THE WAR: The Last Grim Goodbye

The last images of the war: U.S. Marines with rifle butts pounding the fingers of Vietnamese who tried to claw their way into the embassy compound to escape from their homeland. An apocalyptic carnival air—some looters wildly driving abandoned embassy cars around the city until they ran out of gas; others ransacking Saigon's Newport PX, that transplanted dream of American suburbia, with one woman bearing off two cases of maraschino cherries on her head and another a case of Wrigley's Spearmint gum. Out in the South China Sea, millions of dollars worth of helicopters profligately tossed overboard from U.S. rescue ships, discarded like pop-top beer cans to make room for later-arriving choppers.

In the end, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese poured into Saigon, raised the flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government and took into custody South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh and Premier Vu Van Mao. For many Americans, it was like a death that had long been expected, but was shocking when it finally happened.

So the century's longest war was over, in an efficient but ignominious evacuation. It was nightmarish enough, but it could have been worse; only a few South Vietnamese soldiers fired at the departing Americans, and none were on target. At least the U.S. was spared the last awful spectacle of its people fighting a pitched battle with its late friends and allies. In fact, the Americans managed to bring about 120,000 South Vietnamese refugees out with them.

Perhaps appropriately, the American goodbye to Viet Nam was the one operation in all the years of the war that was utterly without illusion.

So much so that Americans were recoiling from any reminder of the war—even at the risk of betraying some of their best ideals. In California, Arkansas, Florida and other sites where South Vietnamese refugees might be settling, many citizens were angrily telling them to stay away; there were not enough jobs even for Americans. It was not an edifying performance in a nation settled by immigrants and refugees.

There was something surrealist in the swiftness of the last catastrophe—a drama made doubly bitter by the fact that most Americans had made their emotional peace with Viet Nam more than two years ago. The P.O.W.s had come home, the last American soldiers had withdrawn. The nation turned, not very happily, to other preoccupations—to Watergate and then to coping with recession and inflation. But since Viet Nam had deceived Americans so many times before, it was perhaps fitting that it should be the only war they would have to lose twice.

Having come to terms two years ago with Viet Nam, most Americans wanted to put it behind them again. Gerald Ford said earnestly: "This action closes a chapter in the American experience. I ask all Americans to close ranks, to avoid recrimination about the past, to look ahead to the many goals we share and to work together on the great tasks that remain to be accomplished."