With the help of a local missionary, Reverend Tom Stebbins, who spoke Vietnamese, I circulated among the crowd in the CRA compound, assuring them that all would be eventually evacuated. Meanwhile a loading zone for the larger Marine CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters was laid out in the embassy courtyard. Even with two landing zones operating simultaneously, the evacuation began slowly and sporadically, for the main evacuation point at Tan Son Nhut had priority. By midnight some 1,800 people had been evacuated from the embassy, but then the helicopter flow came to a temporary halt as the choppers refueled aboard ship after completing the DAO evacuation. Panic began to spread among the evacuees still in the CRA compound.

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The Marine guards securing the gate between the CRA compound and the embassy courtyard were becoming hard pressed. Captain Herrington came to their rescue, entering the CRA compound to restore order, followed by myself and Sergeant Herron. ‘Khong ai se bi bo lai!’ Herrington said. ‘No one will be left behind!’

Over and over again he reassured them, ‘I’m in here with you, and I’ll be on the last helicopter. They will not leave me behind. No one is abandoning you. In a little while the helicopters will begin arriving again.’ Finally the panic subsided. As soon as it did, we moved the 1,100 remaining evacuees from the CRA compound through the gate and onto the roof of the firehouse, where they could see what was going on.

At about 2 a.m. on April 30, the helicopter flow resumed. After forcing them to abandon their luggage, we found we could put 90 Vietnamese on board the CH-53s. At 4:15 a.m. Colonel Madison informed Wolfgang Lehmann that only six lifts remained to complete the evacuation. Lehmann told him no more helicopters would be coming. But Colonel Madison would have none of it. We had given our word.

Madison and his men would be on the final lift after all the evacuees under our care had been flown to safety. Lehmann relented and said the helicopters would be provided. That message was later reaffirmed by Brunson McKinley, the ambassador’s personal assistant. But McKinley was lying. Even as he reassured us, he knew the lift had been canceled, and he soon fled, along with the ambassador and Lehmann, his DCM.

It was the only time in my 38-year military career that I had been lied to on an operational matter. For a military officer such an act would be unthinkable. But the State Department obviously had different standards, and McKinley later became a high-ranking officer at State in charge of refugee affairs.

In spite of our assurances that we would not abandon them and that we would be the last to go, Colonel Madison had no choice but to do just that. He gave the terrible order for his team to withdraw. When we arrived at the fleet, Madison berated the helicopter squadron commander for his perfidy. But he, too, was appalled. Everyone believed they were dealing with a bottomless pit, and no one realized they were but six lifts from success.

The epitaph for the U.S. involvement in Indochina had been given earlier that month before the fall of Phnom Penh in neighboring Cambodia. Just days before his execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian statesman Sirak Mitak penned a final note to the U.S. ambassador refusing his offer of evacuation.

‘I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty….You leave and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.

‘But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we all are born and must die one day. I have only committed this mistake in believing in you, the Americans.’

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