Some American historians comment reasonably that the South Vietnamese soldiers lost their fighting spirit due to the “family syndrome” (changing their focus to take care of their own family) in the last period of the war. The prime cause, however, was actually the “abandonment syndrome” rather than the family syndrome, which followed the latter in the last fleeting days. The “abandonment syndrome” started from Washington, moved to Saigon and spread among the leaders, politicians, intellectuals, and senior generals after the Nixon administration forced South Vietnam to sign the Paris Peace Accords. By the time the communists attacked and captured Ban-Me-Thuot, the contagion spread from Saigon to Pleiku and Da Nang, infecting all South Vietnamese cities, towns, units, officers, soldiers and the population, specially in I and II Corps & Regions. This contagion destroyed the fighting spirit of South Vietnamese armed forces.
The abandonment syndrome was a psychological illness rooted in the discouraged state of mind of Washington leaders, who sought to straddle internal difficulties and renounce the American policy of interference in Indochina, particularly in South Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger realized this policy by giving North Vietnam many opportunities to freely act in South Vietnam through the Paris Treaty. Ford kept Kissinger in order to keep Nixon’s strategic plan under the control of the U.S. Congress, of which the majority wanted to abandon South Vietnam by severely cutting off military aid for its armed forces. President Nguyen van Thieu considered these American political facts as “betrayal.” The abandonment syndrome was, in effect, a chain of betrayal resulting in a series of catastrophes for the RVNAF and the South Vietnamese people. They were victims of American and Vietnamese political games.
It is necessary to take a backward step to reexamine the case. After the communist capture of Phuoc-Long in January 1975, Ambassador Graham Martin went back to Washington and persuaded President Ford to stand behind Richard Nixon’s promises, as President Thieu requested, and provide additional military aid for the RVNAF. President Ford asked Congress for $300 million in supplemental aid for Saigon, but could not guarantee any future retaliation against the communist’s open invasion of South Vietnam. Washington’s response to Saigon was vague until the North Vietnamese Army attacked Ban-Me-Thuot on March 10, 1975.
When the NVA began to isolate the Central Highlands by attacking ARVN outposts and fire support bases along Highways 19 and 21, President Thieu alerted Ambassador Martin of what was a repeat of Phuoc-Long. He anticipated a new North Vietnamese total offensive with forces invading across the borders and the DMZ. Through the ambassador, he suggested Washington react appropriately. However, once the attack on Ban-Me-Thuot appeared to be a truly large-scale offense, Washington maintained its willful silence. Thieu became desperate after a week of continuously but hopelessly appealing for firm U.S. support. No favorable response was received.
Instead, in those days, ambassador Graham Martin let President Thieu know the deterioration of the climate in Washington, particularly in Congress, and the possibility that all military aid to South Vietnam would be cut off. President Thieu learned that not only was it highly unlikely that South Vietnam would receive any supplemental aid, it was unlikely that they would receive any aid at all in the next fiscal year, beginning in June. The RVNAF would face within a few months an abrupt halt of any means of continuing the war. This was a deathblow for Saigon’s leaders and the RVNAF. As a result, Ban-Me-Thuot was quietly lost.
The fall of Ban-Me-Thuot, from a military viewpoint, would not amount to serious damage for South Vietnam because the ARVN might be able to retake it, had they the means to fight. Even if they could not recapture this lost city, the communists could not easily defeat the RVNAF and “liberate” South Vietnam without undergoing years of terrible fighting, as General Vo Nguyen Giap estimated—two or three years—and only after suffering heavy damage to their armed forces.
By contrast, from a political viewpoint Ban-Me-Thuot may be considered a final conclusion, or a clear exposition of the will of the American powers to betray their honor by ignoring the U.S. signature on an international treaty, by neglecting the promises of a U.S. president, by betraying a longtime U.S. ally, and by betraying tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers who had sacrificed their lives to defend the freedom for this small country.
South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu would conclude that the United States betrayed him, his regime, and the RVNAF, saying: “It’s better to let the Americans speak for themselves—and I have heard many very important men, who had a great responsibility in Vietnam, say that we have no other word than ‘betrayal.’ ‘Betrayal.’”1 Thus, because of this perception, Thieu made the fatal decision to abandon South Vietnamese I Corps and Region and the Central Highlands of and II Corps & Regions, which led to the collapse of RVNAF fighting spirit in these military regions. The abandonment syndrome began to spread widely and the tragedy of South Vietnam continued after Thieu’s decision.
