Goodnight Saigon Read online

  “That you, Tommy-Guns?” Tingley called into the otherwise empty complex of offices and workrooms. He thought that perhaps the lance corporal who assisted him as clerk typist and van driver, Donald “Tommy-Guns” Tompkins, might have arrived early, something highly out of character.

  “In here, Tingley,” a familiar voice answered.

  “Skipper, you’re here awfully early today,” the corporal said, recognizing that the response came from his boss, Captain Jerry Shelton, a man who had risen through the enlisted ranks to staff sergeant and then had advanced to lieutenant when he received a battlefield commission in Vietnam. Now a major selectee, the mustang captain who served as the Joint Public Affairs Office’s operations officer and second in command, looked forward to pinning on gold oak leaves and entering field grade rank status. He had come a long way since growing up in Texas and working as a ranch cowboy until he joined the Marines as a boot private.

  “Busy Friday night,” Shelton said, pouring coffee for himself and a cup for the corporal too. “A Marine found murdered this morning, air winger from Futema. Someone slashed his throat and threw his body into the ocean. It washed up on the rocks near Torii Station. Naval Investigative Service says it looks like another dope killing.”

  “Lots of dope all over the place, Skipper. Smack, hash, Buddha, you name it. It’s everywhere,” Tingley said in a disgusted tone as he opened a briefcase and brought out a light green folder filled with the previous night’s message traffic and laid it on the captain’s desk.

  “I stopped off at the communications center on the way up from the barracks, sir,” Tingley said and then started laughing. “Last night, a Marine got his dick bitten nearly off at Camp Hanson.”

  “Come again?” Shelton said and laughed too.

  “Yes, sir,” Tingley answered, laughing more, now excited to tell the captain the entire ugly story.

  The corporal had read the messages while at the communications center, including the Serious Incident Reports issued by each of the regiments and camps. At the top of the SIR list, a Marine nearly losing his penis to a jealous Okinawan bar girl in Kin Village, outside Camp Hanson.

  “This turd from Fourth Marines,” Tingley began, relaxing his butt across the corner of the captain’s desk, reclining while casually sipping his coffee as he unwound the sordid tale, “he’s taking his last night on liberty before he goes home. So he decides to finally tell his Okinawan girlfriend that he won’t be seeing her anymore. She goes nuts in the bar where she works, but then seems to calm down. She makes an evening of it with the guy, soaking him for all the drinks he will buy.

  “Well, sometime after midnight, when business is just about done, this girl talks the dumb shit into going home with her. Right off the bat, at her place, she goes down on the guy, to give him a fond-farewell blowjob.

  “The guy is moving and grooving to it, you know, feeling the pleasure, and suddenly the girl clamps down on his rod. She does her best to bite it off.

  “He comes undone, no doubt. Eventually, he manages to get what’s left of his crank out of her mouth, but not until she had chewed all the way through it. His schlong is hanging only by a shred of skin on one side.

  “Of course, he is bleeding like a stuck pig. So he panics and takes off running for the barracks. He hits the main gate at Camp Hanson, and by this time he nearly passes out from blood loss. Numbnuts tells the MPs that he got his dick caught in his zipper.

  “The Ps know it’s a lie right off because the asshole is wearing button-up Levis!”

  Both Marines laugh so hard that tears stream from their eyes.

  “In all seriousness, though, Skipper,” Tingley added, catching his breath, “it was a pretty bad incident, and the Marine had to be taken to Kui Hospital. They sewed his tool back on, but who knows how the guy will be.”

  “Jim Lee, at Stars and Stripes, will love that one,” Shelton said, still laughing. “It should be interesting to see how he manages to write it so that they will publish it.”

  “No way, Skipper,” Tingley retorted and laughed. “They’ll never put anything like that in the paper.”

  “Probably not,” Shelton said with amusement. “But it won’t be because Jim doesn’t try. What else you have?”

