Last days in Vietnam (2014) - Những ngày cuối cùng ở Việt Nam

LTC (Join to see) - I cannot adequately express my deep despair and sorrow for our friends, colleagues, and families we left behind who faced reeducation camp, prison, and/or death because we failed to adequately prepare an organized evacuation plan for political reasons until the very last minute - and left far too many people who had risked their lives supporting our efforts and relying on our promises to fend for themselves - to escape by any means possible - whether legal, illegal, or by force - often depriving others of the designated and/or intended means for their own escape. Martin, Polgar, and our internal team and many of our military, civilian contractor, and civilian proprietary pilots and crews risked their lives flying as many of our collaborators, staff, and families as possible to safety. We are just really fortunate the north and their troops did not fire on our fixed wing, rotary, and seaborne assets - which would have provoked fierce retaliatory strikes - killing many more people during our evacuation efforts. Beyond all this I cannot forgive the utter failure to adequately destroy the documents that directly led to reeducation camp, prison, and/or death for far too many of our friends, colleagues, family members, and assets left behind. In the end when Martin was finally pressured to board a CH-46 on 4/30/75 at around 0458 the message was sent with his code name Tiger Out signaling the ambassador had departed the embassy. Unfortunately, Navy - Marine pilots thought this meant everyone was evacuated - but we still had about 80 troops and agency personnel stranded on the rooftop. Our field radios wouldn't reach the fleet with their limited power and short antennas - so temporary antenna had to be rigged up to contact the fleet. Marine helicopters finally evacuated our last contingent from the US Embassy Saigon (Saigon Station) rooftop many hours later. You can read Frank Snepp's book A Decent Interval for a better sense of what these final days were like for agency personnel trying to exfiltrate our collaborators and families from the country. My Very Kindest & Deepest Regrets, Sandy

Thanks for sharing LTC (Join to see). To be honest, this time in our history brings back very disturbing memories about how we deserted so many Vietnamese who were left to be slaughtered.

LTC (Join to see) Thank you for providing the link. I will watch it, even though it brings back painful memories of our government abandoning the ARVN and South Vietnamese people.