Hanoi’s goals set forward in the VWP-Politburo’s approved offensive plans for the NVA forces in South Vietnam were to totally defeat the RVNAF and promptly occupy Saigon. There was no political matter in these new plans as they now clearly sought to solve the war by military force. First, all communist forces in South Vietnam, NVA and VC divisions, separate regiments and specialized units, were incorporated into corps-sized units. Each corps was commanded by a two- or three-star general and carried out a special battle plan for each front line as an attacking spearhead. Second, almost all combatant units, reserve troops, new war equipment, and additional supplies were sent to the South through the Ho Chi Minh Trail and Highway 1, across the Ben-Hai River, to reinforce or replenish each corps. Tens of thousands of vehicles, carrying full troops, weapons, ammunition, and supplies, continuously rolled down these accesses day and night to their destinations in the South. Finally, all NVA forces of 20-division equivalents were directed toward Saigon in a final campaign named “Ho Chi Minh,” to “liberate” South Vietnam. This offensive campaign was directed by the VWP’s Politburo with three of its eleven members, such as Le Duc Tho, Pham Hung, and Van Tien Dung, commanding all forces in South Vietnam.
In the first week of April, Phu-Yen and Khanh-Hoa Provinces and Cam-Ranh Bay, one of the finest and most important harbors in the Pacific, were consecutively occupied by NVA forces. The ARVN line of defense held by the ARVN 3rd Airborne Brigade at Khanh-Duong had been overrun by the overwhelming NVA I Corps forces and the ARVN Marine Division at Cam-Ranh was ordered to move to Vung-Tau Harbor in ARVN III Corps & Region.
President Thieu then decided to establish a new defense line north of Ninh-Thuan, his native province, to defend the last portion of ARVN II Corps & Region in the coastal areas. He placed Ninh-Thuan and Binh-Thuan Provinces under the command of ARVN III Corps & Region commander, Lieutenant General Nguyen van Toan, and ordered him to organize the III Corps Advanced Command Headquarters at the military airfield, five miles northwest of Phan-Rang, the capital city of Ninh-Thuan Province. Lieutenant General Nguyen Vinh Nghi was assigned as field commander to direct all RVNAF units in the region, including several Regional Force battalions, some fighter and helicopter squadrons of the VNAF 6th Division that had been withdrawn from strategic Phu-Cat Airfield, and the ARVN 2nd Airborne Brigade moving from Saigon to the region on April 8. He also reinforced the defense line with the ARVN 2nd Infantry Division from Ham-Tan and the 3rd Ranger Battle-Group from Bien-Hoa.
These actions came too late, since the communists had two corps of six to seven divisions in front of Ninh-Thuan and three others that began to attack ARVN units in III Corps & Region. However, ARVN troops at the Ninh-Thuan defense line and farther in the south were willing to fight, even to the death, to protect their native lands and their families, if their leaders were determined to steadfastly stand and fight. With them the abandonment syndrome stopped and the family syndrome no longer ravaged the RVNAF’s will to fight. They would possibly lose to the overwhelming communists forces which had definitely gained leverage after the disappearance of ARVN I and II Corps & Regions. Unfortunately, after the communist “Ho Chi Minh Campaign” went into effect on April 9, 1975, the political climate between Saigon and Washington worsened, which damaged again the RVNAF’s fighting spirit.
After South Vietnam lost Phuoc-Long in early January, the Ford administration had proposed an additional $300 million in military aid for the RVNAF. Before approving Ford’s proposal, the U.S. Congress sent a delegation to South Vietnam (and Cambodia) for a fact-finding mission in the last week of February. This congressional delegation was comprised of seven representatives and a senator, led by Representative John Flynt, Jr. Among them were anti–Saigon-regime activists Peter McCloskey, Donald Fraser, Millicent Fenwick, and Bella Abzug, who behaved rudely and attempted to humiliate Saigon leaders and U.S. Embassy and American officials anytime they could.
Upon returning to Washington on March 2, these activists vocally exaggerated the nature of the situation in South Vietnam and the mistakes of Saigon leaders in order to agitate anti-war feelings among the American people. In Congress, they canvassed congressmen to vote down Ford’s proposed additional military aid for Saigon. One activist, Pete McCloskey, when answering an interview question by Professor Larry Engelmann, charged South Vietnam with human rights violations for beating some urban communist prisoners, but closed his eyes to the extreme cruelty of the communists when they captured Phuoc-Long and executed hundreds of South Vietnamese provincial officials and innocent people. He did not see the deadly wound the South Vietnamese people and their army suffered from the “stab-in-the-back” by an ally when facing a ferocious enemy that continued to be strongly supported by its communist allies. The cut back of military aid and the broken promise to our army and people were acts of betrayal.
In the beginning of the war between the communists and nationalists, our leaders and intellectuals had no illusions about leaning on the United States to fight against our foes. But, the war itself had become something else, an international conflict between the communist bloc and the free world, and the United States had transformed South Vietnam into a “testing-ground” for their new worldwide strategy. The nationalists were pushed toward an “absolute necessity” of fighting in alliance with and under the support of the United States, until one day this powerful ally withdrew its 550,000 troops “with honor” from our country. McCloskey blamed the South Vietnamese Army of being unable to “make the war” against the communists, conveniently forgetting that the United States itself, in its ten years of direct commitment in the country using potent fire power, full troop strength, and every strategy did not achieve victory. Shifting the war burden to the RVNAF while cutting all support was shockingly cruel for such a nation. Could U.S. Congressman McCloskey and his peers comprehend these realities? Could they all know they would be the real creators of South Vietnam’s tragedy in April 1975?
The South Vietnamese were not the only people who blamed McCloskey. Many American politicians and generals, officers, and enlisted personnel who had fought in Vietnam, also did, because they shared with the RVNAF feelings of defeat. One of them, the wise U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, observed about the betrayal, “to be an enemy of the United States could be unpleasant, but to be a friend of the United States could be fatal.”1 I am thankful that American political conscience always exists in the hearts of many congressmen in Washington, so that the United States can continue its leadership of the free world. With dignity, numerous American congressmen represent a people who like freedom, justice, and truth.
Unfortunately, there were few such in the U.S. Congress in 1974–1975. Ambassador Martin went back to Washington on April 2, with the fact-finding congressional delegation, to present the situation and request Congress’ approval of the additional military aid for Saigon; his voice fell on the deaf ears of the majority of the congressmen. When he returned to Saigon, four weeks after disappearing to some paradise in America, he would see South Vietnam going to hell. The Central Highlands in ARVN II Corps, Quang-Tri and Hue in I Corps had fallen, and Da Nang was under communist siege.
That same day, General Frederic C. Weyand, then U.S. Army chief of staff, came to Saigon with Ambassador Martin, as President Ford’s special envoy, to review the situation in South Vietnam. He was the last hope for Saigon to get the $300 million of additional military aid. Returning to Washington after Da Nang, Qui-Nhon, Nha Trang, and Cam-Ranh Bay had fallen to the communists, General Weyand testified before Congress asking for this urgent aid for Saigon. But his demand was also rejected. U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Philip Habib, who was up on Capitol Hill waiting for the good news from the congressmen, later wrote, “you know they wanted to wash their hands of Vietnam. They wanted to forget it. That kind of mood was prevalent in Congress in 1974–1975.”2
Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, the political and military situation was worsening day by day. Ambassador Martin returned to Saigon with Kissinger’s clear message to abandon South Vietnam. Martin was told: “You gotta get back out there because the American people have gotta have somebody to blame.”3 According to Martin, Kissinger and Brezhnev, the Soviet Union’s top leader, had an arrangement on the last day for the Americans to leave Saigon; it was May 3.
Ambassador Martin, who said that he would personally come to Da Nang to lead the ARVN troops to fight against the communists, instead ordered his deputy, Wolf Lehmann, and Major General Homer D. Smith, defense attaché in Saigon, to prepare plans for the evacuation of all Americans and South Vietnamese officials, RVNAF high-ranking officers’ families, and those who were considered to be in danger of execution if captured by the communists.
The Defense Attaché Office’s overall evacuation plan called for: first priority, using commercial flights; second priority, using fixed-wing U.S. C-130 aircraft, from Tan-Son-Nhut Airport to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and Andersen Air Force Base in Guam; third priority, possibly using transport ships from Vung-Tau to Subic Naval Base in the Philippines; and the last option, or “Option Four,” using a frequent-wing or helicopter lift, in case of emergency. Originally, the U.S. Embassy in Saigon was authorized to evacuate only 35,000 Vietnamese into the United States. But in reality, said Lehmann, the categories of Vietnamese at risk were countless.
