No More Vietnams (29 page)

Although the surprise withdrawal at first threw General Dung off-balance, he quickly recovered. On March 18, a full division attacked the convoy at the town of Cheo Reo, where a key bridge was out, and succeeded in cutting Saigon's forces in half. Military and civilian losses were heavy. Cheo Reo was littered with corpses. South Vietnam's remaining forces pressed toward the coast, limping along as North Vietnamese units struck at them repeatedly. On March 25, Saigon's ragged columns reached the coast. Out of the eighteen battalions that started out on the withdrawal, only three managed to finish it.

In March 1975, when South Vietnam had no longer had any room for error, President Thieu had made an enormous one with this hastily arranged withdrawal. It was a tragic mistake—although probably an academic one given the votes of the Democratic Caucuses—that precipitated the collapse of South Vietnam.

After vacillating about whether to withdraw his best forces from the northern front to defend Saigon, Thieu realized that there was no alternative to this after the disaster in the central highlands. His plan called for his northern forces to retrench in coastal enclaves around Hue and Danang. North Vietnam's offensive in the area, which began simultaneously with the attack on Ban Me Thout, had made little progress. But as South Vietnam's best forces prepared to withdraw on March 18, the area's commanders were forced to redeploy their troops in tighter lines of defense.

No one was under any illusions about how difficult the maneuver would be. A strategic retreat is a perilous operation
under the best of circumstances. South Vietnam's northern commanders now had orders to pull back under the worst of conditions, as the growing intensity of enemy attacks jeopardized their ability to establish a new line of defense. On March 19, North Vietnamese tanks rolled across the cease-fire lines. Quang Tri Province soon had to be abandoned. Thousands of refugees fled the Communist advance and streamed south toward Hue. Then, when pressure mounted on Hue, over a million refugees set out for Danang.

As the front deteriorated, what came to be known as the “family syndrome” set in. Because the war required South Vietnam's soldiers to spend years in the service, they were allowed to have their families live near their posts. Now, hundreds of troops were abandoning their units to get their wives and children to safety. As chaos set in, three divisions evaporated almost overnight.

On March 25, Hue fell to the North Vietnamese. Danang quickly came under attack from over 35,000 Communist troops. As Saigon tried to evacuate whatever organized military units remained, mass hysteria seized the city. Over 2 million people milled in the streets, looking for family members or trying to find transportation to escape to the south. Thousands waded into the sea in a desperate struggle to reach barges and fishing boats offshore. Among them was the commander of South Vietnam's northern army, who had striven valiantly until the last moment to salvage his disintegrating forces. On March 30, almost exactly ten years after American troops first landed on its beaches, Danang was overrun by the North Vietnamese.

Within less than a month, Thieu's forces had lost half of South Vietnam's territory. But they had little to show for it. Thieu's strategy of withdrawing from the north to concentrate on the defense of the south had utterly failed. Its success was absolutely dependent on whether South Vietnam's forces could be pulled out
intact.
After the disastrous withdrawal in the central highlands and the panic-stricken collapse of the
northern front, Thieu's plans resulted in just a handful of organized military units reaching the Saigon area.

Meanwhile, Cambodia was in its last hours. On March 16, the United States Embassy had started to evacuate its nonessential personnel. Ever since Congress had cut off our bombing in 1973, Communist Khmer Rouge had had free run of most of the country. Their forces had encircled Phnom Penh and now were on the verge of strangling it. Artillery barrages were deliberately fired at crowded refugee camps. Stories circulated about brutal atrocities committed in Communist-occupied territories. But the United States did little to alleviate the situation. Congress had imposed restrictions on aiding Phnom Penh that were even more draconian than those on helping Saigon. On April 16, with supplies and ammunition running out, Phnom Penh capitulated to the Khmer Rouge.

Our Saigon embassy did not begin its evacuation until April 4, because it was feared that if the South Vietnamese realized we were pulling out, their resistance would crumble. The delay had consumed precious time, however. Now, although the United States would be able to pull out all of its personnel and dependents it would be impossible to get out all the South Vietnamese civilians who had worked for us over the years and who faced a serious risk of being executed immediately after the Communist took power. In the final days, American helicopters shuttled thousands from the embassy roof to our ships offshore. But many thousands more were left behind.

