As NVA General Van Tien Dung, who was to lead the final cross-border assault to overrun South Vietnam, noted at a Politburo conference on January 8, 1975, ‘It was obvious that the United States…could hardly return….To fully exploit this great opportunity we had to conduct large-scale annihilating battles to destroy and disintegrate the enemy on a large scale.’ The groundwork for the final NVA blitzkreig had been laid.

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General Smith has detailed the consequences of that betrayal, as in March 1975 President Nguyen Van Thieu made the fateful decision to abandon the Central Highlands, and the whole South Vietnamese defense structure began to unravel. But not all of the ARVN collapsed. The 18th ARVN Infantry Division at Xuan Loc, some 40 miles northeast of Saigon, put up a valiant struggle.

From March 17, 1975, to April 5, 1975, the 18th ARVN Division held its ground, virtually destroying the 6th, 7th and 341st NVA divisions in the process. Only when the NVA brought in its 325th Division and also began moving its 10th and 304th divisions into place did the 18th ARVN Division finally give way. But it was too late, and by the last week in April NVA divisions were at the gates of Saigon. It was obvious to all that the end was at hand.

At the time the only open channel of communication between the United States and North Vietnam was through the FPJMT, which had been given diplomatic status by the Paris Accords. Regular FPJMT liaison flights between Saigon and Hanoi had been conducted since 1973.

Using out-of-country PACAF (Pacific Command Air Force) C-130 transports, the flights would include members of all four FPJMT delegations–the U.S., North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese and Viet Cong, officially the ‘Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam,’ or PRG. Just such a flight was scheduled for April 25, 1975, with the full knowledge that the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi was prepared to give its position on the U.S. withdrawal.

Having diplomatic status under the Paris Accords as the chief of the negotiations division of the U.S. delegation, I was ordered to make the trip, accompanied by my translator, Specialist 7 Garnett ‘Bill’ Bell (who after his retirement would remain active in POW/MIA affairs and for a time head the U.S. POW/MIA office in Hanoi).

A remarkably dedicated soldier, Bell had just returned from accompanying the bodies of his wife and children, along with his sole surviving daughter, to the United States. They had died in the crash of the C-5 ‘baby lift’ evacuation aircraft on April 3, 1975 (see the Personality department, P. 10), a crash that also took the life of Barbara Kavulia, the Negotiation Division’s civilian secretary. Although he had been told to remain in the States, Bell returned, for he knew he was our most qualified U.S. interpreter.

From start to finish the whole journey was a surreal, Kafkaesque affair. For starters, there were my negotiating instructions. The FPJMT had dual chains of command. One was through military channels through the DAO in Saigon and Pacific Command in Honolulu to Roger Shields, assistant secretary of defense for POW/MIA affairs in the Pentagon. The other was through diplomatic channels beginning with James Devine, the political/military officer in the embassy in Saigon. Since this was to be a diplomatic mission and I was a representative of the U.S. government, I sought out Devine to receive guidance on what terms the United States proposed.

But with then U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, who had lost a stepson in combat in Vietnam, on the edge of physical and emotional collapse and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Washington reportedly in a blue funk over his ‘betrayal’ by North Vietnam’s Le Duan, Devine was evidently as much in the dark as I was.

‘What are my negotiating instructions?’ I asked.

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