Saigon Remembered -- 20 Years Later, A Former Marine Looks Back At The Frantic Evacuation Of The Fallen City

By 1975, when Saigon fell to North Vietnam, there were only about 6,200 Americans left in the country, including military advisers, intelligence people and diplomatic staffs.

The first Americans had been sent there in 1960 - a few hundred Green Berets to help South Vietnam. By 1969, at the peak of the U.S. military buildup, nearly 550,000 Americans were there. But by 1972 anti-war sentiment at home had become too strong to ignore, and ground forces were withdrawn. The Paris Peace Accords in 1973 ended the war if not the conflict.

The first week in January 1975, North Vietnam tested the peace by seizing control of Phuoc Long province, 80 miles north of Saigon. President Ford said he couldn't foresee any circumstances that would bring American troops back. In March, the North Vietnamese began their march to Saigon.

As the last Marines scrambled aboard a helicopter to leave Saigon to the enemy, they wept tears of relief, shame, frustration and noxious gas.

Relief because they very nearly were overlooked in the chaotic evacuation, shame because Marines aren't known for running from a fight, and frustration because they knew it had been an unwinnable war.

The gas was an accident. They'd left their own spewing canisters at the door to block the desperate Vietnamese people they'd been forced to abandon, and now the wash of the chopper blades was blowing stinging fumes back into their faces.

`It was all a waste'

"We were pretty emotional about it. We all had tears in our eyes, even the pilot," says James Kean, who was in command of the last 11 Marines to leave the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon as the city fell to the Communists 20 years ago.

"It was that feeling of being just worn out. We didn't win. We didn't lose. It was all a waste. And the last thing we did was to gas ourselves."

Kean, now 53 and president of a manufacturing firm in Marysville, was promoted to major that January of 1975. He'd spent two tours of duty in Vietnam during the war and now was stationed in Hong Kong, in charge of Marine security guards at embassies in 23 Asian cities, including Saigon.

In March, the North Vietnamese army began marching south, flushing ahead of it more than 100,000 refugees, civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers, deserters trying to save their families.

As the troops advanced, the U.S. began evacuating American military and workers, war orphans and Vietnamese nationals. South Vietnamese government leaders, military personnel and civilians with any connection at all to the Americans were terrified of being caught by the invading army.

Kean arrived in Saigon on April 17 to oversee the evacuation there. People were arriving from Danang and Nha Trang, badly traumatized from hasty evacuations under brutal circumstances. Americans and South Vietnamese had a shoot-out for seats on the planes, and several people were killed. One plane was commandeered by South Vietnamese army deserters who wouldn't let women and children aboard, Kean recalls.

But the evacuation brought out the good in people, too.

One Marine from the Saigon embassy commandeered a bread truck, picked up a load of prostitutes and took them to Tan Son Nhut Airport, Kean remembers. They were his personal friends, the young sergeant said as he signed papers promising he'd be responsible for them all in the U.S.

A Marine captain from Hawaii flew in on one plane to try to rescue his wife's family in Saigon. He wasn't allowed to stay, but Kean dispatched one of his embassy Marines to check on the family. The mother went with the Marine, leaving food cooking on the stove, Kean says, but the father refused to evacuate.

By April 28, the North Vietnamese had encircled Saigon. More than 43,000 had been evacuated, Kean says, including 5,000 Americans. But there were still 1,200 Americans in Saigon and tens of thousands of Vietnamese who'd been promised a way out by American officials.

That evening, Kean remembers, the city's sirens blared the signal that Saigon was being attacked. By dawn, thousands had gathered outside the embassy walls in hopes of being evacuated.

Kean was responsible for the people in the embassy, including Ambassador Graham Martin and his 62 Marine guards. They'd have to identify the people clamoring to get into the gates as best they could.

`Marry me, marry me!'

"There were 10,000 people out there," Kean says. "People were cutting all sorts of deals to get in. They were yelling at the Marines, `Marry me, marry me!' We couldn't take them all. In some cases we were very cruel in who we chose to take. We knew once we were gone, many of these people would have trouble surviving."

One man tried to hand a baby and a brown paper bag full of uncut gems up to the Marine sentries at the wall. The guards refused both, Kean says.

To make a landing zone for the helicopters, Kean's men cut down a huge, ancient tamarind tree on the grounds, removed the stump and painted an "H" on the dirt. Another landing zone was set up on the rooftop.

They positioned machine guns and burn barrels at the wall. If the people attempted to storm the embassy, they'd be greeted by gunfire and a wall of flame as the Americans headed for the roof. Inside the embassy, they recorded serial numbers of some $4.7 million - all the ambassador's cash reserves - and burned it in barrels.

The first helicopters arrived to evacuate them about 3:15 p.m. April 29. Soon they were dropping into the compound with regularity, hovering 70 feet above the yard and then dropping straight down into it, picking up as many people as they could lift and rising 70 feet straight up again before heading for ships waiting offshore.

Suitcases left behind

The people couldn't take anything with them. Suitcases and weapons were dropped into a pile in the yard. Kean figures they evacuated about 2,500 Vietnamese from the compound that afternoon and evening.

The helicopters came and went steadily until at 3:30 a.m. when a helicopter pilot landed with presidential orders to take the ambassador out with him. Martin walked to the helicopter with the embassy flag stuffed in a paper bag under his arm. There were still 400 people waiting in the compound.

Kean told the Marines it was time for them to "button up and get out of there." What they didn't know was that Martin's flight was supposed to be the last one. It would be more than four hours before someone remembered the 11 Marines back at the embassy.

As soon as Martin was safely in the air, they began backing out of the compound and into the embassy in a tight semi-circle. When the people in the crowd realized what was happening, they stormed toward the door. One of the Americans grabbed a huge timber used to bolt the embassy doors, placed it across the small of his back, wrapped his arms around it and began spinning it to keep the crowd at bay.

When the Marines got inside, they sent the elevators to the top floor, locked the controls and began climbing the stairs, dropping tear-gas canisters behind them and locking the doors to the stairwells as they went.

The crowd used a fire truck to smash the embassy doors, but the tear gas kept them from coming upstairs. They spent the night looting the embassy and finally left, leaving the compound deserted and littered with trash.

When the Marines got to the roof, they hunkered down to wait for their ride. By the time it came, it was nearly 8 a.m.

`Of course we were scared'

"I can't say we weren't scared with all that was happening down below," Kean says. "I spent a lot of time thinking about my family and the war. But Marines are Marines. They teach you in boot camp you're King Kong. Of course we were scared. But we were also pissed. Some of those people down below had been shooting at the helicopters."

Kean says that as far back as his first stint in Vietnam, in 1966, he knew it would end something like that.

"I knew the United States was getting involved in something it wasn't going to win. We never did learn how to handle insurgency. We had no trouble with stand-up fights, but insurgents looked like farmers, out there planting rice. We had the best intent, but what we really did was disrupt their way of life."

Last June, Kean and the other Marines with him on the rooftop went to Washington, D.C., to see "Miss Saigon," the musical production based on the Vietnam War. The play, which begins previews here on Thursday, re-creates the conflict very well, he says, "particularly when you consider that many in the crew weren't even born when the war ended."

Last October Kean went back to Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, with a film crew making a documentary of the city's fall, to be shown later this year. It was Kean's first time back since that night on the embassy roof.

He says he never doubted the Marines would come back for them. "Personally, I always thought we'd be OK. But when I got to the ship, I realized: We really did almost get left behind."