EVACUATION: A helicopter lands
on the U.S. embassy
April 30, 1975
Good Night, Vietnam
By John Cloud
PLAN TO
CLOSE MISSION AT ABOUT 0430 30 APRIL LOCAL TIME. DUE TO NECESSITY TO
DESTROY [COMMUNICATIONS] GEAR THIS IS THE LAST MESSAGE FROM EMBASSY
SAIGON.
After those words were sent, someone took a sledgehammer to
the machinery. The ambassador and CIA chief were flown out by 5 a.m.,
and the last official American presence—11 Marines—waited for
a helicopter on the roof. Around them, chaos had blossomed: Saigon was
burning, the communists were nearing, and thousands of South Vietnamese
were trying to flee with the Americans. Hours earlier, one man had tried
to put his baby on an embassy bus, as ABC's Ken Kashiwahara recalls in
the oral history Tears Before the Rain. Kashiwahara watched as
the man fell, and the bus ran over the baby. But the driver kept
going.
Just before 8 a.m., a Chinook-46 helicopter landed and whisked
away those last Marines, drawing up plumes of the tear gas they had
dispersed in the embassy to discourage people from going to the roof.
And in that vaporous haze, the American war in Vietnam—a debacle
that took 16 years and 58,000 American lives—finally ended.
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