According to General Smith, the evacuation began on April 1 with the “Evacuation Control Center” (of his attaché office) operating 12 hours per day. From April 3, this center was functioning 24 hours a day, primarily to “assist with refugee operations.” But according to Lehmann, the evacuation began in the end of March. Certainly, the evacuation by commercial flights and U.S. C-130s was secretly commenced at the beginning of April to prevent chaos in Saigon. However, after the crash of the C-5A Galaxy in “Operation Babylift,” which removed hundreds of Vietnamese orphans from Saigon, secrecy could no longer be maintained, because the crash sadly had killed hundreds of children and several female U.S. personnel who volunteered to take care of them on the plane back to the United States. The story of children’s bodies dispersed from Hoc-Mon to Tan-Son-Nhut drew tears from everyone who heard it.
After this crash everyone knew that the United States was conducting an evacuation. Every Vietnamese family in Saigon tried to find a way to get out the country. The abandonment syndrome then reappeared among South Vietnamese politicians, generals, and high-ranking officials. In reality, at least 25,000 people had fled the country by commercial flights and U.S. C-130s in the previous week. All of them were upper-class rich people or U.S. direct employees. The evacuation continued during the following weeks.
During those days, rumors widely spread that former Vice-President, Major General Nguyen Cao Ky, would plan a coup against President Thieu to seize power and lead the RVNAF in the fighting against the communists, while other “third force” politicians and some generals would arrange a peaceful transfer of power to General Duong van Minh for a possible negotiation with Hanoi on the “coalition government” in South Vietnam. This political solution was perhaps proposed by French Ambassador to Saigon, J. M. Merillon, based on the rumors that “Big Minh” was accepted by Hanoi. On March 24, North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham van Dong suggested to French Ambassador to Hanoi, Philippe Richer, that the French might successfully achieve such a solution in the South. Accordingly, the Frenchmen entered the games. Later, all of them, the French, those in the Vietnamese “third-force,” and Duong van Minh himself, realized they had been taken in by a deceitful trap. Actually, North Vietnamese leaders had the solution of defeating South Vietnam and taking Saigon by force, through the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign,” as they had newly planned. Indeed, five days after capturing Cam Ranh Bay on April 8,1975, Le Duc Tho called a meeting at Loc Ninh of all commanders and political cadres of COSVN, military regions, and all high-ranking officers newly coming from the North to study the March 25 Resolution of the VWP’s Politburo which decided to “liberate” South Vietnam by military means. Tho made known the Politburo’s decision to form a command Headquarters of the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign” which consisted of:
1. Field commander: General Van Tien Dung
2. Field political supervisor: Pham Hung
3. Deputy commanders:
a. Lieutenant General Tran Van Tra
b. Major General Le Duc Anh
c. Major General Le Trong Tan
4. Deputy commanders of logistics:
a. Major General Dinh Duc Thien
b. Brigadier General Bui Phung
5. Deputy political supervisor: Brigadier General Le Quang Hoa
6. Chief of staff: Brigadier General Le Ngoc Hien
After the meeting, the communists launched their final attacks on ARVN III Corps’ defense lines around Saigon from April 9.
The NVA II Corps of Major General Nguyen Huu An, composed of the 304th, 324B, and 325th Divisions, began to attack at Ninh-Thuan, on Route 1 and inter-provincial Route 11. The ARVN defense line was defended by the ARVN 2nd Division, the 2nd Airborne Brigade, and the 3rd Ranger Battle-Group. The NVA IV Corps of Major General Hoang Cam, comprised the 341st, 6th, and 7th Divisions plus an artillery regiment and an armored regiment assailed the ARVN 18th Division along inter-provincial Route 20 and at Xuan-Loc, the capital city of Long-Khanh Province, 45 miles northeast of Saigon. The NVA I Corps of Major General Nguyen Hoa was comprised of the 308th, 312th, and 320B Divisions. It was moving a long way from Quang-Tri and Thua-Thien to attack the ARVN 5th Division, which defended Binh-Duong Province, 25 miles north of Saigon. The NVA III Corps of Major General Vu-Lang, with three divisions, 320th, 316th, and 10th, began to attack the ARVN 25th Division along Route 1, northwest of Saigon. Finally, the corps-level Tactical Force 232nd of Major General Le Duc Anh, with four divisions, the 3rd, 5th, 9th infantry, and the 27th sapper, cut Route 4, south of Saigon to block reinforcements from ARVN IV Corps & Region. (See Map 9.)
After the war, the communists said they had only used 280,000 troops, 400 tanks and 420 artillery pieces in this 1975 spring campaign. This claim is not true. The actual figure is likely double that, because to serve the 280,000 combat troops would require at least an equivalent number of troops in supportive and logistical services. By mid–April, on every front, ARVN units were outnumbered by NVA forces 1-to-5 in manpower and 1-to-4 in firepower.
On April 15, the NVA II Corps of General Nguyen Huu An forcefully attacked all over the Ninh-Thuan defense line and the Phan-Rang Airfield, at which was quartered the ARVN III Corps Advanced Command Headquarters of Lieutenant General Nguyen Vinh Nghi. Despite the fierce resistance of the ARVN 2nd Airborne Brigade (minus one of its battalions that had helilifted to Bien-Hoa on the previous day as part of a move back to Saigon), the airfield was overrun by overwhelming NVA forces after two days of fighting. Lieutenant General Nghi, Brigadier General Pham Ngoc Sang, VNAF 6th Division commander, and Colonel Nguyen Thu Luong, 2nd Airborne Brigade commander, were captured by the communists on April 17, while fighting in retreat to Binh-Thuan. The only ARVN commander who escaped from Ninh-Thuan was the one-star general, 2nd Division commander, who fled on the command helicopter of General Nghi at the beginning of the NVA attack. This unit was fighting without its commander and dispersed. The ARVN 3rd Ranger Battle Group was also overrun. The Ninh-Thuan defense line disappeared on April 18. Binh-Thuan and Binh-Tuy Provinces also fell to the NVA II Corps in the following days. This NVA large unit advanced to Phuoc-Tuy on Highway 1.
The last and largest battle between the RVNAF and the NVA occurred at Xuan Loc, the capital city of Long Khanh Province, 40 miles northeast of Saigon. The ARVN 18th Division and Attachéd Airborne and Ranger units, and several Regional Force battalions, supported by VNAF fighters and bombers, heroically devastated the overwhelming NVA force comprised of four infantry divisions, an armor brigade, and two mechanized ground and anti-aircraft artillery brigades in twelve days of fierce resistance against them from April 9 to 20, 1975.
Located at the intersection of Route 1 and Route 20, Xuan Loc City was the home base of the ARVN 18th Division and the strategic point that blocked NVA access to ARVN III Corps & Region and Saigon from the Highlands and the northeast coastal area. General Van Tien Dung, commander of the Communist Ho Chi Minh Campaign, launched the NVA II Corps’ attack on the ARVN III Corps’ new defense line at Ninh Thuan. To effectuate his tactics of “lightning speed, more lightning; boldness, more boldness,” he ordered NVA IV Corps, led by Major General Hoang Cam, to neutralize the ARVN 18th Division of Brigadier General Le Minh Dao at Xuan Loc. This was an effort to secure the way for his main army to have a prompt approach to Saigon for the final stage of South Vietnam’s “liberation.”
On the morning of April 9, after several hours and 4,000 shells of destructive artillery fire into Xuan Loc, the NVA IV Corps launched a three-pronged attack on ARVN defensive positions around the city’s perimeter. The attackers were the 266th Regiment of the NVA 341st Division plus tanks from the northwest, the 165th Regiment of the NVA 7th Division plus tanks from the north, and the 209th Regiment of this division plus tanks from the northeast and east. After the first wave of shelling into the city, the Forward Command Headquarters of the ARVN 18th Division led by Colonel Nguyen Xuan Mai, deputy commander, wisely moved to a new base in a plantation at Tan Phong, 6.5 miles south of Xuan Loc, while General Dao was still at his Long Binh base camp. Evidently, the real commander who directed the defense of the 18th Division at the city was the young and brilliant Colonel Le Xuan Hieu, then commander of the ARVN’s 43rd Task Force, which consisted of the 1/43 and 3/43 Battalions, the 5th Armor Regiment minus, and the 82nd Ranger Battalion of the ranger hero, Major Vuong Mong Long. There were also two Regional Force battalions in the city commanded by Colonel Pham van Phuc, province chief of Long Khanh. Under the command of these elite commanders, the defenders of Xuan Loc fiercely and successfully neutralized all enemy assaults on their positions. Hundreds of NVA troops were killed and a dozen tanks were destroyed. However, some ARVN positions were lost.