President Thieu’s abandonment concept could be clearly seen just 24 hours after Ban Ma Thout was attacked. On March 11, 1975, he called a meeting with key figures such as prime minister Tran Thien Khiem, General Cao van Vien, and Lt. General Dang van Quang to decide the fate of I Corps & Region and the Central Highlands. Thieu concluded, “Given our present strength and capacities we certainly cannot hold and defend all the territory we want.”2 He meant that he would save his armed forces to hold populous and flourishing areas, including several coastal provinces of II Corps & Region, territories of III and IV Corps & Regions, and the continental shelf, rich with newly discovered oil.
On March 13, 1975, President Thieu, in the presence of prime minister General Tran Thien Khiem, summoned Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, I Corps & Region commander, to Saigon and ordered him to abandon I Corps & Region. General Truong hesitated to execute this tragic order until March 19, 1975, when he was summoned again to Saigon.
On March 14, 1975, Major General Pham van Phu, II Corps & Region commander, was summoned to Cam-Ranh Bay for a meeting with President Thieu and his Military Council members: General Tran Thien Khiem, prime minister; General Cao Van Vien, chief of the RVNAF Joint General Staff; and Lt. General Dang Van Quang, Thieu’s military adviser. President Thieu ordered General Phu to withdraw his armed forces from Pleiku, Kontum, and the Central Highlands to the coastal provinces to provide additional forces for the defense of these vital areas. Thieu explained: “We had to take troops from the isolate areas, gather our forces to defend the more vital areas, because we judged that the United States would not help us again. If they wanted to help us they would have done so by then and we could not wait until it became too late. We had to take the calculated risk because withdrawal without mobility and great firepower is a risk. But it was a must for us.”3
Despite the above explication, Thieu’s decision to abandon the Central Highlands, remains one of the biggest secrets of the Vietnam War. When General Phu implemented this disastrous decision on March 16, 1975, the move shocked the American authorities in South Vietnam, South Vietnamese intellectuals, and RVNAF generals and middle-ranking officers. However, the surprise of the communist leaders would rise to the highest degree. Thieu had given them the generous opportunity to win the war two years earlier than they had expected.
If Thieu’s reasons for the withdrawal were as he stated, then his decision may be perceived as one of the most foolishly strategic maneuvers in the history of war. But a general like Thieu surely must have known better. Perhaps there were other reasons. One of these might be that Thieu took this fatal decision as an act of revenge against the so-called “betrayal” by the United States. He knew that if the United States abandoned South Vietnam, the war would certainly be lost. He would not allow the United States to unweave itself from the defeat. The “tit for tat” behavior that Thieu displayed was very simple: if the United States wanted to abandon South Vietnam to the communists, he would push the process forward sooner than had been imagined.
A different explication finds expression in rumors saying that the plan to abandon the Central Highlands and I Corps & Region was a design of Lieutenant General Dang van Quang, Thieu’s adviser, who had secret relations with American authorities in the background to quickly push the abandonment in exchange for American assurance of the fortune of Saigon leaders afterward. Rumors also spread among international observers and South Vietnamese intellectuals that a deal had been struck to give the North Vietnamese half of the country without resistance. Meanwhile, Ambassador Martin explained Thieu’s order to be the only wise course of action to cut the military lines short and retain the great economic part of the country—the southern delta. In any case, the abandonment of the Central Highlands was an enormous mistake. (Before Thieu’s death on September 29, 2001, until today, nobody has seen any of his “memoirs” on his political life or on the Vietnam War. Yet we have to respect his silence. Perhaps history will not reveal the secret of this last period of the Vietnam War.)
