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1-003 U.S. Leaves Vietnam
Vol. 1- No. 3
1995
Lead: FLASH MARTIN TO SCOWCROFT. PLAN TO CLOSE MISSION AT ABOUT 0430 30 APRIL LOCAL TIME. DUE TO NECESSITY TO DESTROY COMMO GEAR, THIS IS LAST MESSAGE FROM EMBASSY SAIGON. Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts. Content: Ambassador Graham Martin had been at his post for twenty-one months. The nation he so faithfully served had been heavily involved in Vietnam since President Kennedy sent advisors in 1962. Billions of dollars, nearly 60,000 American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese casualties later, it had all come down to this: a national government disintegrating, a capital city surrounded by the tanks of North Vietnam, and a U.S. Ambassador destroying his effects in the wee hours of the morning. After dispatching the final message Martin, a native of Thomasville, North Carolina, left his office and, with most of the staff, made his way upstairs. They came out of the stairwell onto the roof at 4:40 AM. Shortly thereafter, a CH-46 helicopter emblazoned with the words "Lady Ace 09" hovered and then sank to the landing pad. The Ambassador, with the embassy flag, boarded the helicopter and headed out into the South China Sea to the awaiting armada of U.S ships. Back at the embassy, a detachment of ten Marines under Major Jim Kean had secured the landing zone on the embassy roof and was holding back the crowds of Vietnamese clambering to get any available transport out of the country. Suddenly, an arm broke through the glass window of the door to the roof. One of the Marines pulled the arm into the broken glass and it was drawn back with a shriek. Someone asked Kean if the fleet knew they were there, since radio contact had been broken, but he didn't know. The Marines waited, jerking arms into broken glass as minutes passed with agonizing slowness. Finally, a single helicopter with its escorts came out of the gloom, swooped down, and picked them up, as the United States left Vietnam and the hard, dark eastern sky began to soften with the dawn of April 30, 1975. The producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts. Resources Butler, David. The Fall of Saigon: Scenes from the Sudden End of a Long War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Copyright 1995 by Educational Broadcast, Inc.
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