In two days, Colonel Hieu conducted several counter-attacks and recaptured lost territory, causing serious losses for the NVA 7th Division and the 266th Regiment of the NVA 341st Division. General Le Minh Dao had come to the new Forward Command Post at Tan Phong in the morning of April 9. On April 10 he ordered the 2/52 Battalion of the 52nd Task Force moving from Nguyen Thai Hoc Hamlet back to the city to reinforce the 43rd Task Force. On the way back to the city, this elite battalion of Captain Huynh van Ut encountered an NVA unit and killed more than 60 of its troops and captured several dozen guns, including 37 mm anti-aircraft guns. On the eastern side of the perimeter, the 82nd Ranger Battalion of Major Long also nullified the assaults of the NVA 209th Regiment. The remains of NVA troops and tanks were dispersed all around the L-19 Airfield.
Units of the 52nd Task Force of the ARVN 18th Division, commanded by Colonel Ngo Ky Dung, were also violently attacked by two regiments of the NVA 341st Division along Route 20, from Dau Giay Crossroads to Horseshoe Hill. The 1/52 Battalion at Dau Giay was especially steadfast in withstanding for days the ferocious attacks of the 33rd Regiment of the NVA 6th Division. The ARVN 18th Division’s 48th Task Force of Lieutenant Colonel Tran Minh Cong, which was along Route 1 from Tan Phong to Suoi Cat, southwest of Chua Chan Hill, had contact with elements of the 141st Regiment of the NVA 7th division in a plantation north of the Route. Before noon on April 9, ARVN III Corps commander, Lieutenant General Nguyen van Toan sent a combined force composed of the 3rd Armor Brigade of Brigadier General Tran Quang Khoi, the 8th Regiment of the ARVN 5th division of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Ba Manh Hung, and three Ranger battalions, to reinforce Xuan Loc. This combined force formed into three task forces: the 315th, the 318th, and the 322nd Task Forces moving along Route 1 from Bien Hoa to Xuan Loc. The first column, or the 315th Task Force, was first stopped by the enemy at Hung Nghia Hamlet and then at Hung Loc Hamlet, several miles west of Dau Giay Crossroads. Large skirmishes continued for days and the NVA III Corps had to reinforce the roadblocks of the NVA 6th Division’s 33rd Regiment by the 274th Regiment of this division and a Regiment from the NVA 341st Division. Although these task forces of ARVN III Corps could not reach Dau Giay to link up with the 1/52 Battalion of the ARVN 52nd Task Force, they did attract half of NVA IV Corps’ force fighting in a different direction and this really impeded the plans of NVA General Van Tien Dung’s to neutralize the ARVN 18th Division and capture Xuan Loc City.
On the other hand, ARVN III Corps commander, General Toan also asked the RVNAF-JGS to reinforce Xuan Loc with the 1st Airborne Brigade. On April 12, this elite unit of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen van Dinh was helilifted west of Tan Phong Rubber Plantation. Immediately, it’s five battalions, which included an artillery Battalion, moved up to Route 1 and Suoi Cat, several miles southwest of Chua Chan Hill, to replace the 48th Task Force which was ordered to move to the south and west of Tan Phong as reserves for the ARVN 18th Division. The Airbornes pushed back the 209th and 141st Regiments of the NVA 7th Division to Chua Chan Hill and decimated at least a battalion of the latter. With the reinforcement of the Airbornes, the ARVN’s defense at Xuan Loc was strengthened.
By the evening of April 12, the fights turned to the ARVN’s favor at all Xuan Loc fronts. The NVA IV Corps’ losses were serious, with more than 3,000 troops killed and more than two dozen tanks destroyed. General Van Tien Dung ordered the NVA IV Corps to cancel its attack plans and repulse its units from Xuan Loc City. He called the ARVN’s heroic and successful defense of Xuan Loc “the enemy’s stubbornness.” Communist Command Headquarters of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign sent Lieutenant General Tran van Tra to Xuan Loc Front on April 13 to take over the command of all NVA units for a new phase attack on the ARVN units at Xuan Loc. The NVA IV Corps of Major General Hoang Cam was reinforced by the separate 95B Regiment from the Central Highlands and the 325th Division of the NVA II Corps from Ninh Thuan. General Tran van Tra changed offensive plans against the ARVN units at Xuan Loc Front in this new phase. (See map #8.)
After April 13, Xuan Loc City was not hit by further NVA infantry and tank assaults but only by artillery fire of some three to four thousand shells per day. In the meantime, the NVA 7th Division sent back its 209th and 141st Regiments to Route 1, fighting with the purpose of pinning down in position the ARVN 1st Airborne Brigade. Meanwhile, two other NVA IV Corps’ divisions and the 95B Regiment strove to wipe out the ARVN 52nd Task Force along Route 20 and push back the ARVN III Corps’ task forces on Route 1, west of Dau Giay. NVA main efforts clearly shifted to the west side of the Xuan Loc Front. In three consecutive days, from April 13–15, the 270th and 273rd Regiments of the NVA 341st Division and the 95B Regiment, supported by an armored Regiment and two mechanized artillery regiments, strongly attacked all ARVN positions along Route 20, from Dau Giay Crossroads to Nguyen Thai Hoc Hamlet and Horseshoe Hill. The fights were extremely fierce, especially at Horseshoe Hill. The 1st Company of the ARVN 3/52 Battalion had to resist the overwhelming assaults by the NVA 95 B Regiment and the deadly artillery fire of the NVA 55th Artillery Regiment from Nui Ma (or Phantom Hill). No one could have imagined the result, that “everything around us was destroyed and the slope of the hill in every side appeared changing its altitude with NVA troop bodies mingled with uprooted brushes and trees’ branches, piling up layers and layers,” as reported by first Lieutenant Nguyen Thanh Truong, the company commander, to his battalion commander, Major Phan Tan My.4
Major My sent a company from Nguyen Thai Hoc Hamlet to reinforce the defenders of Horseshoe Hill. The fight at Crossroads Dau Giay was at the same intensity between the ARVN 1/52 Battalion and the 33rd Regiment of the NVA 6th division. The losses on both sides were too high. 200 ARVN troops were killed and the NVA casualties were innumerable. On the night of April 13, the 3/52 Battalion withdrew to rejoin the 52nd Task Force at Nguyen Thai Hoc Hamlet. Dau Giay was lost to the NVA, but fighting on Route 20 continued for two more days. In the meantime, three ARVN III Corps task forces, under the command of Brigadier General Tran Quang Khoi, were striving to linkup with the 52nd Task Force. They were unable, however, to cross the NVA roadblocks and barrages from an infantry division and an artillery Regiment in the area north of Hung Loc Hamlet on Route 12 Soc Lu Hill. The ARVN 52nd Task Force was then isolated and fought alone, but bravely. However, outnumbered by the enemy ten to one, and under continuous enemy attack, the 700 remaining members of this besieged task force could not resist any longer. On the night of April 15, Colonel Ngo Ky Dung decided to abandon Route 20 and led his troops in a fighting retreat to Trang Bom on Route 1, west of Dau Giay Crossroads.
On the morning of April 16, considering the request of General Toan, III Corps’ commander, General Cao van Vien, Chairman of the RVNAF-JGS, ordered the VNAF to drop two Daisy Cutter Blu-82 bombs on the NVA troop concentrations at Xuan Loc. One was dropped at Dau Giay Crossroads that blew up the command headquarters of the NVA 341st Division and killed hundreds of its troops; another was dropped on the command headquarters of the NVA IV Corps at some area northeast of Xuan Loc City. Later in the day, captured telecommunication reports from this NVA Corps revealed that 75 percent of its staff personnel and hundreds of other troops were killed. After April 17, there were no more strong NVA attacks on ARVN units at Xuan Loc. NVA General Van Tien Dung ordered a drop of any offensive plans against the ARVN 18th Division. The NVA II Corps, after seizing Ninh Thuan and Binh Tuy, made a detour to the east of Saigon, on Route 25, instead of joining the NVA IV Corps at Xuan Loc as planned. The latter was also ordered to withdraw from Xuan Loc and move to Bien Hoa for a new offensive phase. Only two regiments of the NVA 7th Division remained around Chua Chan Hill. The battle of Xuan Loc was over three days later. General Van Tien Dung could not have imagined that 8,000 ARVN troops in this small city could stop and defeat 40,000 of his troops in 12 days of fierce resistance, killing more than 5,000 of his troops and destroying more than three dozen of his tanks. He judged that attacking the ARVN 18th Division again was unnecessary. On the ARVN side, General Nguyen Toan, III Corps commander, felt that Bien Hoa, his rear base, would be in danger if he did not have enough forces to defend it. He ordered General Khoi’s Task Forces at Hung Nghia Hamlet to get back to Bien Hoa and the 18th Division and its attached units to withdraw from Xuan Loc and move along Route 22 to Long Binh on April 20. Only the 1st Airborne Brigade of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen van Dinh was ordered to remain at Phuoc Tuy to defend Vung Tau Port. Thus the heroic victory of ARVN units at Xuan Loc would pass into worldwide military history as a glorious defense of a city.
