Last Days in Vietnam Page #9

It is a unilateral ceasefire

and an unconditional surrender.

The 30-year war in South

Vietnam is at last over.

The first thing I did was

to destroy my documents,

my badges, just keeping the civilian ID.

And then I went around

Saigon to see what happened.

I saw a lot of South Vietnamese

soldiers in underwear.

They took off all their

military clothes, boots,

and they threw them away.

And I thought, well,

what would happen to them?

And to me, to myself.

Right.

I thought of my friends who were

killed in action and I thought,

"Well, is this what we fought for?"

"Is this what the Americans came for?"

And I didn't have the answer.

I have wrestled with this ever since.

I realized that I had become

the quintessential American in Vietnam.

I had all these causes, all

these big things I was doing.

I was trying to get the

truth back to Washington.

I was talking to agents, trying

to persuade the Ambassador,

and I forgot that what was

at stake were human lives.

For years after that, I

hear that sound in my head,

that sound like,

"Tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk-tchk. "

In the middle of the

night I just jump up.

I thought the helicopter

come pick me up.

I called it "dream in the wind. "

Later we found out the

big fleet is out there.

You can just take a boat and go there.

They take everybody.

If you can get out

there, you're on board.

And I just didn't know that.

You know, so...

As we approached the

Philippines with our refugees,

there was a big problem.

They wouldn't let us in.

And the reason they

wouldn't let us in is

because the government

there had recognized

the new regime in Vietnam

and these Navy ships we were escorting,

they were all flying

South Vietnamese flags.

And the solution was to

reflag all these ships

as American ships.

They lowered their Vietnamese

flag, people crying.

It was very emotional for

them to lose their country,

their flag, their ship.

Everything was gone.

And then we raised the American flag.

We tried to do that with

as much dignity as we could.

There were thousands and

thousands of Americans

who served in Vietnam who were

sitting at home heartbroken

at watching this whole

thing come to naught.

The end of April of 1975 was...

the whole Vietnam

involvement in microcosm...

Promises made in good

faith, promises broken;

people being hurt because we

didn't get our act together.

You know, the whole Vietnam War

is a story that kind

of sounds like that.

But on the other hand,

sometimes there are moments

when good people have

to rise to the occasion

and do the things that need to be done.

And in Saigon, there was no

shortage of people like that.

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