  “Marine in the barracks, also at Camp Hanson, damned near bought the farm after chugalugging a quart of vodka,” Tingley said, pointing to the report. “His buddies found him in the rack, on his back, choking to death on his own vomit. This dumb shit, on a fifty-dollar bet, downed the whole quart in one long pull and then laid down. After a while, his buddies thought they better check on him. He was damned near dead. They managed to get him to the battalion aid station in time. He’ll be headed for alcohol rehab at Long Beach, I imagine.”

  Captain Shelton thumbed through the stack of reports and said, “What about intel reps?”

  “Sir,” Tingley said in a low voice, “the confidential messages are there, in the classified folders. Two secret messages too. Information reports to the Commandant of the Marine Corps distribution list. Both pertain to the same thing. News from Vietnam.”

  The captain refilled his cup with coffee.

  “Want more?” he asked Tingley.

  “Sure, sir,” the corporal said and walked to the coffee pot with his mug.

  “So what’s the scoop from Vietnam?” Shelton asked.

  “Looks bad, Skipper,” Tingley said. “One of the messages originated from the defense attaché in Saigon and the other from the Marine liaison officer in Da Nang.

  “The NVA have crossed the border and attacked some little ville called Don Luan. They basically invaded South Vietnam, openly violating the Paris Peace Accords, like they’re thumbing their noses at us. The messages say the assault was launched by the 301st NVA Corps made up of their Third and Seventh NVA divisions, some tank battalions,artillery, antiaircraft, and service support elements. Looks like a heavily manned and well-equipped invasion. Lots more detail in the messages.”

  “Of course, they’re thumbing their noses at us,” the captain said. “They know we won’t do anything.

  “Meanwhile, the big story in Stars and Stripes is how the ARVN kicked ass on the NVA, finally knocking them off Mo Tau Mountain on Wednesday, relieving the death grip from the Communist artillery positions that the NVA had used to shut down Phu Bai Airfield. I wonder how much of the NVA’s incursion into South Vietnam, on Friday the thirteenth of all days, will make the papers?”

  “You know the press, sir,” Tingley answered. “If they report it at all, they will downplay it, of course. They damned sure don’t want to say anything about the North Vietnamese violating the Paris Peace Accords.”

  “Motherfucking, cock-sucking, Communist whore bastard North Vietnamese!” Staff Sergeant Joe Carr bellowed as he stormed into the office complex, not knowing who, if anyone other than Corporal Tingley, waited inside.

  “Joe!” Captain Shelton shouted from his office to the outer rooms where the staff sergeant had begun slamming furniture against the walls.

  “Sir!” Carr responded.

  “I take it that you have heard the news!” Shelton called to him.

  “If you mean the fucking NVA have just reinvaded South Vietnam, and nobody in fucking Congress, the White House, or the whole fucking country gives a rat shit about it, then yes, sir, I have heard the news,” the staff sergeant answered.

  Carr had spent two tours in Vietnam as an infantry Marine and had served a tour on the recruit training field as a drill instructor, training Marines to fight in Vietnam. Light complected and blond haired, his emotions regarding what he held as America’s long-standing obligation to the Vietnamese people showed itself in a bright red glow of heated passion on his face and balding head. He was a violently expressive man.

  On Carr’s heels, several other Vietnam War veteran Marines filtered into the office, each expressing similar sentiments about what the North Vietnamese Communists had done, but none quite as colorfully vocal as Joe Carr.

  “No wor
d on when we mount out, sir?” Carr asked the captain. “There is no way that we can just sit by and let those Communist cock-suckers waltz in and take over.”

  “Nothing so far,” Shelton responded.

  “Fucking III MAF has seen this coming,” Carr said. “Nobody else wants to listen to them, but the division and the wing have been cranking everything up since last summer, getting ready to go back to war.

  “Word I have is that the NVA has more men and weaponry positioned in South Vietnam now than when we were fighting the war. The day Kissinger locked us into that Paris bullshit peace-talks crap, the NVA started shipping all their shit and people south.

  “I got friends at III MAF G-2, and they know the scoop, Captain. Believe me.

