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RIP Hugh Van Es — 7 Comments

  1. My friends, Hai Tran and Xuan-An Tran were supposed to have been evacuated from the Embassy on that last day, along with their four children. He was a librarian for the USIS, she was a high-school science teacher, who had some connections to an experimental South Vietnamese nuclear power plant; both were considered to be in extreme danger from the North Vietnamese. They waited, and waited at home all during that last long day, for a phone call, or for someone to come and get them – no one ever did. Fortunately, Xuan-An’s brother was a Viet Coast-Guard commander, the captain of a 100-ft patrol boat. He had decided to make a run for it out to sea, at the last; he sent all of his crewmen into the city to fetch their families, and went to get his and Xuan-An’s mother. He was horrified to find them all still waiting, and urged them not to wait a moment longer. They came away with him, having to carry their youngest daughter, who was a toddler, and each of them with no more of their personal possessions than would fit into a small pack the size of a student’s book-bag.
    Xuan-An told me there were a hundred people crammed onto that patrol launch, when they finally cast off and headed out to sea. There was a cargo ship, the Pioneer Contender, and an aircraft carrier, the Hancock, waiting just beyond the horizon.
    The boy who lived with my family for a while, Kiet Huong Vo – he got away by helicopter, from the airport at Tan Son Nhut. He was a Vietnamese Air Force security policeman; he got carried away in a group of people rushing a helicopter. He was thrown up against the door, and on impulse, threw away his M16 and got on. He had not thought of escaping, really, but there was his chance and he took it.
    He said that on the Hancock, as soon as they emptied people out of the helicopter, they pushed the helicopter overboard. There were so many people, and so many helicopter waiting to land and possibly almost out of gas and terribly overloaded, no place and no time to do anything else but shove them off the deck to make room for another to land.

  2. I was antiwar, young and stupid, and believed the leftist propaganda until my early 30’s (1980s) when I had profound second thoughts. I cried when I heard that all the sleeping pills were sold out in Saigon when it fell; suicide was considered preferable to the oncoming Communist horde. Since then numerous books have documented the real history of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. I haven’t trusted the media since.

  3. Here’s an appropriate link:

    The Fall of Saigon

    I would recommend the whole site; but especially President Ford’s letter where he says:

    “We did the best that we could. History will judge whether we could have done better. One thing, however, is beyond question – the heroism of the marines who guarded the Embassy during its darkest hours, and those brave helicopter pilots who flew non-stop missions for 18 hours, dodging relentless sniper fire to land on an embassy roof illuminated by nothing more than a 35mm slide projector.”

    Also, under misc photos, it shows the marines after they retreated to Manila reading the newspapers about what they have just done. They have just played a huge part in history! And they do, indeed, look so young.

  4. I’m not at all sure if the above comment was suggesting my link was inappropriate. Perhaps I should have introduced it differently let’s try this:

    “Summing this up as ‘The Saddest Day’ is appropriate, but perhaps misleading to the young or the still numb.”

    link reposted:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcQoQDkhbYw

  5. My brother lost his life in the earlier days of the evacuation. The C5A transporting orphans out of country departed Ton Son Knut air base but accidently lost rear doors, thus de-compression and returned only to crash into a rice paddy and dike. It was a chaotic time with alot of urgency to leave. We did the best we could at the time. God bless those people we left behind.

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