There were several factors that contributed to this victory: (1) the determined will to fight by commanders and troops at Xuan Loc; (2) the displacement of the ARVN 18th Division Forward Command Headquarters to a secret underground base, which secured the safety of General Dao to command his units; (3) the creation of ingenious underground emplacements for dozens of artillery batteries secured a continuous counter-fire throughout the resistance; (4) the VNAF air support, which was adequate; especially, two Daisy Cutter Blu-82 bombs dropped at Dau Giay and northeast of Xuan Loc City that caused thousands of casualties for the NVA and forced them to change their operational plans.
US Army Lt. General Philip B. Davidson, once chief of staff J2-MACV, admitted, “The battle for Xuan Loc produced one of the epic battles of any of the Indochina wars, certainly the most heroic stand in Indochina War III…. In this final epic stand the ARVN demonstrated for the last time that, when properly led, it had the ‘right stuff.’”5 Also, Major General Homer Smith, then U.S. defense attaché in Saigon, reported to General George Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, that “the valor and aggressiveness of GVN [Government of Vietnam] troops appears to settle for the time being the question, ‘Will ARVN fight?’”6 Yet, once again, the voices of American generals fell upon deaf ears in the U.S. Congress.
Indeed, on April 17 (April 18 in Saigon) the U.S. Congress voted down $300 million in additional military aid and $722 million in emergency aid to Saigon, which had been proposed by President Ford on April 10; but authorized $200 million for the evacuation American personnel. This proved to be the decisive “washing hands” of South Vietnam by the congressmen, about which President Ford commented: “Those bastards.” President Thieu sent a delegation to Washington in an effort to persuade the U.S. Congress not to announce publicly its decisions. This was to prevent the demoralization of ARVN troops and keep them fighting. But it was too late.
On April 19, the U.S. Embassy in Saigon received orders to complete most evacuations of Americans and sympathetic Vietnamese as previously planned, while secretary of state Henry Kissinger and others, including ambassador Graham Martin, were still hoping they might be able to persuade Hanoi to negotiate a truce or a “coalition government” for South Vietnam. However, Hanoi refused to negotiate with Thieu. Ambassador Martin suggested President Thieu resign, after he persuaded Major General Nguyen Cao Ky to suppress the coup against Thieu. He also sent U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., who was then chief of a U.S. delegation of the Four-Party Joint Military Team (FPJMT), to Hanoi with all members of the FPJMT. Colonel Summers had no purpose except to receive from Hanoi the terms of the U.S. withdrawal. Colonel Summers did not disclose the exact date, but it was expected that the last day of all U.S. personnel leaving South Vietnam would be May 1, 1975, except those who would remain to negotiate with Hanoi on compensation for war damage in return for information about American POWs and MIAs.
Colonel Summers’ delegation was the last U.S. diplomatic envoy to officially have discussions with Hanoi, but nothing concerning a temporary truce or a coalition government was noted or mentioned. The “coalition government” problem would be managed by Ambassador Martin himself, or by Thomas Polgar, then CIA Saigon station chief, who had a relationship with a certain Hungarian peacekeeper of the International Commission in Saigon. Later, Ambassador Martin blamed Polgar of such a contact. The ambassador himself said that he did not believe in a coalition transition, but he did explain the situation to Thieu and said that Saigon’s generals could not do anything to solve the South’s problems with Thieu in power. Thieu also said Martin never asked him to resign. However, the transition of Thieu’s power to someone else for a possible negotiation with Hanoi was a clear necessity. In due course, South Vietnamese Lieutenant General Tran van Don, the last defense minister of the Saigon regime, later said:
In the last days, the French Ambassador told me that if you would like to save Saigon from long-range artillery, if you would like to have a compromise solution to keep South Vietnam neutral, the only man who could do it was Big Minh. I asked the French Ambassador “Why Big Minh?” He said because Big Minh is the only one the other side would like to recognize as the new leader in South Vietnam. When I asked the American Ambassador, Graham Martin, he told me the same thing—maybe he got it from the French Ambassador.7
The last ten days of April 1975 were a time of tremendous confusion in Saigon. On the morning of April 20, President Thieu held a long meeting with Ambassador Martin. After that, Lieutenant General Nguyen van Toan, III Corps & Region commander, was summoned to meet the president at the Presidential Palace. No one knew exactly what matters the president and the ambassador discussed and what orders the general received from his commander in chief. On the same day, Brigadier General Le Minh Dao, ARVN 18th Division commander, received orders from General Toan to withdraw his forces from the defense line at Xuan-Loc. Abandoning Xuan-Loc would mean giving easier access for the NVA II and IV Corps to promptly advance to Saigon.
The next day, April 21, the communists occupied Xuan-Loc. In the evening, president Nguyen van Thieu announced his resignation before the National Assembly. In a long televised speech, Thieu accused the United States of being unfair, irresponsible, and inhumane, and of all manner of “betrayal.” In an inspired moment, he pledged that he would stay with the armed forces to fight the communists as a soldier. Instead of yielding power to Big Minh, President Thieu chose to follow the South Vietnamese Constitution and turned over the presidency to vice-president Tran van Huong, an old but respectable politician in South Vietnam.
Two days later, the U.S. completely abandoned South Vietnam. The declaration was made by U.S. president Gerald Ford himself. On April 23, in a speech at Tulane University in New Orleans, Ford announced: “Today America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.”8 According to Robert Hartman, Ford’s councilor, the president of the United States was delighted and highly elated by the success of this trip to New Orleans after his speech was loudly applauded by the students at this university. Ford would, however, ignore the tragic effects of this fatal intentional declaration. Disaster immediately came to Saigon through a rising terror of “American abandonment” and “communist massacre.” After that, every person and every family tried to find a way to escape from the country. Panic and desperation spread to all corners of the South Vietnamese capital.
Within 24 hours, former president Nguyen van Thieu was secretly escorted by Thomas Polgar and his CIA team to Tan-Son-Nhut Airfield. Along with prime minister Tran Thien Khiem, he fled Saigon on a U.S. DC-6 plane to Taiwan. Their families had gone before them. In the following days, sooner or later, almost all of Thieu administration’s ministers, generals, and senior officers quietly abandoned their posts and fled by whatever means. Among those who fled were General Cao van Vien, chairman of the RVNAF Joint General Staff (JGS), Lieutenant General Nguyen van Toan, III Corps & Region commander, and Lieutenant General Nguyen van Minh, Capital Military Special Zone commander, who were first and foremost responsible for the defense of Saigon. With the top commanders disappearing, their senior staff officers also vanished in the following days.
By midnight on April 28, the RVNAF Joint General Staff and other central arms, branches, and services were almost abandoned by their bosses and could not properly function to direct, support and supply combat units in III Corps & Region. Commanders of ARVN divisions around Saigon were left with no specific plans to defend it. Consequently, these divisions and smaller separated units had to fight the stronger enemy forces in their previously assigned defense lines without top ARVN command orders, support, and coordination.
In such a situation, President Tran van Huong could do nothing, as commander in chief, to continue the fighting to save Saigon. Five of General Van Tien Dung’s communist corps were approaching and Saigon’s political dreamers still believed in negotiating with Hanoi on the “coalition government.” Finally, under the pressure of these dreamers, President Huong stepped down on April 27. The same day, the National Assembly immediately elected Duong van Minh as President. Big Minh took office on the afternoon of April 28.