Major General Phu, ARVN II Corps commander, implemented President Thieu’s orders to abandon the Central Highlands. Phu’s staff had only 48 hours to prepare plans for the withdrawal of more than 55,000 troops of all ARVN units from these cities to Tuy Hoa Province in the coastal area. The first convoy that left the Central Highlands, on March 16, 1975, was the 20th Engineer Group which had the mission to repair the road and bridges along the way. When the main convoys began to move, more than 400,000 people joined them. The retreat of II Corps & Region troops became an enormous exodus. On its march, the massive exodus convoy, which included thousands of military and civilian cars of all kind, moved slowly along the unusual, mountainous and narrow Route #7B from the Highlands to Phu-Bon Province, an 80 mile saga. How could ARVN units move quickly while protecting the mass composed of 80 percent women, old people, and children, riding on minor means of transportation or trudging on foot? How could they organize a safe convoy to react when the enemy attacked? How could they feed tens of thousands of people who hastily left their homeland without any provision? Anyone who has experience on the battlefield can imagine the thousand-and-one risks of a tactical retreat. Remember, the ARVN withdrawal from the Central Highlands in March 1975 was transformed into a massive exodus convoy of hundreds of thousands of civilians, who wanted to escape from the communist massacre and the cruelty of the communists as happened in Hue City in 1968. Thus, the withdrawal lost its characteristic as a purely tactical maneuver and assumed more risks.
NVA General Van Tien Dung initially seemed surprised by the retreat of ARVN II Corps & Region forces from the Central Highlands. But after safely acquiring the empty Pleiku and Kontum cities, he sent the 320th and 968th Divisions in pursuit of the exodus. The pursuit was a little late but was enough to kill more than two hundred thousand people of this exodus from the highlands.
On the ARVN side, the half-million people moved safely for two days on the abandoned Route 7B under the command of Brigadier General Pham Duy Tat. It reached Hau-Bon, the capital city of Phu Bon Province, as its first resting place. Five hundred thousand people—soldiers and civilians, men and women, elderly and children—jammed into every corner of the city. Unfortunately, on the morning of March 18, 1975, the 7th Ranger Battle Group, in a search operation south of the city, was wrongly hit by VNAF bombers and fighters that caused the death of more than 150 and destroyed two tanks. That night the NVA 320th Division opened fire on the city with artillery. Thousands of innocents were killed under this ferocious shelling of more than a thousand shells. Flesh and blood scattered all over the city’s market and many buildings and houses were burned down. An enormous number of tanks, gun-armored carriers and civilian buses exploded. A large column of flames and smoke billowed up to the darkened sky. Groans and cries resounded desperately throughout the night. Han Bon City, extending a kilometer each side, was completely in ruin. Seventy percent (70%) of ARVN II Corps & Region’s heavy guns, equipment and tanks were destroyed. Thousands of innocents and soldiers were wounded and many soldiers, including officers and NCOs, broke rank to take care of their families. The family syndrome began to emerge.
On the morning of March 20, the exodus convoy continued moving along Route 7B to Phu Tuc District, 22 miles Southeast of Hau Bon where it had to stop at the bridge “Le Bac” on the Ba river (600 m long) and the newly built up pontoon bridge west of Phu Tuc to gradually pass over. General Dung’s units moved up and launched an enormous number of shells on the retreating mass that stretched several miles along the route. After one hour of artillery fire, the NVA 320th Division assaulted this large convoy and cut the mass into fragments. Thousands of civilians jumped into the river to evade the firing, only to drown. Other thousands stampeded in all directions to be killed by crushing themselves, by direct enemy fire, and mostly by enemy shelling. Countless children and women were killed. Their bodies dispersed all over this five-mile portion of the highway and around the two long bridges or in the waters of the Ba River. Anyway, the exodus convoy passed through the enemy ambush that day.
ARVN troops reacted fiercely and close combat occurred everywhere. The most intense was the resistance of the ARVN 21st Armored Battalion, the 203rd Artillery Battalion, and the Ranger troops. On March 21, the ARVN 7th Ranger Group attacked a unit of the NVA 320th that had captured Phu Tuc and retook this small city for the exodus to repose. On March 22, the convoy moved out again to the next destination, Cung Son, 40 miles west of Tuy Hoa City. Again, the column was ambushed by the 60th Regiment of the NVA 320th Division. Again, tens of thousands of innocents were killed at the pontoon Dong Cam, 6 miles west of Cung Son. Fortunately, two ARVN Ranger battalions, the 35th and the 51st, that covered the last portion of the column broke forth to inflict heavy casualties on the 60th Regiment of the NVA 320th Division while other ARVN units fought their way through enemy road blocks. Finally, the exodus convoy arrived at Tuy Hoa on March 27, 1975.
