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.
What I remember the most from that period was that plane crash that killed all those poor orphans trying to escape from Vietnam.
Remembering The Doomed First Flight Of Operation Babylift
https://www.npr.org/2015/04/26/402208267/remembering-the-doomed-first-flight-of-operation-babylift
Yes the C 5 galaxy that went down. I was young but I remember that too. We always paid attention to what was going on in our household. I can’t say the same for my kids but lord I tried.
I remember because I was in the Mediterranean on a US nuclear submarine. My division chief had done 3 tours there on PBR’s. We got the news over the wire. You couldn’t talk to the chief hardly at all. I guess he wondered why he worked so hard for his Purple Hearts.
I remember because I was in the Mediterranean on a US nuclear submarine. My division chief had done 3 tours there on PBR’s. We got the news over the wire. You couldn’t talk to the chief hardly at all. I guess he wondered why he worked so hard for his Purple Hearts.
At the time of the fall of Saigon, I was a college student in L.A. and volunteered for the Red Cross at Camp Pendleton to help the Vietnamese refugees being flown in and housed in tent cities there. I was in a large volunteer meeting at my college when it was announced that the “baby lift” plane had crashed and the children were killed. I remember people starting to cry, especially the women.
If that didn’t make you cry, you weren’t human.
IIRC a good number of those male refugees ultimately volunteered to serve in the US Armed Forces.
That’s Good Immigration!
The left-wing lost Vietnam to the communists.
It was a big day in Harvard Square.
Everybody was running around cheering and honking horns.
Don't forget Cambodia. Ironically, it took the NVA to end Pol Pot's regime.
Dad was stationed at Clark. My mother was in The Philippines helping out with the other end of the baby lift. She never talked about it much.
Dad flew evac missions during the fall. The closest he ever got to combat (as far as I know) was looking down on the city at night and seeing the street fighting. Those old C-130s had no flare launchers so they actually hung out the side doors with cargo straps holding a flare pistol and watching for any smoke trails. Hell of a thing to do for a young man (dad) with babies back home.
I was not home a year yet, after 3 years at U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield, home of the B-52 base there.
I could not get over how orgasmic on camera Peter Jennings looked. How full of glee and joy that (expletives) bubbled out of the TV. Over 58, 000 of my brethren-in-uniform gave their lives there, and this (expletives) is so happy that ‘the other guy’ is just walking on in, like walking into a pancake house booth that you just left.
Yeah, I remember the day, and forever cursed the newsmedia.
Yep. Left-wingers are the blame for that too. Heck, they loved Pol Pot!
I was at U-Tapao, Khorat, and Tahkli on TDY for six months, in late 1972, early ‘73. KC-135 squadron from Barksdale.
They sure hope that everyone forgets the killing Fields part of the story.
After the Soviet Union fell, I read analysis of the cost to them to prop up, North Vietnam. The money the democratic held congress withheld to South Vietnam was small compared to what USSR was spending.
“....The left-wing lost Vietnam to the communists.....”
Truth to that. The insane libs practically gave it to the commies.
That alone should have been enough to NEVER let an insane lib anywhere near the levers of govt for ANY reason. They should be in an asylum, not Congress.
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