On the American side, after President Ford’s declaration at Tulane University, there was discord between the State Department and the Defense Department on the evacuation of Americans from South Vietnam. According to some American observers, the evacuation proceeded too late because Henry Kissinger was still playing at diplomacy with the communists while James Schlesinger, who viewed abandoning South Vietnam as a serious error and the failure of American policy, had ordered his men to hurry the evacuation from Saigon of American military personnel and all Americans. In addition, according to Ambassador Martin, Kissinger had an arrangement to leave U.S. war equipment, which was used by the RVNAF, for the communists while Schlesinger sent people to South Vietnam for the secret recuperation of these heavy war equipment.
In Saigon, the mess created by this difference between U.S. departments was clearer. In the critical days of late April 1975, Ambassador Martin hoped that Hanoi would respect the Kissinger-Brezhnev verbal agreement to give him enough time to organize a timely and safe departure for all Americans. For this purpose, he tried to keep his men from doing things that would provoke the NVA to attack sooner or would excite the ARVN troops’ opposition, repercussion, or retaliation against the Americans. To be sure, Martin contended that he could not pull out many ARVN senior officers because it would keep them from leading their units and maintaining their troops’ fighting capability to protect the safe withdrawal of the Americans. Similarly, Martin tried to slow the evacuation of 5,000 Americans, believing in a temporary truce or a coalition government, which would be arranged by the intermediation of French Ambassador Merillon, or at least to use the appearance of this as a psychological screen to deceive the South Vietnamese people that the Americans did not abandon them. All of Martin’s plays were concealed in deception intended to once again beguile South Vietnamese people, ARVN officers and troops in the late days of Saigon.
In the meantime, honest and pragmatic U.S. senior officers like Defense Attaché Major General Smith, Colonels LeGro, John Madison, Jr., and Harry Summers, Jr., were trying to progressively push forward the evacuation plan of Americans, ARVN senior officers’ families and South Vietnamese collaborators by U.S. fixed-wing C-130s. More than 5,000 people left the country every day from April 24. Before that, in mid–April, U.S. defense secretary James Schlesinger sent his delegate, assistant secretary of defense Erich von Marbod, to Saigon with the mission to recuperate U.S. heavy war equipment, which had been offered to the RVNAF during the Vietnamization period.
After Phan-Rang Airfield fell on April 18 and the communists seized several F-5s and A-37s, Marbod secretly persuaded Lieutenant General Tran van Minh, South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) commander, to evacuate all war planes at Bien-Hoa and Tan-Son-Nhut Airfields to Thailand. All in all, by April 28, VNAF pilots flew more than 130 war planes to U-Tapao Royal Thai Air Force Base.
Marbod also sent U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Richard Lee Armitage, who had spent nearly six years on active duty in South Vietnam, back to Saigon to privately meet his old friend, Captain Do Kiem, South Vietnamese Navy’s (VNN) deputy chief of staff, and ask him for help in planning the evacuation of the South Vietnamese fleet to the Philippines. Captain Do Kiem presented the idea to Vice Admiral Chung Tan Cang, South Vietnamese Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), and persuaded him to approve the plan of evacuation.
Vice Admiral Cang first hesitated, but after meeting with president Duong van Minh hours after his presidential inauguration, Cang decided to move his fleet as Captain Kiem and Amitage proposed. Admiral Cang later recalled: “He [Minh] said that if we were going to fight there would be loss of life and bloodshed with no purpose because the situation was hopeless. So in this case everyone had their own solution. I went back to headquarters and called for a staff meeting, and we decided that now was the time to move out.”9 The evacuation of the South Vietnamese fleet began in the evening on April 29. The operation was finally completed after the fall of Saigon with 34 transoceanic warships, which carried 30,000 Vietnamese refugees, reaching Subic Naval Base in the Philippines. In addition, about a dozen small patrol boats were abandoned at large after transferring their passengers and crews to other vessels, since these boats were not seaworthy.
In general, the plans to recuperate this expensive war equipment from South Vietnam were successfully done by U.S. assistant secretary of defense Erich Marbod. However, Ambassador Martin would later blame these activities for creating problems for his timely and orderly evacuation plans, because the communists had rocketed Tan-Son-Nhut Airfield on April 28, thinking that the United States had broken their word to them in removing the heavy war equipment they supposedly had agreed to leave in place for them. And, because enemy shelling of the airport prevented the fixed-wing operation from functioning, he had to order the last frequent-wing option: the helicopter lift.
Certainly, the head representative of the United States in Saigon, Ambassador Martin, would do everything he could to evacuate the Americans and avoid any possible disaster. U.S. assistant secretary of defense Erich von Marbod also did what was in the interests of the United States. They should not be blamed for their actions.
Because these American authorities had carefully planned for the final act of “washing their hands” of South Vietnam, especially after the United States arranged with Hanoi for a fixed-date departure for the Americans, Saigon could no longer stand. Thus, whatever Ambassador Martin did to keep the ARVN fighting, it was done intending to protect the safe withdrawal of the Americans but not for the life and death of South Vietnam. Fighting to survive was hopeless. A great number of South Vietnamese generals and senior officers stayed with their units to face their stronger foes in these most critical days of South Vietnam. Later many of them sacrificed their lives for the honor of their armed forces.
The mass of people in Saigon did not know just how bad the situation was when General Duong van Minh took office on April 28. They did not know that all ARVN combat units in III Corps & Region and in the Capital Military Special Zone (CMSZ) had been left behind by their top commanders since the early morning, and now, these units were separately fighting without any coordinated plan to defend Saigon while five NVA corps-sized units approached and surrounded it at a 30 to 40 kilometer (20 to 25 miles) perimeter. These NVA units could attack Saigon at any time.
Believing in the protection of the ARVN, which had been able twice to push back the communist attacks in 1968, people in the capital went about their daily activities. The face of Saigon appeared peaceful and quiet. Markets, stores, and restaurants were open as usual and traffic was normal. Streets were filled with pedestrians, bicycles, and cars. Schools around the city were not yet closed; kids were still playing in schoolyards or studying in classes. Everything appeared in it’s habitual state. But there was an eerie silence throughout the city, mixed with occasional sounds of gunfire or explosions echoing from the outskirts. Everyone felt that something very important was going to happen soon.
While the families of high-ranking government officials and RVNAF senior officers were being successfully evacuated by U.S. fixed-wing C-130s from Tan-Son-Nhut Airfield, the majority of the Saigon population, especially the middle class, thought a temporary peace with a coalition government, which had been widely rumored days before, would occur; or there would be a withdrawal of all ARVN forces in III Corps & Region and in Saigon to the Mekong Delta, the richest part of South Vietnam, for the formation of a new defense line along the Tien-Giang River, as was previously planned by former President Thieu. They patiently waited for news, good or bad. If the first possibility were realized, the people in Saigon and in the Mekong Delta would have had at least a short period to decide their futures. If a new defense line were formed to protect the Mekong Delta, the war would continue with more intensive bloodshed, because all RVNAF units at IV Corps & Region were at full strength and led by elite generals, such as Major General Nguyen Khoa Nam, an airborne commander, and Brigadier General Le van Hung, the hero of An-Loc. Commanders, officers and troops in this military region were willing to fight. No one was thinking of a third solution in those days: surrender to the communists. Nevertheless, all possibilities were illusions except the third one, which materialized promptly beyond anyone’s imagination. I was one of Saigon’s witnesses during its final days.
At the time, I was RVNAF-JGS-J2’s liaison officer to the IV Corps & Region Staff-G2 at Can-Tho, the capital of the Mekong Delta. I was living at General Hung’s residence. This ARVN hero had been my best friend since we were cadets of the Thu-duc Reserve Officer School’s 5th Class in 1954. He was my platoon-mate and roommate then; later, in the first three years of the 1970s, he was my boss, when he commanded the ARVN 5th Infantry Division. Now, at IV Corps & Region, after almost twenty years in the army, General Hung still considered me as his closest friend despite my rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
On the morning of April 28, General Hung sent me back to RVNAF Joint General Staff-J2 (JGS-J2, the highest military intelligence staff-service of the South Vietnamese armed forces) to gather accurate information on the political and military situation. I flew back to Saigon on General Hung’s command-helicopter. The helicopter had to take a detour to the sea to fly along the coast to Saigon, instead of following the routine itinerary along Highway 4, afraid of being hit by an enemy SA-7 personal anti-aircraft missile. An NVA division had cut this important road at Tan-Tru in Long-An Province, some twenty kilometers south of Saigon, isolating it from ARVN IV Corps & Region. On the plane approaching Saigon from the east, I watched the city as it peacefully went about its normal activities.
