http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1468990,00.html Tanks, bombs and bicycles: how America was humbled
Three decades after the North Vietnamese rolled into Saigon, Colin Smith, who was there for The Observer, recalls the tumultuous last days of the war in south east Asia and the chaos of the evacuation
Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer
Thirty years ago, I arrived at the flattened gates of what was then the presidential palace in Saigon about 10 minutes after one of the North Vietnamese army's Russian T-54 tanks had gone through them without the formality of lifting the latch. Soldiers of the southern Army of the Republic of Vietnam - always referred to as ARVN - were gathered on the lawns tearing off their uniforms like actors doing a fast costume change. Once they had surrendered their weapons, their captors told them they were free to go.
Separated from their men, five worried-looking officers, one a colonel, were sitting on the raised kerb around the gravelled drive. They looked up at me as I walked by, then down at their feet. Remembering all the little acts of kindness shown to me in previous weeks by ARVN soldiers at various fronts around the besieged capital and the patience they displayed at all our questions, I felt ashamed that I dared not offer them as much as a cigarette. A teenage member of the North Vietnamese army (NVA) waved me back towards the broken gates with his new-looking Kalashnikov rifle and I was glad to go, consoling myself with the thought that probably the last thing the defeated troops needed was acknowledgment from a Westerner...
...The South Vietnamese republic was shrinking fast. After Hué fell, we flew to Da Nang. A mini-Dunkirk had occurred at the estuary of Hué's Perfume river, though mercifully without any determined attempt to impede flight. Vehicles and artillery had been abandoned and ARVN troops had waded out to a flotilla of small boats and a few landing craft. Some had their families with them, both young and old. Barefoot soldiers came ashore at Da Nang with muddy M-16 rifles under one arm and immaculate small children under the other. 'They don't know what they are running from or how close the enemy is,' complained a bewildered Indian shopkeeper who had been swept up by this tide. 'They just run.' Then Da Nang's resident CIA man, officially its US consul, called a press conference at which he informed us that the North Vietnamese had already cut all roads south from the city and that Da Nang was going to be next. It was difficult to take him seriously - the place was packed with armed troops; all the evacuees from Hué seemed to have brought their rifles with them, and often mortars and heavy machine-guns. But appearances were deceptive. The troops were disorganised, lacked leadership and, above all, pined for American air support...
...Four million Vietnamese were killed between 1959 and 1975 in what the Vietnamese increasingly regard as a civil war. Most of us who remained in the city whose name had now been changed by the victors from Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City were convinced that we had witnessed a historical watershed that ranked with the fall of Constantinople. Surely 30 April, 1975, would always be remembered as the beginning of the decline of the United States as a great power. The idea that the victor would not get the spoils seemed ludicrous.
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