The Evacuation of Saigon, 1975

From Al Santoli, editor. Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It. New York: Random House, 1981. 251-255.

Stephen Klinkhammer
Navy Hospital Corpsman
Aircraft Carrier USS Midway

The Evacuation of Saigon, the whole thing, was called Operation New Wind or Fresh Wind or Fresh Breeze or something like that. . . .

We were real close to shore at that time, right off Saigon. We heard that we were taking on a whole bunch of civilians. We would be flying in and out with refugees, with American personnel, with reporters. The Tan Son Nhut airport was being bombed with big rockets. You could see the explosions from the sea. We were flying in and taking on refugees, and they were flying out whatever they could. With the refugees there were worms, women going into labor, TB and wounded lying on the choppers because there were a lot of shells coming in. There were a couple of dead or dying on the chopper whom we couldn't save. We were landing in Tan Son Nhut. That was our staging point, where everybody was loading.

There were people coming out in boats, half-sinking boats. There were people who had their own airplanes who we were flying out. There were all these choppers we had left there; they were using these to fly out, the Vietnamese [were]. The [carrier's] flight deck was so full of choppers that we had the push them overboard because there was no room, we couldn't get our own choppers in. . . . It was total chaos. The Purple Heart Trail, the road that came into Saigon from the paddies west of the city, was so jammed, from the air I could see columns of people that were at least twenty miles long. A lot of children crying. Some had clothes they picked off dead bodies. Most were barefoot. There were oxcarts and they were hauling what they had. There were wounded men on both sides of the road with battle dressings on. The NVA [North Vietnamese Army] was lobbing these rockets all over the place, they were wiping out civilians. . . . They were dropping the rockets right into the crowds of fleeing people. . . . Saigon was the last stand, the capital, where the American embassy was.

A lot of American Marines were activated and had put up a perimeter guard around Tan Son Nhut. The NVA was still lobbing these rockets. In fact, when I took off we were also flying out from the American embassy--a lot of people had been told to go there instead of Tan Son Nhut. It was really a mess. These rockets are lobbing in and a C-130 took off full of people going out to one of the aircraft carriers and it was blown out of the sky. . . that was all over the runway. There were corpses, there were burned-out tanks that people had used to come in, there were pieces of bodies lying in the fields and on the streets. It was just bananas, total chaos. People screaming, "I want a place on this chopper!" and not being able to communicate because of the language barrier and because they would not listen.

They were raiding the American Exchange. The image I have is this one guy holding up one of those ten-packs of Kellogg's cereal and he's waving it. They were throwing American money up in the air.

We ended up with three thousand civilians aboard the Midway. We had taken all of our squadrons off [the carrier] because they had been there for offensive purposes. The civilians all stayed where the squadrons used to be. There were people sleeping on the floors, all over. Of course, they didn't know what a bathroom was. They were packed in, I'll tell you that. So we'd all take turns walking duty and if someone was puking or if someone had diarrhea or worms, we'd treat that.

On April 30 Saigon fell. South Vietnam had fallen. The Vice-President, Ky, flew out to the Midway in his own Cesna. Ky had with him an immense amount of gold bars. A lot of these people, some of the higher ups. . . had with them a lot of American money. We confiscated everything from civilians when they came on board. There were pounds and pounds of pure heroin, pounds and pounds of nice marijuana, which I really wanted to sample. People had little cherry-bomb grenades. We picked up guns. A lot of canned fish had to be tossed out. A lot of fever, they had a lot of malaria. So we had these three thousand people packed in there. That was the best we could do. . . . There were dead bodies we were bagging and bagging. There were still people fleeing Saigon in small boats.

The Vietnamese were scared. I have to put myself in their place--leaving my home, not being sure where I'm going to go, what's going to happen to me. They were very calm, almost in shock. We fed them and had interpreters tell them what to do, and I think the interpreters helped a lot. We had gunnery sergeants, old Marines, who spoke the language. I knew enough to get by, enough to say, "What's wrong with you?" or "I need this" or "I need that." They were basically very calm, sleeping on the hangar deck. They were treated very nice. They were in, I guess you could call it shock--just a panic, the intensity of the five--or ten-day span there. When I started to come down, I know how I felt: "Holy fuck, what just happened?" The adrenaline runs for so long, then it all stops. The war's ending cut you off just like that. You say okay, but the adrenaline is still running.