The
whirlpool took me back to April 30th, 1975… Anna’s quasi-birthday…
she would’ve been five or so. I was in Saigon that morning. There was mass
hysteria and panic at the American Embassy gates. Ambassador Martin held off as
long as he could. He must have gotten a thousand Vietnamese Civilians and
several of my own people out. God bless his soul. The Lady Ace 09 Chinook snatched up the reluctant Ambassador
around 0500. I’d never
seen anyone in a suit with his balls… ever! And I’d been in Vietnam on and off since
August of ‘65… earned some rank to Staff Sergeant first tour before
transferring to the Criminal Investigation Division two years later. Then in
’71 and I found myself running back and forth between Saigon and the rice
paddies working with Counter Intelligence until the whole shithouse came down.
I
loved the people of the countryside but every time I returned to Saigon my
heart sank. I hated answering to politicos and contractors on Congressional
junkets to Saigon. They might have had a desire to win the war at first but,
after seeing it as a cash cow, their ambitions didn’t go much further beyond
securing the next fat military contract… meeting only with soldiers who’d been
at desks so long they’d forgotten what soldiers do best; break things and kill
people.
I’d
been occupied since the beginning of April in Saigon ushering my people through
to the temporary safety of the embassy. They were the forgotten people who had
been my eyes and ears… unraveling and reporting crimes… petty crimes to crimes
against humanity… just so that once exposed the government could bury them with
piles of paper. I suppose it had always been this way since the stone age when
the first hutch had been burnt to the ground.
I’d
gotten through the gate; my military ID was enough even though I was in
civvies. I was in a daze. I hardly knew I had a girl tucked under my arms. She
was about five… handed to me by her mother who couldn’t squeeze through the
gate as a Marine had to force it shut behind me.
Eyes,
I remember their eyes.
CPO
Ryan greeted me halfway to the Embassy doors, “Where you been! At a goddamned skivvy
house!”
I
knew it was his way of saying, “Glad to see you made it!”
I
felt the child’s small hand patting my cheek. Oh, yeah, the girl. Looking up at
a Huey hovering over the roof, I shouted over the racket, “I have a package to
deliver.”
The
chaos of an impending hell are words that fit it best. Once on the roof, we got
in cue… circling loud buzzards and eagles, Chinooks and Hueys, hovered to pluck
up anyone they could. Ryan grabbed and yanked my free arm, “Get your ass on
that fuckin’ Huey Crazhinski!”
There
was no more room for an adult. She clung to me, our eyes locked on each other’s
as I broke her grip and handed her up… an offering to the sky gods. Against the
roaring whine of the Lycoming turbos and the chopping of rotors, I shouted,
“Take her! Fuckin’ take her dammit!” The Marine grabbed her… he didn’t need
convincing. Her eyes still fixed on mine as though pleading. She was pulled inside
and the chopper lifted off.
It
wasn’t likely most of us left were going to get out. Ryan cussed, “Mother
fucker! That’s one of the last one’s Crazhinski!” I rarely heard him cuss.
“We’d
better get out before the Jar Heads lock it down!”
I
stood in a daze watching a decade of a futile endeavor ending as the mob began ransacking
the embassy grounds far below. Ryan grabbed my arm and yanked me away shouting,
“Was that worth it!”
It
was too late anyway, “Was what worth it?” I yelled but, within the maelstrom of
sound from the sky above and mob below with us, I didn’t think he heard me.
“I
know…” he shouted, “You’ve got blood running out your ears. Let’s save our
asses now!”
“How.
The grunts are locking all the doors!”
“There’s
always a way, follow me.” The next two hours Marines were systematically
evacuating, locking the elevators at sixth floor and locking the gates between
floors on the civilians who were sure to be sent to re-education concentration
camps or executed by the North Vietnam Army. By 0700 tanks with the red star had
already been rolling down the broad boulevard from the Presidential Palace as
the last of the Marines retreated to the roof and a hovering Huey.
We
were on the grounds by then. I had been a robot up to that time and felt
nothing. The blood from my ears, my head feeling like a balloon that would
explode, meant something was terribly wrong. The memory was fresh in some
instances… every detail of frantic faces… we passed several groups of ARVN’s
stripping off their uniforms standing with nowhere to hide vulnerable in their
skivvies… mostly conscripts though some had fought courageously. But they had
been hoodwinked by corrupt officers who’d already fled… and some of my memory
was completely blank … We got past the mob to empty eerie streets crossing
canals and ending at a safe house until dark.
Ryan
was good. Once, I wanted to be just like him. I’d fallen into a semi-coma
state. In and out… walking… carried. He radioed ahead. I don’t remember much.
Some Navy SEALs got us to a Submarine Tender waiting off the coast and packed
to the bulwarks with refugees.
I
saw him looking over me while I lay on the cot in the medical dispensary, “Was
what worth it?”
The
Nurses in Okinawa told me I’d asked over and over, “Was what worth it?”
What? Ten years of my life in the service of a
country that abandoned us just like it abandoned the people of Saigon? We were
there to save Vietnam from Communism while the Catholic regimes in Saigon from
the beginning were using us to suppress the country-side… the hamlets… mostly
Buddhists. Or, was he asking if it was worth it to save the girl? I believe he
meant the latter.
If
that was the case, the answer was a resounding, yes.
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