Posted on 04/30/2018 1:07:13 PM PDT by BBell
After three decades of bloodshed, Vietnam’s civil war abruptly ended 43 years ago today, on April 30, 1975. The events surrounding this date are seared into the minds of every Vietnamese person of a certain age.
I was not yet four years old, but these are some of my earliest memories. There was no longer a North and South Vietnam divided at the 17th parallel, only the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Days before, the radio inside our house in Saigon had been ticking off provinces that had fallen into North Vietnamese hands: some of them the hometowns of my relatives. As rumors of gory revenge preceded the communists’ advance, thousands of people abandoned their homes and fled to any place that was still free. Many, including my aunts, with husbands away fighting in the South Vietnamese Army, ended up at our house.
The presence of so many visitors had the feel of Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. But for this reunion, the mood was far from celebratory. I recall hearing the word hoa binh, meaning peace, sprinkled in conversations. My father explained that it meant the end of fighting and soldiers on both sides could go home. “For you, there would be no more hiding under the counters and staircases,” he said to me.
I could not wait for hoa binh, the inspiration for the name of my father, Hoa, and one of his brothers, Binh. Its concept was the eternal dream in a land that seemed to have been forever besieged by war. I imagined peace would magically stanch the flow of white-clad mourners passing by our house. For some time, the mourning ritual of relatives and friends accompanying the deceased on foot to the burial site had become increasingly frequent. From inside our house, my siblings and I could make out the sobs and shuffling of footsteps. We would rush out to catch a glimpse of the framed picture of the deceased leading the procession. The face staring out of the frame was almost always that of a young man.
As the North Vietnamese Army closed in on South Vietnam’s capital city, a panic overtook its streets, culminating in madness on April 29, one day before its collapse. Saigon was flooded with people scrambling wildly, as if fleeing an unseen monster. Older siblings carried younger ones on their back as parents lugged bags. Alongside them all, South Vietnamese soldiers frantically tore off their uniforms. Some people fled on bicycles piled high with their belongings while others pushed carts.
No one bothered to pick up anything that was dropped. The streets were littered with shoes, clothes, and luggage, with broken bicycles and cars that had run out of gas, their doors still open. In the chaos, I heard a loud explosion. I saw a man slumped in a pool of blood as swirls of smoke and dust rose from his body. My father explained that everyone, terrified of the communists, was trying to get out of the country.
On April 30, the North Vietnamese tanks crashed into the gates of Independence Palace, home to the president of South Vietnam. The chaos of the previous day transformed into an eerie quiet. All around us, radios blasted an endless message loop: “dau hang khong dieu kien!” (“Surrender without conditions!”) The urgency in the announcer’s voice was unmistakable, even if I did not entirely understand what the command meant.
From our balcony, my older siblings and I looked down to the streets at the long line of tanks lumbering past our house. Flying from radio antennas were billowing flags, bright red with a yellow star at the center, the symbol of the Communist Party. Trucks followed the tanks. Dangling from the sides were uniformed soldiers in bush hats and sandals cut from recycled tires. Some looked not much older than many of the teenage boys in our neighborhood.
Crowds lining the street waved flags while chanting, “Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh! Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh!”
I was fascinated by the parade and its deliverance of hoa binh, but to my parents it must have felt very different.
I was 13. I remember overhearing my dad saying to a friend “my son was born during this war and I was afraid that he would have to fight in it”.
That’s Good Immigration!
The Vietnamese have been wonderful. These are the sorts of people who we want for immigrants. They work hard and prosper.
You left out CBS.
The same class of people who are trying to "Watergate" Trump right now.
My home was in Saigon till it fell, though at the time of the fall I was at school in Manila. I was set to go back to Saigon but received a letter from my father with some plane tickets back to the states stating it was too
I ran all over Saigon and on Than Sa Nhut airbase on a 50cc Honda from my 7 grade to my junior year high school. Fun times.
At the end there were few soldiers, with empty barracks all over the place. MACV compound was all but abandoned.
My father evacuated off the roof of BOQ1 to the USS Hancock. They pushed his helo off into the water to make room for more that were waiting to land.
I saw him getting a plane with other evacuees on TV.
This was the first victory for the CPUSA.
They are still allowed to operate at all levels of FEDGOV, State and Local Governments, the “Press”, and Academia, completely unfettered.
Communists never go away peacefully.
Too dangerous
Walter Cronkite? Yeah, that SOB helped lose the war with his "fake news". All the alphabet news agencies helped to lose that war by providing coverage of only the things they wanted to show.
The "News" media have been the nation's enemy since they started broadcasting on Television, and thanks to Trump, a lot of people have woken up to the fact that they undermine our elections and our governance.
Dear abb,
re: “I was at U-Tapao, Khorat, and Tahkli on TDY for six months, in late 1972, early ‘73. KC-135 squadron from Barksdale.”
I was there, from late 71 to 74. I met the base historian from “Blahville”, as he said it. 635thCSG-SupSqdrn/aug635thSPsq.
Dan Rather with his “reporting”. We know ol’Dan would never lie or misrepresent facts.
It was partly that emotions were heightened as it was, knowing that Vietnam was falling and knowing all those people would be coming in to the camps.
Most of the refugees were very nice. The exception was the high-echelon refugees (generals, senior government officials). They were all housed in their own separate VIP camp. I partly volunteered at the refugee PX tent or whatever its called in the Marines, and those guys could be real jerks when they came in and simply ordered you to give them everything.
One time they had a Marine Corps protocol officer with them. He was dressed in a suit but you could tell he was a Marine because he had a Marine tie and tie bar on. The Vietnamese started being really obnoxious and the volunteers started getting upset. The poor protocol officer who was standing behind them kept on trying to motion to us with his hands to stay calm and he was silently mouthing “just do what they want.”
A lot of the blame for losing the war falls squarely on the shoulder of the Government of South Vietnam, who favored the Catholic minority, and alienated the Buddhist majority of the South.
Met a lady who came with her family in the 80s. She the government gave them $300. Her dad worked 2 jobs to pay it back. He told her America had been good to them so they owed America.
I witnessed numerous C-130 planeloads full of dead ARVN's, (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) landing daily at Tan Son Nhut air base.
I knew it was just a matter of time before the South would fall.
I left in November of that year.
Well I was 27 and I was ashamed of my government. To have let all those brave men die in combat and then give South Vietnam to the communist!
The Army drafted me in 1969. I was,and still am in favor of fighting communism. But I wasn’t keen on the idea of a war that American GIs were not permitted to win. So drafting me was the only way the Army could get me to Vietnam. We were betrayed by our own government.
Military’s hands were tied by the Democrats, and then Nixon got snookered by Kissinger into the “peace” agreement /aka surrender. Had Nixon not been battling Watergate I think he would have pushed to continue air support for the ARVN, which would have made it much more difficult for the NVA to invade. Once Ford took over as President, South Vietnam was doomed.
Heckuva day. Remember it well. A propaganda triumph for world communism, which proved in time, yet again, that communists are the most violent, corrupt, dishonest, and dissembling bunch in the entire history of Planet Earth.
It looks like the same people that ran Korean war.. We weren’t allowed to win. Both wars took over 50,000 American Lives. I was in Vietnam also from May 68 to April 69.. I felt betrayed when we allowed it to fall into the Communist hands. at least we kept South Korea free..
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