The helicopter crew dropped me off at the RVNAF-JGS compound and flew the plane back to Can-Tho. At JGS-J2 Office, I met the colonel deputy chief-of-staff J2 and some officers who were in charge of the intelligence and operation branches. I learned that an hour before noon, almost all top commanders and senior officers of the JGS were gone. Officers and personnel of this highest command headquarters of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces were left behind by their bosses. However, everyone remained in place, believing in new President Big Minh, who would negotiate with the communists about the “coalition government.” They waited for new orders. Consequently, activity at the staff service loosely continued as a matter of form.
JGS-J2 provided me a jeep with a driver. I went home, which was located on Tran Hung Dao Street, 5th District, passing over the Presidential Palace, the Saigon Market, and the Saigon Police Department headquarters. Nothing had changed anywhere. In the afternoon I returned to J2. I was able to use the hotline to call General Hung and report the general situation—something like a weather forecast. I told him that at this hour, 3:30 P.M., Saigon was very calm but “very hot.” A “big hurricane” seemed to be coming soon, because west of the capital we already heard the echoes of thunder. The north, the east, and the south remained quiet but the “high wind” was poised to rise quickly into an alarming cyclone. I also pointed out that people said in the last several nights that Saigon was very cloudy, so that all the “big stars” had disappeared. General Hung was very astute in comprehending the situation. He asked me if Saigon had prepared for the hurricane. I told him they had not. Hung asked again: “Tell me, if you know, what they are doing or what they are going to do, especially the new ‘Sun’?” I answered: “I don’t exactly know. There would possibly be a ‘mixed drink’ prepared soon, but I’m not sure.” He replied: “Impossible! Now, tell me would you return to Can-Tho or not?” I answered him: “I don’t know. I’m waiting; I will call you again.” After we hung up, I was unable to make any further contact with him or see him again. (The new “Sun” meant the new president; the “mixed drink” meant the coalition solution).
In my heart, I wanted to join General Hung at IV Corps & Region to help him in the future fighting against the communists. That was why I did not try to flee the country but instead searched for a way to return to Can-Tho. However, the road was blocked and everything happened very fast. When I left the JGS compound about 5:00 P.M. that day, April 28, I saw two warplanes, A-37 fighters, in the air of Tan-Son-Nhut, bombarding the airfield. I wondered why at this time two A-37 fighters of the VNAF were attacking their headquarters base camp. I did not think Major General Nguyen Cao Ky would order VNAF pilots to do it even if he conducted a coup d’état (rumors of this had circulated), because Tan-Son-Nhut was his residence and principal base. Later, I learned that these A-37s were among those captured by the communists at Phan-Rang Airfield on April 18 and were being flown by two former VNAF pilots, who had defected to them that day.
Fifteen minutes later, I came to Kim-Son Restaurant on Le-Loi Avenue. There, I would meet the most knowledgeable people in the capital: journalists, writers, professors, politicians, and even senators and representatives. In Saigon, several restaurants had become “pocket information centers” for years and Kim-Son was one of these. I wanted to meet those intellectual people to learn about the political climate in Saigon after Duong van Minh seized power. Several were my friends and would let me know everything because they considered me to be a liberal poet rather than an army intelligence officer.
Indeed, I met some of them. They were discussing Big Minh’s inauguration speech, the possible appointees to his new cabinet, his policy, and particularly his coalition government with the communists in the South. Based upon the recent political and military situation, they concluded that to save Saigon a certain bloodbath, Big Minh was inclined toward the coalition solution, of which Lieutenant General Tran van Don, then defense minister, appeared as a very smart activist. For days before Big Minh inaugurated his presidency, General Don had run back and forth between French ambassador Merillon, American ambassador Martin, and Big Minh to push forward the demarche of this political solution. These intellectuals named Don a “cracked go-between” and considered Big Minh a “wavering coalitionist,” a mediocre but lucky general and an illiterate politician. Therefore, their activities would not go anywhere and Saigon would fall soon. I was considerably saddened. I thought I had better rejoin General Hung in IV Corps & Region.
There was a curfew that night. Two hours before dawn, on April 29, the communists began to show their presence around Saigon by shelling Tan-Son-Nhut Airfield, DAO compound, and RVNAF-JGS headquarters. At DAO compound two U.S. Marines were killed. In the morning, Ambassador Martin arrived to observe the Tan-Son-Nhut Airfield and ordered a stop to the U.S. C-130s fixed-wing operation, thinking RVNAF’s top command had pulled out, no one was left to command the defense of the airfield, and the evacuation was no longer protected by South Vietnamese troops. The evacuation of Americans and select Vietnamese was carried out by U.S. helicopters and was called the frequent-wing operation and held at the DAO compound.
At 9:00 A.M., I arrived at RVNAF-JGS. The guards allowed me to pass through the main gate. At J-2, I met a Lieutenant Colonel who was the Chief of the Internal Intelligence Branch. I knew that since the previous night there had been no further contact with the ARVN 25th Infantry Division at Cu-Chi, on Highway 1, west of Saigon. It meant that this largest ARVN unit on the western defense line of Saigon had been overrun by the communist forces of the NVA III Corps.
In the North, the ARVN III Corps & Region command headquarters at Bien-Hoa disappeared and the ARVN 3rd Armored Brigade moved to Go-Vap, five kilometers north of Saigon. Farther in the northwest, the ARVN 5th Infantry Division had several small contacts with the NVA I Corps but still retained its command headquarters at Lai-Khe Plantation. In the northeast, the ARVN 18th Infantry Division, the 81st Special Airborne Brigade, and two Airborne Brigades still held their positions along the New Freeway from Long-Binh to Cat-Lai and the New Port, while a brigade of the ARVN Marine Division at Vung Tau was moving to its base-camp Song-Than at Thu-Duc. Possibly, the NVA IV Corps, which had attacked the ARVN 18th Division at Xuan-Loc, would carefully advance on this access. Meanwhile, the NVA II Corps, after attacking the ARVN 1st Airborne Brigade at Long-Thanh, would make a detour farther to the southeast, overlapping ARNV units in the northeast and advancing along interprovincial Road 25 to Nhon Trach, on the east bank of the Saigon River, ten miles southeast of Saigon. In the south and southeast, the newly formed ARVN 106th Ranger Division, composed of the 7th, 8th and 9th Battlegroups, had few contacts with the NVA 232nd Tactical Force.
In sum, by April 29, the ARVN had five divisions around Saigon and the NVA had sixteen divisions or more, according to JGS-J2’s estimate. Saigon could not be held if the enemy attacked immediately that day.
Perhaps Lieutenant General Dong van Khuyen, JGS-Chief of Staff, was the last highest authority of the RVNAF who received this J-2’s report. However, this general could do nothing but secretly leave his post on the morning of April 29 by the rear gate to DAO compound and flee to the U.S. Seventh Fleet, which was at some distance from the shore of Vung-Tau, on a U.S. helicopter.
At JGS, everyone could see U.S. helicopters landing and taking off at DAO compound carrying Americans and select Vietnamese to the fleet. I knew that on-board these planes important people—ministers, directors, and seniors officers—had started to become refugees in a foreign country with ambiguous destinies. But at least they were lucky enough to evade any communist reprisal if the ARVN could not hold Saigon. We, the anonymous officers, NCOs, and soldiers, stood there watching our bosses leave with endless feelings of sadness. By this time, an hour before noon, command at JGS, the highest headquarters of the RVNAF, had pulled out. All superior officers were gone. The numbers of personnel who were left behind were diminishing by the minute. How could ARVN combat units around Saigon fight without a head!
And the Americans who early on came into this country believing in a just cause were now leaving it in a hurry. What did they think of the situation? Was it a defeat? It was strange, this complicated Vietnam War. An officer at J-2 told me that Professor Vu van Mau, the former minister of foreign affairs who had resigned from his post to oppose President Diem’s policy toward the Buddhists’ riots in 1963, that morning had announced in an Armed Forces regular broadcast President Big Minh’s decision to chase out the Americans. That also was strange. We really did not comprehend the complex politics of the parties involved.
I learned from another officer that on April 28, after the inauguration of his presidency, President Minh had sent a delegation composed of the Catholic priest Chan Tin, the Buddhist priest Chau Tam Luan, and Lawyer Tran Ngoc Lieng to Camp David at Tan-Son-Nhut to meet NVA Brigadier General Vo Dong Giang, Hanoi’s highest representative at the Four-Party Joint Military Commission, to arrange a cease-fire.
