Last Men Out: The True Story of America's Heroic Final Hours in Vietnam by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin

Author:Bob Drury & Tom Clavin [Drury, Bob & Clavin, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Non-Fiction, War & Military, Vietnam War, United States
ISBN: 9781439161029
Google: RfeK1VQZ-2MC
Amazon: B0043RSJKY
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2011-05-02T23:00:00+00:00

Four

The first wave of Fleet Marines disembarked at the DAO from six CH-53s at six minutes past 3 P.M. The troops—the first of four rifle companies and an 81-millimeter mortar platoon, over 800 men in total—were met by an angry General Carey, who demanded to know what had taken the helicopters so long. He was told by a platoon commander that there had been a mix-up between the Marine and Air Force flight controllers. For the Marines, the designated launch hour, or L-Hour, signified the time they would reach the landing zone. To the Air Force, it meant the time they were wheels up from the fleet. Carey’s already mottled face turned from red to crimson as he fanned out the Marines to preassigned sectors. They wasted no time establishing a security zone to protect the nearly 400 Americans and over 4,000 Vietnamese and third-country nationals already being formed into sticks, units of anywhere from twenty-five to fifty evacuees, depending on the aircraft’s size and power.

Despite the initial delay in the helicopter arrivals, the evacuation was soon proceeding smoothly. The choppers were guided to the compound’s designated landing zones by Marine air traffic controllers on the ground waving signal paddles of various colors that allowed them to coordinate with descending pilots. There were three pickup points: in the parking lot, on the baseball field, and on the tennis courts. When the helicopters touched down, the sticks of evacuees were escorted from the staging areas to the flight ramps. Families huddled together, locking arms, afraid of being separated. Bending beneath the deafening rotor blades before trundling up the tailgates, they looked as if they were bowing to the rescue Birds.

“No baggage! No baggage!” the Marines hollered over and again as piles of suitcases, duffel bags, and rucksacks began to grow into a small range of hills.

As the choppers filled, however, General Carey and Colonel Gray became alarmed by reports of the increasing number of sullen ARVN troops, airborne and regular army, roaming the edges of the DAO compound watching their window of escape rapidly closing. The two Marine officers knew—and knew that the ARVNs knew—that when the NVA and VC entered the city in full force, uniformed South Vietnamese soldiers would be their first targets. At one point, a skirmish erupted when a small unit of ARVN charged the Marine perimeter, shooting wildly. The Fleet Marines drove them back by firing over the heads and took no casualties.

On another occasion, four South Vietnamese soldiers spotted one of the embassy MSGs, Sergeant Ted Murray, patrolling a ditch that ran parallel to the chain-link fence that separated the American compound from the airport. Armed and agitated, they approached Murray and began yelling through the fence in English.

“American coward!”

“Why are you abandoning us?”

“What happened to your promises?”

Murray did not dare raise his M-16 rifle, even when one of the ARVNs produced a pair of wire cutters and began severing the chain links. He was at wit’s end—he agreed with everything they said—until two more MSGs and a half-dozen Fleet Marines appeared from behind a barracks building.

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