  “They say the NVA has all kinds of SA-2 and SA-7 surface-to-air missiles, a whole network of radar air defenses, antiair artillery, plus a world of ground shit too spread all over I Corps and the Central Highlands, and some of it even sitting damned near in Da Nang.

  “The Commies have 185,000 fresh combat-line troops and more than 107,000 support personnel standing at the ready in South Vietnam too. That’s in addition to about 50,000 Viet Cong. The spooks tell me that the NVA even laid a 5,000 kilometer oil pipeline along the western border, plus built a whole new highway for their 600-and-some-odd new Russian T-54 tanks and all their other self-propelled artillery, ammo trucks, and heavy equipment to drive south. Assholes in DC have known this for months too, and they do nothing and say nothing. They just keep cutting aid to South Vietnam.”

  Captain Shelton knew that Joe Carr was correct in what he had just said. He had heard the same information repeated at the III MAF operations briefings during the past several months. In response, the Marine division and aircraft wing had heightened their training and had even begun putting armor plating in the bellies of some of the larger transport helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Several times weekly, Marines answered reaction drills, in which they reported to Kadina Air Base and Futima Marine Corps Air Station to mount out to South Vietnam at a moment’s notice.

  Several units from the Fourth and Ninth Marine regiments, Third Reconnaissance Battalion, and other Fleet Marine Force service and support elements operated at high alert. They stood ready to further reinforce the Thirty-first, Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth Marine Amphibiousunits and their reinforcements, which made up the Ninth Marine Amphibious Brigade, afloat on ships near the Philippines. Commanded by Brigadier General Richard E. Carey, the brigade had poised itself where it could react at a moment’s notice to troubles that now appeared in Cambodia as well as South Vietnam.

  “Joe,” Shelton said in a calm voice, “the war is over. They gave it away. It’s just a matter of time, so get used to it. Most of our planning now is evacuation. I would be very surprised if we landed any combat forces except to evacuate people.”

  Shelton knew the score, not just from what he had seen the operations planners doing and from what III MAF briefing officers had laid on the table. He knew it from simple political savvy. Congress would not stand for anything more in Vietnam except an evacuation.

  “Motherfuckers!” Joe Carr grumbled, pouring himself a cup of coffee and lighting a cigarette.

  “Gunny Thurman,” Shelton called to the operations chief.

  Gunnery Sergeant Russ Thurman joined the captain, and the two men walked outside to talk privately.

  “From what I understand, this thing could get really bad very soon,” Shelton told Thurman.

  “I know,” Thurman said. “I’ve sat in on briefings at Camp Courtney. They say if we land forces anywhere north of Vung Tao, the first battalion to hit the beach will virtually get wiped out—probably suffer a 90 percent casualty rate. That’s if the Communists turn this into a full-scale offensive and we go back to fight.”

  “It won’t happen,” Shelton said. “All the plans I’ve seen call for evacuation programs. Anything involving offensive operations is purely for contingency purposes and in support of ultimate evacuation.”

  Both men stood quietly, sipping coffee and watching Marines scurry up the hill, reporting to their various duty sections for the standard half-day Saturday work schedule.

  “You need to start thinking about people we can assign to cover this thing,” Shelton said. “Whatever happens, I want you to deploy as team leader.”

  OUTSIDE THE WHITE House, the sun shone brightly, giving an illusion of warmth on the South Lawn. Meanwhile, cold, dry air gripped Washington, DC, on this sixth day of January 1975.

  President Gerald R. Ford sat quietly at his desk in the Oval Office, taking a few moments to read situation reports sent by CIA Station Chief Thomas Polgar and the defense attaché in South Vietnam, Major General Homer D. Smith, USA. He wanted to have his thoughts collected regarding the current developments in South Vietnam before he listened to briefings on the situation from his national security staff during a meeting with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, and CIA Director William Colby.