Of those who took part in the exodus, only one in four of the troops reached the coastal province. Sixty percent of civilians, women and children were killed by NVA troops and the rest were captured. In other words, only 20,000 of the 55,000 troops made it through and only 700 rangers survived among the 7,000. And only 100,000 of the 400,000 civilians reached Tuy Hoa City.
Tens of thousands of ARVN soldiers cried for this tragic withdrawal from the Central Highlands. They cried for the fatal orders that forced them to abandon their lovely fortified lands without fighting; they cried for their family members, loved ones and fellows who were cruelly killed before their eyes while they were unable to protect them; and they cried for the heart-rending sorrow of seeing innocent people dying hour after hour of hunger, thirst, and disease while enduring another 80-mile journey from Phu-Bon Province to the coast, after March 18. The massive exodus of a half million people fled from the Central Highlands on Route 7B was remembered as the “Convoy of Blood and Tears.”
South Vietnamese soldiers and innocent inhabitants of the Central Highlands were, first and foremost, pitiful people defeated by both the Saigon leaders’ strategically unrealistic decisions and Hanoi leaders’ strategically real ambitions. Other RVNAF soldiers and people in other parts of South Vietnam would follow their fates in the very near future. But Van Tien Dung’s victory on Route 7B amounted to the collective killing of unfortunate people, a great slaughter but not really the excellent combat of a great captain. He was no better than any barbarous general in ancient times.
Everywhere, the communists were feared by the South Vietnamese population who wanted to follow the ARVN soldiers anywhere, even to the death, rather than stay with the communists. The so-called General Uprising never happened in South Vietnam after the communists began their “General Offensive.” The communists of North Vietnam could occupy South Vietnamese towns and cities but not South Vietnamese hearts and minds. Ironically, the bloody terror that the communists had previously sowed in South Vietnam, such as the collective massacre of innocents at Hue in their 1968 Tet Offensive, was the main factor that created such panic among the population and the family syndrome among ARVN soldiers in I Corps & Region in late March, in addition to President Thieu’s decision to abandon Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien Provinces.
While Major General Pham van Phu, II Corps commander, was trying to establish a new command headquarters at Nha-Trang and relocate his units to form a new defense line in the coastal areas, Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, I Corps commander, was stuck with President Thieu’s order to abandon Quang Tri and Thua Thien, the two northernmost provinces of his military region on March 13. As previously mentioned, until the third week of March, General Truong still hesitated to implement President Thieu’s order, because he had under his command more than 250,000 troops of ground, sea, and air forces in excellent dispositions and all were willing to fight even though the military situation everywhere in his military region was under trouble, including Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien. During the week, from March 13 to March 17, many times General Truong called the prime minister, General Tran Thien Khiem, to report the situation and suggest he ask President Thieu to annul the order to abandon I Corps & Region.
On March 14, President Thieu decided to move the Airborne Division from the south and west of Da Nang back to Saigon as his strategic reserve, minus a brigade which would be put down to the defense line at Khanh Duong District on Highway 19, fifty miles northwest of Nha-Trang, to block the NVA units access to the coast. With this move, Thieu showed his intention of shortening the north-south defense line down to the 12th parallel, at somewhere north of Nha-Trang. General Truong persuaded President Thieu that the withdrawal of the Airborne Division from Da Nang would enable him to move the Marine Division from Quang-Tri to defend this crucial port. In doing so, he would probably give up Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien Provinces to the communists. On the same day, General Truong called Lieutenant General Lam Quang Thi, his deputy and I Corps Advanced Command Headquarters’ commander at Hue, to order him to move the two Marine Brigades 258th and 369th from Quang Tri Province to Da Nang by March 17. In the meantime General Truong insisted President Thieu reconsider his order to abandon Hue.
On March 18, under the request of the two highest commanders of I Corps & Region, General Tran Thien Khiem, the prime minister, visited Da Nang to review the situation. He left Da Nang in the afternoon without any special recommendations. On March 19, General Truong flew to Saigon to submit the new defense plan of the I Corps & Region to President Thieu and suggested again he keep the two northernmost provinces of his military region. President Thieu’s decision was probably not clear. Thus, when he went back to Da Nang on March 20, General Truong told General Thi that Hue would be defended; however, he ordered General Thi to draw a “contingency plan” to evacuate the last 147th Marine Brigade and the 1st Infantry Division from Thua Thien Province to Da Nang. The plan was drawn but no one knew exactly for what reason all of ARVN forces under General Thi’s command moved out of Quang Tri and Hue by March 24. Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien Provinces were completely vacated by ARVN regular forces. They were abandoned.