Hanoi was now throwing everything it had into the offensive. From September 1974 through March 1975, North Vietnam had sent over 120,000 additional combat troops into South Vietnam. With Saigon on the ropes, Hanoi went for the knockout punch. In April it hurled in another 58,000 troops. Saigon was dazed. No one expected defeat to come so quickly. Thieu, whose counterattack on Ban Me Thout had long ago become fantasy, now sought to regroup his forces to defend a truncated South Vietnam. But with North Vietnamese reinforcements piling into his country, events overtook his every
move. Almost as soon as he proposed a new line of defense, it became unfeasible to defend.

On April 9, the final significant battle of the third Vietnam War began at Xuan Loc. It looked like a total mismatch on paper. But Xuan Loc's defenders put up fierce resistance despite the enemy's huge superiority in numbers. North Vietnam's forces ravaged the ranks of South Vietnam's troops with some of the heaviest artillery barrages in the entire war.

On April 10, as the North Vietnamese offensive swept across South Vietnam, President Ford went before a joint session of Congress to request emergency assistance for our allies. He asked for $722 million in military aid and $250 million in economic and humanitarian aid. In light of the gravity of the situation, he also requested that Congress respond no later than April 19. It was an act of great political courage, because he knew that seeking assistance for Saigon would win him no friends in Congress.

When Ford later met with leaders of Congress, he ran into strong opposition to helping Saigon. “I will give you large sums for evacuation,” said one senator, “but not one nickel for military aid.” Another said, “I will vote for any amount for getting Americans out. I don't want it mixed with getting Vietnamese out.” They were willing to give money to retreat but none to avoid defeat. Since the 1974 elections, antiwar majorities controlled the House and Senate more firmly than ever. A flurry of hearings were held, but Ford's request never came to a vote on the floor. It died in committee.

Meanwhile, South Vietnamese soldiers at Xuan Loc were repulsing multiple assaults in hand-to-hand combat, with over 1,200 enemy troops left dead on the battlefield. North Vietnam's forces hammered away at our ally's positions with thousands of rounds of artillery. South Vietnamese lines held back the onslaught until April 15, when the tattered remains of their units finally fell back, unable any longer to continue the fight.

With the fall of Xuan Loc, there was little left to stop the North Vietnamese Army's advance along the road to Saigon. Other battles were being fought all around South Vietnam, but
on April 20 an eerie stillness settled over the country for almost a week as all eyes turned to see what would happen in Saigon. Over 120,000 North Vietnamese troops in sixteen divisions surrounded the capital and were preparing for a massive, three-pronged attack on its 30,000 defenders. It was clear that, except for the paper work, the third Vietnam War was over.

On April 21, President Thieu resigned with the hope that a successor would be able to spare Saigon from total destruction in a final battle. He was soon replaced with General Duong Van Minh, who intended to open negotiations with the enemy. It was a hopeless undertaking. Saigon had nothing left to bargain with. Hanoi, sensing imminent victory, was interested not in conversation but in conquest.

On April 30, 1975, with South Vietnamese forces totally demoralized, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the streets of Saigon. At this point, it would have been the height of futility to resist Hanoi's invading armies. After one armored unit crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace, General Minh and his government were taken prisoner. A North Vietnamese soldier scrambled onto a balcony to wave the flag of the victors. Soon it was flying all over Saigon.

South Vietnam, after courageously resisting Communist aggression for twenty-one years, had surrendered.

• • •

In the presidential campaign of 1972, Senator George McGovern claimed that South Vietnam would collapse within seventy-two hours of the final withdrawal of American troops. But it did not collapse then. It did not collapse when Congress took away threat to Hanoi of an American retaliation in 1973. It did not collapse when Congress sharply reduced its military and economic aid in 1974. It did not collapse until 1975, when all hope of future American aid was lost. For over two years, South Vietnam held off the hordes of invaders from the North.

Our news media portrayed the soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam as cowards. Americans remember the images of desperate troops clinging to the skids of evacuation helicopters or racing with refugees to see who could escape
the fighting the fastest. In fact, some South Vietnamese units did fall apart under fire in 1975. That has happened to all armies, including our own, in all wars. But it is important to recognize that it is asking a lot of a soldier to fight bravely when his ammunition is rationed and the enemy's is not.