I left JGS headquarters about 1:00 pm this afternoon after failing to make contact with General Hung in IV Corps & Region. At that time, only authorized people could enter and leave the gates. I wanted to go to VNAF headquarters at Tan-Son-Nhut Airport to find a means to go back to Can-Tho.
I spent almost forty minutes reaching the VNAF headquarters’ main gate. It seemed that every vehicle in the city was carrying a full load of people and driving on Cong-Ly Avenue to the American Defense Attaché Office (DAO) compound and Tan-Son-Nhut Airport seeking a way out of the country. All kinds of cars and thousands of people massed at the airport gate, trying to get in. Of course, no one was permitted to enter the gate, not even VNAF officers. I told the jeep driver to take me back to JGS compound. But then the main gate was secured by the ARNV 81st Special Airborne Brigade’s troops. Nobody was allowed to come in or get out. It was about 2:45 P.M.
I heard that Lieutenant General Vinh Loc was made chairman of the Joint General Staff and ex–Brigadier General Nguyen Huu Hanh, a suspected communist discharged from the army a long time before, was assigned by Big Minh as JGS chief of staff. I wondered how these newly assigned generals could run an empty JGS since almost all senior officers and key personnel at all joint-staff offices were fleeing or wandering throughout the city? Who would work for them when they did not allow people to come back to their offices?
I left the JGS gate while the sky of the DAO compound buzzed with U.S. helicopters were flying back and forth like birds over a burning forest. The evacuation of Americans and select Vietnamese continued. My family members supposedly would have been placed aboard one of these planes had I returned to Saigon three days earlier. They were supposed to be evacuated from the country on April 23 or 24, since U.S. Colonel William LeGro, DAO’s senior officer in charge of military intelligence and RVNAF-JGS-J2’s advisor, had close relations with Colonel Hoang Ngoc Lung, JGS’ chief of staff J-2, and had established an evacuation list of family members of all J-2’s senior officers. All of them had left for Guam days before by U.S. C-130s, except those of my family, whose names were not on that list or on any U.S. departure manifest, because during these days I was working at IV Corps & Region and none of the J-2 authorities could inform me of this secret evacuation. Now, I knew that I could do nothing to help my family leave the country. I, myself, wearing a uniform, could not even enter through the gates of any Vietnamese or U.S. installation for any reason. I thought to myself, “I will accept my destiny and will suggest my family do the same.”
Desperate, I told the jeep’s driver to take me to the Pagoda Restaurant, on Tu Do Avenue, another one of Saigon’s “pocket of information centers.” I met some friends and learned that all members of President Minh’s delegation had been retained at Camp David in Tan son Nhut Air Base the night before by the communists, and NVA General Vo Dong Giang had informed them about Hanoi’s ultimatum forcing of President Minh to surrender unconditionally.
At the Presidential Palace, President Duong van Minh was always surrounded by his new aides (who were called members of the “Third Force” Party), such as the notable jurist Professor Vu van Mau, Lawyer Ngo Ba Thanh, the Buddhist nun Huynh Lien, some political rookies such as Nguyen van Hao and Ly Qui Chung, and some pro-communist teachers and students such as Hoang Phu Ngoc Tuong and Huynh tan Nam. All had once been received by French ambassador Merillon, on April 22, but had been chased out from Camp David on April 24 by Phan Hien, the chief of all Hanoi’s delegates at the Joint Military Commissions in Saigon, when they accompanied General Duong van Minh for a precocious talk on political settlement prior to his seizure of power in South Vietnam. Now, it seemed the communists turned down any negotiation with President Minh but his surrender. I thought this could not be happening.
I left the Pagoda Restaurant about 4:00 P.M. By that time, U.S. CH-53 helicopters were flying back and forth over the city. Several landed on the roof of the U.S. Embassy building and others on Hai Ba Trung Street, taking off from there, fully loaded. The majority of these birds still came and left from the DAO compound in Tan-Son-Nhut.
I felt that the highest stage of the American evacuation had come. That the Americans were hastening to leave meant the communists were pressing to come. I wanted to go to the U.S. Embassy to take a look. Between the intersection of Hai Ba Trung Street and Thong Nhut Avenue and the embassy building were thousands of people. The embassy was surrounded by a huge crowd of Vietnamese, American, and third-country nationals who were trying to get in. The main gate was closed and numerous U.S. Marines had secured it. However, people were trying to climb over the walls. Some were taken in but many were pushed out. It was a complete mob scene, crazy and piteous.
Up to that point, I did not know how many Americans had already left and how many more were going to leave the country, but I surely knew that, contrary to the suspicion of some American authorities, the people of Saigon, even those who were left behind, did not hate the Americans. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese wanted to go with them but nobody tried to hurt them as they made their way out of the country. ARVN soldiers in Saigon, at all units, were under control. The majority were still awaiting orders to fight. Perhaps they did not know that all the big bosses had already left.
I told the driver to take me to the Vietnamese Navy (VNN) headquarters on Bach-Dang Quay, following Nguyen Hue Avenue. Thousands of people crowded the quay along the riverside, but the four large VNN battleships floated gently on the water at several piers along the naval camp’s riverfront. The gates of these piers were closed and strictly guarded by numerous armed seamen. No one could pass through. The traffic was jammed with cars and motorbikes abandoned in the streets.
Because travel to the VNN headquarters had become impossible, I decided to go home. We returned to the center of Saigon. On Tu-Do and Le Loi Streets, people were still walking, shopping, or even waiting in line at some movie theaters. It was strange. I wondered if these people knew that not too far from there, at the U.S. Embassy and along the naval base’s waterfront, thousands of others were trying to find a way to escape from the country. Probably they did not know that their lives would be forever changed when the communists came and took over the city.
A heavy thunderstorm moved over Saigon late in the evening of April 29. After taking a shower, I was going to bed when my nephew told me that he just heard Major General Nguyen Cao Ky announcing on the Armed Forces radio broadcast that he would stay to fight the communists to his last drop of blood, until his death. I said, “Yes, every ARVN soldier in Saigon wants to fight to the death rather than to live with the communists; but, you know, many generals are gone and I would appreciate it if General Ky would stay to fight.” However, I did not trust our unpredictable leaders, who lacked steadiness and loyalty.
In the morning of April 30, the jeep came. The driver was First Sergeant Kim Nhi, who had been my longtime driver when I was deputy commander of the ARVN Military Intelligence Center (MIC) from 1966 to 1968. He and I went to have breakfast at a restaurant on Gia-Long Street. All the restaurants around Saigon Market were open. Sergeant Nhi told me that the night before there had been major fighting in the west outskirts, along Highway 1, and this morning when driving the jeep to my home he saw many refugees running from the Bay Hien area to Phu-Tho, where the MIC was located. Bay Hien was the base camp of the Airborne Division. I knew that in this area and around Tan-Son-Nhut Airport, at that time, there were at least two airborne brigades, the Third of Lieutenant Colonel Tran Dang Khoi and the Fourth of Lt. Colonel Le Minh Ngoc. I believed in these airborne commanders’ fighting competence and leadership. I thought they could hold the west defensive line for days and the communist attack against them would be bloody. I realized that the communists had finally come. Times would be hard for all of us and disastrous for Saigon’s people. I never thought the end would be bitter. But it was.
After breakfast, about 8:30 A.M., we went to the Vietnamese Navy headquarters, on Bach Dang Quay. I saw no more battleships docked at the piers along the river. Back to Thong Nhat Avenue, at the US Embassy, the crowd had almost disappeared, but several looters mobbed in and carried out everything they could find. Certainly all the Americans were gone.
On the way to JGS headquarters, we were stopped at Cong-Ly Bridge; many cars were also stopped right there. People said that this morning several enemy rockets had fallen into and around this RVNAF highest headquarters compound and there had been fighting around Tan-Son-Nhut Airport. I decided to go to the Military Intelligence Center, my former unit, on To Hien Thanh Street in the Phu-Tho area. I met Lt. Colonel Nguyen van Nhon, deputy commander of the unit. Lt. Colonel Nhon told me that president Duong van Minh had announced on Saigon Broadcasting at 9:30 A.M. his policy of “reconciliation and concord” with the communists to save the people from carnage; he suggested all RVNAF soldiers stop fighting and stay in place, and declared his intention to meet the Provisional Revolutionary Government’s official representatives to discuss the formalities of an orderly changeover of power to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Brigadier General Nguyen Huu Hanh also ordered RVNAF generals, officers and soldiers to execute President Minh’s commands.