Within hours, residents of these provinces, especially Hue, were struck by dread at their fate. The withdrawal of the ARVN Marine Division from Quang-Tri and the I Corps Advanced Command from Hue was like an atomic bomb exploding on their heads. The dread of a communist mass-killing and the panic of the real ARVN abandonment generated the family syndrome, which began to spread widely in every separate ARVN unit and among local forces. Commanders, officers and soldiers of these units, relinquished by their senior commanders, could not do anything but manage to save their families and their own lives. By all means they sought to evade the communist bloodbath before the arrival of the barbarous troops.
Every corner of the land, town, district, and village was transformed into a chaotic state. People sought to leave their native lands before it was too late. Masses of people began to pour onto Highway 1 using whatever means of transportation they had, with their most necessary provisions, and unintentionally formed into a colossal exodus of more than a million refugees, moving southward for several days. Others took the sea route on every kind of boat floating along the coastal water to indefinite destinations in the southern provinces.
Quang-Tri was occupied by the communists on March 24. Only a day later they captured Hue. North Vietnamese General Van Tien Dung then reorganized his forces in the region into a new corps-sized unit to pursue the mass-exodus, which was moving slowly on a sixty-mile escape road from Hue to Da Nang. It was too late, despite Dung’s spurring on his units with the slogan “lightning speed, daring and daring” to attack the innocent refugees. What a militarily talented maneuver to capture the empty cities and pursue a disorderly exodus of mostly women and children on this lengthy itinerary! A million people reached Da Nang City.
Da Nang then doubled its population to three million. Refugees from Quang-Tri and Hue, however, created serious problems for the I Corps & Region commander and the American Consul. In the first instant, when the mass of refugees came into the city, an enormous number of soldiers from the ARVN 1st and 3rd Divisions deserted and joined them. The family syndrome, which followed the abandonment syndrome, then became a psychological contagion that gravely affected these ARVN divisions and other units.
Most soldiers and officers of ARVN units in I Corps & Region had families in Quang-Tri, Thua Thien, and Quang-Nam Provinces. Therefore, not only those of the 1st and 3rd Infantry Divisions but also others of all combatant and specialized units such as ranger, armor, artillery, logistics and supply units, were in a state of disquietude. The majority wanted to abandon their units to look out for the welfare of their families. Many deserted to search for their families among the mass of refugees from Quang-Tri and Hue, or joined them throughout Da Nang City to prepare for another evacuation to the south. Commanders of these units were at the point of doing nothing.
As a result, all military activities in Da Nang stagnated and the fighting spirit of all ARVN officers and soldiers in the region was destroyed. General Ngo Quang Truong suddenly lost the major part of his fighting strength. He knew that, with the downfall of troop morale, he could no longer defend Da Nang and maintain his military region. His only hope was to keep fighting as long as possible to draw the bulk of war materiel out of Da Nang. But the situation became hopeless when the Marine Division was ordered by Saigon to retreat from Da Nang and move to Vung Tau in III Corps & Region.
After March 26, the defense lines of the 1st and 3rd Infantry Divisions in the northwest, west and southwest of Da Nang practically ceased to exist. On the next day, Highway 1 in the south was cut off and several NVA units approached in the vicinity of the city. The chance for refugees to escape from Da Nang lessened except by air and sea transport. But Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) aircraft and Vietnamese Navy (VNN) transport ships were limited.
After March 26, the American Consulate at Da Nang began to evacuate staff, American officials and technicians, and Vietnamese officials and their families by Air America’s aircraft. Vietnamese Navy transport ships and cargo boats could not approach any dock or beach to put on board the hundreds of thousands of people, but only to rescue those who swam toward them. Hundreds were drowned in the sea evacuation. Disorder and bedlam inside the city, at the airport and along the beach was inevitable as millions of refugees and thousands of ARNV soldiers were not under the control of any official body. In addition, from March 27, the communists began to shell the city and the airport causing more problems for the evacuation and intensifying the panic among the masses.