If the media's story were the whole story, South Vietnam would not have survived as long as it did. But it was not. The record shows that South Vietnam's troops fought bravely in many battles right up to the end. In 1973, they fought well in Chau Doc, Quang Due, Quang Nam, Quang Tri, Tay Ninh, Binh Long, Phouc Long, Din Duong, and Hua Nghai provinces. In 1974, they fought well in Kien Tuong, Dinh Tuong, Hau Nghia, Tay Ninh, Binh Duong, Bien Hao, Long Khanh, Quang Tin, Kontum, Darlac, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Thua Thien, Binh Tuy, Phouc Long, Choung Thien, Ba Xuyen, Vinh Binh, Vinh Long, and An Xuyen provinces in South Vietnam and in Svay Kieng Province in Cambodia. In 1975, despite desperate supply shortages and catastrophic military reversals, South Vietnamese units fought heroically in battles in Quang Nam, Binh Dinh, Pleiku, Kontum, Binh Tuy, Tay Ninh, Kien Tuong, Chuong Thien, Dinh Tuong, Phu Bon, Quang Due, Darlac, Klanh Hoa, Long An, Binh Long, Binh Duong, Long Khanh, Binh Thuan, Ninh Thuan, Phouc Tuy, and Hao Nghai provinces. For almost two years, no provincial capital was lost to the North Vietnamese.

Objective military analysts have stated that South Vietnamese soldiers were, man-for-man, better fighters than the North Vietnamese. They lacked nothing in spirit. Our ally suffered more killed in action in the years after our withdrawal than we did during the entire war. Its soldiers proved willing and able to fight against enemy troops—but it was too much to expect them to fight against impossible odds.

Congress turned its back on a noble cause and a brave people. South Vietnam simply wanted the chance to fight for its survival as an independent country. All that the United States had to do was give it the means to continue the battle. Our
South Vietnamese friends were asking us to give them the tools so they could finish the job. Congress would not, so our allies could not.

• • •

“Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life” read the headline of an article in the
New York Times
on the eve of the fall of Cambodia. That encapsulated one side's argument about the morality of our intervention in the war in Vietnam. Those who opposed our actions had hammered on the theme that no greater evil could be visited upon the people of Indochina than the war we were waging. Those who supported our efforts had argued that a Communist peace would be more brutal than an anti-Communist war. In April 1975, the world would finally find out which side had been right.

Since February 1974, reports had circulated in the West about the intentions of the Khmer Rouge. Kenneth Quinn, a State Department Cambodia expert, wrote that the leaders of the Cambodian Communists were fanatics who were planning to carry out a “total social revolution.” All vestiges of the past were to be considered “anathema and must be destroyed.” It would be necessary to “psychologically reconstruct individual members of society.” This meant “stripping away, through terror and other means, the traditional bases, structures, and forces which had shaped and guided an individual's life” and “rebuild him according to party doctrines by substituting a series of new values.”

Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, the principal leaders of the Khmer Rouge, wasted no time implementing their plan. On April 17—the day Cambodia fell—the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh was begun. Three million people were herded into the countryside at gunpoint. No one was exempt. Soldiers opened fire on anyone lingering in the streets and even cleared the sick and dying out of the city's hospitals. Our first look at the new Khmer Rouge government did not show the just order that antiwar leaders had envisioned. It was a grisly picture of desperate doctors and nurses who were forced to roll their
critically wounded patients out of Phnom Penh on their hospital beds, with bottles of intravenous plasma and serum still suspended above them. By nightfall, the city's 20,000 wounded had been sent into the jungle and toward certain death.

That was only the beginning. Similar evacuations were conducted in all Cambodian cities. Wanton executions soon followed. Khmer Rouge soldiers immediately killed army personnel, government employees, intellectuals, teachers, students, and anyone who was seriously ill. In Siem Reap, over 100 patients were murdered in their beds with knives and clubs. In Mongkol Borei, after carefully planting land mines throughout a field, the Communists forced 200 army officers to walk into it. In Do Nauy, Khmer Rouge troops crucified one colonel on a tree after beating him and cutting off his nose and ears; it took him three days to die. And after these executions, the wives and children of the victims were led off to be killed.