settled down for a well-deserved
rest. Less than four hours later, the base came under attack by North
Vietnamese rockets launched from nearby positions. Grabbing their weapons
and gear, English and his fellow Marines scrambled to reach bunkers located
outside the building. They soon discovered that Post 1 had taken a direct
hit, and both McMahon and Judge had been killed. Unknown to the MSGs at the time, Judge and McMahon had become
the
last U.S. service members to die in combat on Vietnamese soil.
Because Judge and McMahon exemplified the Marine
spirit--exhibiting
compassion and professionalism during a bleak, extremely confusing
period--they remain both admired and honored by the MSGs who served in
Saigon. One man who can testify to this is Potratz, who still remembers the
actions of a young lance corporal on his behalf, 25 years ago this month.
"If it weren't for the 'Darwin Judges' and the 'Charles McMahon's,'
"
he reflected, "thousands of Americans and Vietnamese would not have made it
out of the country and lived a fuller life."
--Sgt Steven A. Davis