PEOPLE

Landfall
front, killing the nightwatch. They were not dangerws unless
you were unlucky enough to haw one land close, but the explosions
kgan to make for slccplm nights. Western embassies began to pull
out. '
For rhe fint time American diplomats began to talk openly abour
the possibility of an emergency evacuation - 'a bugout' - and the
western press corps was let in on the contingency plans. Each of the
main hotels was given a met rendezvous point, where gumb would
be picked up by buses and taken to the airport. A coded signal for
the departure was to be broadmt over the Amerian form radio.
A disc jockey would say 'ft'~ 105 outside and the temperature is
rising'. This wwld be followed by Bing Cro5by singing 'I'm dteaming
of a White Chrism:
The Amerhns, it aiatrncd, were going out not with a bang but
a whimper. There was some constanation among the Japanese cormpondent~
who hnd never heard Cmby's famous song. Floor wardens
were appointed in the hotels to ensure that m sleeping wlieague
was left behind should the evacuation ormr, as seemed likely,
in the early hours. Everyone was sworn to secrecy, othwwisc the
pick-up points wwld be overrun by panic-stricken Viemamese. It
was the worst-kept secrct in town. Smn even the shwshinc boys
m d the Continental Palaa were whistling 'White Christmas:
There was a nimour that the Chincse wcre wing to persuade rhe
politburo in Hanoi not to mpture Seigon kcause they were worried
tht North Viername might iry to take over the whole of Indo-
Chh, including Cambodia, It was dismissed 8s the kind of last
seaw tu which the US ambassador, Graham Martin, was clinging.
For a while, Jean-Mdt Merillon, the French ambasador, also
bclieved in a negotiated settlement that might stop just short of
outright surrender. He was said to !x looking for a Victnamcae
Pttain.
The most bizme raidents of Saigon were the hundred or so
North Vietnamese and Vietcong delegates of the joint military commission
that came out of the 1973 Faris peace agreement, who had
been living at a former US marines' barracks at the airport ever since,
They remainrd in their compound throughout the offensive, Only
the Ameriwns, it was thought, had prevented the South Vietnrnlesr
from making very short work d them.
Rocks and hells began to fall on Tan Son Nhut despite North
Vietnamese assurances that they would not interfere with the American
evacuation, and two US marines became the last American servicemen
to be killed in Viemam, An old 'flying boxcar' which was
machine-gunning communist troops on the edge of the airfield took
a hit and lurched about the sky like a falling leaf until it crashed
in Rarnts. One of the 'baby lift' planes taking Vietnamese orphans
to the United States developed a mechanical failure and came down
in some swampy land at the edge of the aitfield shonly after talre-ofl.
Helicopters came back from the scent with pthctic little bundles
wrapped in grcen plastic body bsp,
A tailor reported that he was getting a lot of orders for red, yellow
and blue cloth - the colours of the Vietcong flag (the North Vietnamese
flag was a yellow star on a red background), In the classified
columns of the Saigon PPsf the list of Vietnamese women wishing
tu marry foreignen grew longer: 'Guarantee no vwble if something
happen later'. Brink, the US government hostelry for Ameriean
contractors, where the waitresses wore mini-skirts and white ankle
rxks just like home, closed down. The bar girls in lh Do Street
began to ask: 'You think VC like bang bang'?
In the early hours of 30 April the US marines were still keeping
the crowd at bay outside the US embassy. Frantic Viemnmese, many
of them waving legitimate chits entitling them to evacuation, were
being beaten back with rifle buns and fists. Some of them had been
thcre for the last twenty-four hours watching the Air America and
marine helicoptcn ferry the lucky ones out to the Sixth Fleet. Marines
helped Westerners over the embassy wall, stomping on the
fingen of Vietnamese who tried to climb after them. A woman who
claimed to have worked for the Americans for ten years told a Chicog0
DaiIy Neeus reporter just before he was pulled over thar she was
going home to kill herself. The evacuation rapidly became a
shambles as mobs gathered around the secret pick-up points. The
CIA was unable to rexue hundreds of its Vietnamese agents. As the
marine rearguard withdrew to the roof and their getaway helicopter,
they dropped temr-ga grenades down the lift shafts, the smell of
which lingered in the looted building for days afterwards,
Later thar day thc aBc reported that m vast flotilla of Vietnamese
small craft crammed with refugees had followed the Sixth Fleet out