However, as I was soon to discover, this thesis simply no longer applied to duty in the Nam. In the summer of 1972, American combat forces were no longer in the fray.
27. Saigon, Vietnam: July 1972
As the Eastertide offensive faded into but another footnote on Indochina’s long and troubled history, I arrived, again via World Airways, at Tan Son Nhut, the same airfield upon which I had landed ten years earlier when first setting foot on Vietnam’s soil.
We have come full circle, I thought to myself as we deplaned. In ‘62 we were all advisors, of one sort or another, and we all landed at Tan Son Nhut. Now, ten years later, we’re again all advisors, of one sort or another, entering the country at Tan Son Nhut. Cam Ranh must be a ghost town.
Although the war was over for most Americans serving in Vietnam, there were some advisors who were still very much in the thick of it, none more so than those attached to Vietnam’s only airborne division. By a fortuitous stroke of fate, coupled with some politicking and a bit of deviousness on my part, that’s where I was going! Or so I thought.
“I’d like to see the general!” I snapped, glaring at the lieutenant colonel, one of the general’s minions, as he sat behind his desk with a surprised look on his face.
“Whoa there, Major! What’s the problem? Hell, you just got here. Got a plum of an assignment, too.”
“The assignment is the problem, sir.”
All had gone well and according to plan the first two days after my arrival. AAG’s (Army Advisory Group’s) personnel section had confirmed my assignment to the airborne division’s advisory team and, after in-processing me, had sent me on down to the team’s rear detachment in Saigon. There, after meeting the team’s RDC, a captain, I was in-processed a bit further, drew my weapon and field gear, and was told to report to Tan Son Nhut at 0800 hours the following morning. I was to catch a flight north and join the team on the outskirts of Quang Tri.
At 0745 hours the next day I stood on the airfield’s flight line, rucksack at my feet and CAR-15 in hand. That was as close as I ever got to hearing a round fired in anger on my fourth and final tour in the Nam.
At that point a captain from AAG’s personnel section arrived and informed me that the group had a new commander, who had a new assignment philosophy, and that I was being sent to the National NCO Academy in Nha Trang. He had my orders in hand.
Well, we’ll just have to go and get this misunderstanding straightened out, I said to myself, catching a ride with the captain to AAG’s headquarters compound.
By the time I got there, after listening to the captain’s discourse on his new commander’s assignment philosophy, I was steaming. It was very much like reliving my encounter with Lieutenant Colonel Know five years before, but this time there was no Colonel Lich to turn to. I was on my way to Nha Trang.
28. Nha Trang, Vietnam
The National NCO Academy sat astride Highway One on the South China Sea’s coast. Earlier in the war, the academy’s primary task had been to school ARVN’s noncommissioned officer corps; however, at this juncture it was mainly involved in producing new lieutenants for an army that had been bled white in Giap’s Eastertide offensive.
Housed in a small oceanside villa, the U.S. advisory team consisted of four people—a colonel in command, myself, a captain, and one NCO. Our job was to advise and assist the academy’s commandant. In these waning days of America’s involvement in Indochina, that’s what we did—taught second lieutenants to fight a war that had become exclusively theirs.
Most of these young officers—those who survived would go on to become first lieutenants. Few, however, would be promoted to the rank of captain, because when that rank was due there would no longer be an army of the republic—nor would there be a republic.
By early October, rumors of war’s end ran rampant. On the twenty-sixth, rumor seemingly became fact when presidential advisor Henry Kissinger announced that “peace is at hand.” But Doctor Kissinger’s pronouncement was a bit premature. In Paris, North Vietnamese negotiators continued to quibble over the smallest of points at the peace talks.
The U.S. Air Force was finally, mercifully, unleashed on a strategic, no-holds-barred aerial offensive against North Vietnam. Referred to as Linebacker 11, or the Christmas bombings, it was a bombing campaign that the Air Force had pleaded for—and we who fought in the paddies had hoped for—since the war’s beginning.
And it worked. Just eleven days later our enemy called it quits.
We who remained found it ironic, and tragically sad, that what had eluded our negotiators throughout five fruitless years of “peace talks” while our fellow soldiers were dying—was finally brought about by an eleven-day bombing campaign, a campaign our country could have conducted with impunity at any point in the war.
With the signing of the Paris Accords, the United States had sixty days to get the remaining twenty-three thousand of us out of Vietnam.
In mid-February we closed the door on the team’s villa for the last time, bid farewell to the academy’s commandant and his staff, and hitched a ride on an ARVN Huey to Long Van. From there we’d catch a C-130 and fly south to Saigon and points beyond.
While waiting at Long Van for our C-130, I suddenly experienced an intense feeling of deja vu.
This is where it all started, at least for me. I first landed here ten years ago, nearly to the day! Across the strip there, the vacant and plainly deteriorating frame structures of the Fifth Special Forces Group’s headquarters still stand… appears the Viets are using what’s left of them for firewood. Can it be eight years since we processed through those buildings, heading for all our misadventures in a place called ARO? What had it all been about? A decade of my life, the best one, has passed, and I suddenly can’t seem to find purpose.
To hell with it! Like we used to say in the Cav, it ain’t no big thing.
Just get on the plane and go home.
29. Saigon, Vietnam: March 1973
On the eve of my departure from Saigon, I left one of the Army’s contract hotels on the outskirts of Tan Son Nhut’s main entrance and walked a bit.
I passed the villa in which—behind which—we youngsters of the seventy-six trombones” had spent our first night in the Nam so many years before. The massive cypress trees straddling its walled entrance had changed little; however, the villa looked much older, much smaller, and was in obvious need of paint.
Strolling on down the street, I stopped in one of the many bars that now dotted the area around the air base’s main gate and bought a Saigon tea for a completely disinterested young lady—a lady who knew the terms of the Accords—those that applied to her—far better than I did. All U.S. military personnel must be out of Vietnam by midnight on the twenty-ninth of March, an hour and date that were quickly approaching.
Our era had ended. We were no longer the saviors of her country or the providers of her welfare.
The following morning, thirty or so of us were bused to Tan Son Nhut for the last time. Out-processing was quick and efficient, and, after a shorter-than-usual wait, our flight’s departure was announced. This time, many civilian passengers were boarding with us.
Walking across the airport’s tarmac, I noted a North Vietnamese officer standing next to our aircraft, pencil in one hand and what I presumed to be the flight manifest in the other. He wore the all–too-familiar khaki uniform and pitched helmet, red star affixed thereto.