In hearing Lt. Colonel Nhon summarize these orders, I felt a chill creep along my spine and spread to my brain. I wondered how this could be happening. The fighting that had erupted around Saigon from the night before lasted until that morning. I could not imagine whether the airbornes, the marines, the rangers and soldiers of other ARVN units would obey these orders, especially the troops at IV Corps & Region. By that time, in this military region there were more than three infantry divisions, 18 ranger battalions, 15 artillery battalions and 55 separated companies with almost 400 field howitzers, five to six armored regiments with 500 tanks, the 4th VNAF Division with a hundred fighters and bombers, and the 4th VNN Force with nearly 600 large and small battleships. How could generals, officers, and soldiers of these RVNAF units simply turn over their installations, materiel and equipment to the communists whenever they might come for an “orderly changeover”? Pausing for a moment, I then asked Lt. Colonel Nhon: “What do you think about General Minh’s orders; are these a surrender declaration?” He said: “I don’t know. It seems we lost the war in an unusually peaceful manner. But, we have to wait for clearer orders. I’m confused. I don’t know whether our armed forces will continue to fight or not. We have to wait.”
At 10:25 A.M., we heard President Minh broadcasting his second declaration. This was his unconditional surrender to the communists; something that would be remembered as: “As President of the Republic of Vietnam, I, General Duong van Minh, request all the armed forces give up their arms and unconditionally surrender to the Liberation Army. I declare all governmental bodies, from central to rural level, dissolved.” We seemed to be paralyzed for a while as if we had swallowed something at a gulp. We knew it was the end, a tragic end that we had never imagined. Many of us were crying.
President Minh’s declaration of surrender to the communists and his orders abolishing the regime and the armed forces were a death sentence for all of us, officers, NCOs and soldiers of the RVNAF, who had sworn to sacrifice our lives for years to defend our democracy and protect the people of the South. Our work and merits gained through sweat, tears and blood dried up within hours due to the actions of our incompetent and fickle leaders.
Colonel Nhon left the office with his personnel to burn classified documents and files. Upon returning, he exclaimed, “That’s it! That’s the end! What are we supposed to do now? You were my superior in this unit before so now you may give me good advice in this situation.” I told him: “We certainly do not expect the communists will tolerate us when they come. It’s better to tell our people to disperse, then we abandon the empty camp for them.” It was the sole solution. Later, I learned the majority of RVNAF unit commanders did the same.
Colonel Nhon went out and said something to his personnel. Within fifteen minutes, I saw MIC’s officers, NCOs, and enlisted men leaving from the main gate. Those who were living within the camp’s barracks had changed their uniforms and left the camp with their wives and children. I did not know where they might go but I imagined they were en route to an indefinite and miserable path for their lives. The bitter end of my former unit and almost all others also happened like that. Heartbroken, lamenting, and resentful, we were soldiers of the RVNAF after that.
Sergeant Kim-Nhi, a trustworthy and loyal ethnic Cambodian driver, was still there waiting for me. I called him in, thanked him for his services, gave him a little money, and told him to take his family back to his natal village, somewhere in Vinh-Binh Province. He cried, held my hands for a while, and left. Now alone, Colonel Nhon and I shared the last tragic moment of the disintegration of our unit, our army, and our regime. We shook hands, said “adieu” to one another, and left MIC with tears quietly streaming over our cheeks. I drove the military jeep home still wearing my uniform.
At home, everybody was waiting for me. They had heard the bad news and were worried for me. All of my personal documents, photos, and uniforms were burned, including several intelligence certificates given by British and American intelligence schools. My eighty-year-old mother suggested that I change my uniform and go hide in my first cousin’s house somewhere on the New Freeway. The jeep parked in the street had disappeared; I caught a taxi and went to my first cousin’s house, a lacquer-painting factory, near the New Port. It was a quarter to noon. This afternoon I saw the communists coming into the city in their Soviet-made tanks and trucks. Along the freeway, people were watching them. Yes, it was not a bloodbath. It did not happen right away. But South Vietnamese blood would later pour out at all corners of the land, little by little, to the point that everyone wanted to leave the country.
At night, my first cousin told me she had heard from witnesses that the Presidential Palace’s main gate had been hit by communist tanks before noon and the national flag on the top of the palace had been replaced by a Liberation Front flag. I asked her to stop talking. I did not want to hear things like that. Yes, we had lost the war and the winners could do anything they wanted. I suffered in silence the loss of our regime and the disbanding of our armed forces that we had built for twenty years. The flag, the eminent symbol of our regime power and the spirit of our armed forces, was replaced! Every one of my cousins words pierced my heart. This gentle and virtuous girl seemed to read my silent feelings. She began quietly crying.
General Duong van Minh had bet his dignity on the gamble of power. But power had not brought any honor or pleasure for him, first when plotting the coup to overthrown president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and finally when haggling to seize the presidency in the last days of April 1975. On the one hand, power for him was only an illusion. On the other hand, it was a destructive tool that devastated his honor and destroyed the free regime of the South Vietnamese people. Not only did General Minh terminate the First Republic, but he also abolished the Second Republic of the South and its armed forces. He was different than General Nguyen van Thieu. Thieu, at least, enjoyed the “pleasure of power” for ten years while Minh only suffered its sadness.
However, both of them were unlucky stars in the southern sky—the vandalized rulers. Thieu, who had real power, had given up half of the South’s territory to the communists without fighting, leading to the loss of half of its armed forces in a two-week margin. Minh, with his illusory power, had exterminated the body of the South Vietnamese political and social structure and eradicated the rest of its defensive forces in a brief margin of two hours. The shift of national power into the hands of the communists would lead to a long-lasting test of endurance for the Vietnamese people, both of the North and the South, who were overloaded by misfortune under the violent, brutal, and inhumane communist regime. Yet, to save millions of Saigon’s residents from a bloodbath in the last minutes of South Vietnam, a responsible leader in the position of president “Big” Minh would do no differently than he did. His last dime bet in that complicated war could have been the last and greatest contribution of his life for his country.
Two days later, my wife came from the Mekong Delta and brought me the most sorrowful news. At ARVN IV Corps & Region, a few hours after hearing President Minh’s declaration of surrender, Major General Nguyen Khoa Nam, commander; Brigadier General Le van Hung, his deputy; and Brigadier General Tran van Hai, ARVN 7th Infantry Division commander; committed suicide. All ARVN units in the delta were disbanded. On the same day, two more ARVN generals also took their own lives: Brigadier General Le Nguyen Vy, commander of the 5th Infantry Division, and Major General Pham van Phu, the former commander of II Corps & Region. Later, I learned that a great number of RVNAF unit officers, NCOs and soldiers had chosen the same honorable and valiant death. Among these heroes, there were two lieutenant colonels, three majors, and a captain of J2-JGS and its subordinated units. I cried for all of them, and particularly for my superior and close friend, General Le van Hung. The lofty sacrifice of these ARVN heroes mirrored the indomitable tradition of the armed forces of South Vietnam and the unyielding spirit of the young generation of South Vietnamese generals, officers and soldiers. With dignity, they sacrificed their lives for the honor of their land, regime, and army.
The end of our regime was bitter because the halo of the heroes was shaded by the cloud of shadow of our highest leaders. We lost the war because of bad leadership and not by the inefficiency of our armed forces. The RVNAF was an elite army in the world. We would have been able to confront the communist People’s Army on the battlefield with competence if, after the Vietnamization, our ally and leaders did not tie our hands and turn our backs for the enemy to shoot at us. How could we defend the regime and the people of the South in such a wretched situation? We were formed, trained, and then sacrificed for the sake of others, including our leaders, in the course of the war.
I felt very ashamed of myself for hiding in my cousin Thanh-Lan’s factory. She, a talented artist and a pretty woman, was trying in those gloomy days to teach me the art of making a lacquer painting. However, a few weeks later, I began to wander down the next phase of my life, which started in several communist concentration camps. One day, I received a letter from my wife saying that Lan had escaped from the country by boat and disappeared, with many others, into the depths of the Pacific. I felt the profound sense of the Taoist philosophy concerning human life and remembered two lines of an ancient Chinese poem:
From olden times, beautiful women like famous generals
Promise not, in this world, to see their hairs turning gray.
This was also the fate of the famous General Le van Hung and the beautiful artist Thanh Lan, two of my intimates, whom I will always hold in highest esteem and admiration.