  With the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), dissolved and essentially transformed into the Defense Attaché Office. It operated under the umbrella of the United States Embassy, much like the CIA station did, but limited any embassy operational influence or oversight to only such matters as public affairs and media information. Conducting business autonomously from the embassy, like its predecessor, MACV, the DAO remained an operational and reporting element of the Department of Defense, just as the CIA station was an operational and reporting element of the Central Intelligence Agency, with the embassy only handling its public information and news releases.

  General Smith had replaced Major General John E. Murray, USA, in the fall of 1973, who had six months earlier begun formulating evacuation plans for South Vietnam. CIA Station Chief Polgar had assumed his post in Saigon in late 1972 when Henry Kissinger, then national security advisor and lead negotiator in Paris, finalized the peace accords with Communist Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho.

  As soon as the treaty was signed, the DAO and other experienced American strategic experts initiated the planning for the evacuation of South Vietnam, and not its defense, as the primary contingency. (If secondary contingencies that involved returning American forces to ground combat or similar defensive strategies even existed, no one has to this day ever taken credit for such planning, nor have they ever acknowledged that such plans existed. Thus one conclusion appears very clear: When Dr. Kissinger finally negotiated America out of Vietnam, the United States virtually conceded victory to the Communists and merely planned the means of getting the last Americans out of the country before the nation finally fell.)

  Despite all of Kissinger’s hopes in Paris, with the new year came the clear indication that the North Vietnamese had launched in earnest a major campaign. It had become obvious that the Communists had used the Paris Accords merely as a means to get the Americans out of their way so that they could mass their forces for a final thrust into the heart of South Vietnam and claim victory.

  In a matter of only three weeks, the NVA had already driven their offensive to the city of Phuoc Long, crushing the ARVN forces that stood in their way.

  Today’s message from General Smith, who reported directly to Secretary of Defense Schlesinger, announced that North Vietnamese forces had captured the Song Be Airfield. With control of the airfield, the NVA culminated their offensive and now owned the entire Phuoc Long Province.

  In the twenty-four days since their invasion strike began at Don Luan, the NVA had also captured Duc Phong, Bo Duc, and Bunard Fire Support Base. They had employed a strategy of infiltrating their forces inside the protective perimeters that defended the critical provincial villages and compounds. They commenced the primary thrust of their attacks from within the heart of each stronghold. The South Vietnamese defenses literally shattered in confusion and chaos.

  Developed from the concept of airborne assaults used by American forces in the invasion of
Normandy in World War II, the Communists called this strategy The Blooming Lotus, since the attack opened from the center like a blossoming flower. The Blooming Lotus of the North Vietnamese Army’s 301st Corps had successfully taken, intact, the entire Phuoc Long Province. This was the first time since 1954 that a South Vietnamese province had fallen to the Communists.

  Already in his heart, President Ford knew that South Vietnam’s future rested in the hands of its leaders and the resolve of its fighting forces. No matter what he might present to Congress, he knew that they would not allow any intervention, especially with American ground forces.

  From General Smith’s report, and the success that the Communists enjoyed today, President Ford knew that the end of the war finally made its way to the fore. It was now simply a matter of time.

  “YOUR CONGRESS HAS turned its back on South Vietnam. What makes you think that President Ford will go against their wishes and stop the Communists’ attack?” South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu said, shaking his head as he spoke to the United States ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham A. Martin. “Their intentions are perfectly clear. Certainly, Hanoi knows this, or they would not have attacked us so boldly.

  “In two years, the Congress has cut our aid from nearly $2.5 billion to a fourth as much, less than $700 million. Next they will cut our aid to nothing and let the wolves have us. Furthermore, I know of General Murray’s and General Smith’s evacuation plans, not attack plans. There are no plans for any defensive operations. So how can you sit there and tell me otherwise?”

  Ambassador Martin stood in Thieu’s plush office, towering over South Vietnam’s president, his face long and his complexion matching his gray hair. “I cannot confirm nor deny what plans the military may have prepared at this point in time,” he said. “Clearly, they would not be doing their jobs if they did not have a sound evacuation contingency established. However, I assure you, I give you my sacred word, the United States will not allow Saigon to fall.”