Finally, on the morning of March 29, after thousands of soldiers began to mob the airfield runways, wresting their way on-board the first of three World Air Boeing 727s of American billionaire Ed Daly, any further air evacuation from Da Nang was canceled. General Truong’s staff, some 4,000 troops of the 1st and 3rd Divisions, and 6,000 marines left Da Nang on the same day by transport ships moving south for the defense of Saigon. Da Nang was abandoned. On the next day, March 30, the communists occupied the city. In sum, only ten percent of the 3,000,000 refugees had been able to escape from Da Nang.
During the preceding week, on March 24, the ARVN 12th Ranger Battle Group and the 2nd Infantry Division at Tam-Ky had abandoned Quang-Tin and Quang-Ngai Provinces. Some 5,000 or 6,000 troops of the 2nd Division pulled out from their defense line and moved to the port of Chu-Lai to be drawn out by VNN ships, first to Cu-lao Re, a small island 20 miles offshore, then to Binh-Tuy Province in III Corps & Region. These two provinces were captured by the communists several days later. The whole of I Corps & Region was lost to the communists in less than two weeks without serious fighting anywhere. Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, an elite commander of the ARVN, was unable to make any moves under the fickle Saigon leadership. The RVNAF just abandoned one city after another. The communist forces just moved in and occupied the five northern provinces of South Vietnam one by one without losing even a minor fraction of their armed forces.
President Thieu’s strategy to abandon the Central Highlands in II Corps & Region and Quang-Tri and Hue in I Corps & Region was a disaster for the RVNAF. Abandoning the “isolated areas” to keep the ARVN’s strength for the defense of the “richer parts” of South Vietnam did not work. On the contrary, two corps-sized units of more than 400,000, including other combatant and support units, were merely disbanded by these fatal decisions. But, the most important factor was the fall of the RVNAF’s fighting spirit—due to the abandonment syndrome and the family syndrome. In reality, these two psychological foes defeated South Vietnamese troops, not the real communist army.
As these events unfolded, General Van Tien Dung had the great opportunity to quickly push two corps-sized units, one from the Central Highlands and another from the north, to other coastal provinces of II Corps & Region. President Thieu ordered the withdrawal of the ARVN 22nd Infantry Division from Qui-Nhon on March 31. Binh-Dinh Province was abandoned. Afterward, even if he wanted to organize a new defense line north of Nha-Trang to protect the other coastal provinces, Khanh-Hoa, Ninh-Thuan, and Binh-Thuan, he would not be able to do so because of the increased pressure of the enemy and the impossibility of replenishing or reforming ARVN units which had been withdrawn from the forsaken territories.
On the same day, Hanoi announced that it was ready to talk with Saigon about a new political settlement for South Vietnam, but not with Thieu. Meanwhile, the communist leaders devised new offensive plans to promptly and totally occupy South Vietnam. Frank Snepp, CIA’s chief strategy analyst in Saigon, outlined in a report to his superior that the North Vietnamese Communist Party’s Politburo had reconvened and made a new decision—they would go for total victory in 1975, instead of following the two-year timetable they had previously planned, because they had stumbled on unforeseen victory.
Indeed, the situation drastically changed after President Thieu abandoned the “isolated areas” that led to the destruction of almost half of his armed forces. Hanoi diplomat Ha van Lau’s statement proved the accuracy of Frank Snepp’s assessment; Lau said: “After the fall of Hue and Danang, our leadership decided to intensify the preparations to end the war before the rainy season. This is to say, in the month of April 1975.”4
In the preceding weeks, when President Thieu abandoned the Central Highlands, Hanoi leaders were surprised and believed that Thieu would lay some dreadful traps for them. After acquiring Pleiku, Kontum, Da Nang and Binh-Dinh, they discerned that, instead, Thieu had simply given them the most precious opportunity to “liberate” the South, more than they could conceive in their grandest dreams. They had opened the Ho Chi Minh Trail for their “long march” to the South to take possession of the land for the creation on a communist regime without success. But now, Thieu suddenly allowed their armed forces to march down the largest avenues to Saigon, to come for the final victory, and to make history, faster, shorter, and easier. Why not take this opportunity to realize their dreams? Dreams became reality for the communists on April 30, 1975. However, these realities then crushed the dreams of the other Vietnamese people who hoped for a reunited country of freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Under the communist regime they shall never acquire such desires. For how long will this bitter situation last?