Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is retired US Marine Corps Colonel Anthony Tony Wood.
Speaker 1: Colonel Wood spent thirty four years in uniform and secretly
Speaker 1: led an effort to plan for and execute the evacuation
Speaker 1: of Saigon in nineteen seventy five. April thirtieth, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: marks fifty years since the fall of Saigon. It's a
Speaker 1: painful day triggered by the North Vietnamese violating the Paris
Speaker 1: Peace Accords, invading South Vietnam, and eventually overrunning the South
Speaker 1: Vietnamese capital. Today, Colonel Wood will walk us through all
Speaker 1: of the planning, the many obstacles they've faced while planning,
Speaker 1: and the final frantic days and hours in Saigon. Tony
Speaker 1: Wood was born in nineteen forty five and grew up
Speaker 1: a Marine Corps brat as his dad served in the Corps. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: a dust up with his father led to Wood's decision
Speaker 1: to become a Marine as well.
Speaker 2: Well. I enlisted in the Marine Corps after a fight
Speaker 2: with my father in the summer of nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: and I stayed in the reserves and went back to
Speaker 2: school and then the war heated up Vietnam and I
Speaker 2: thought I would do my thing, and the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: decided to commission me. So I went from sergeant to
Speaker 2: second lieutenant and went off to Vietnam, and one thing
Speaker 2: led to another after that. Thirty four years later I retired.
Speaker 1: Did your father, who was the Marine not want you
Speaker 1: to join the Corps?
Speaker 2: I don't know what his real attitude was on it,
Speaker 2: but it was a good thing that we had. That
Speaker 2: we became very close later, but it was time.
Speaker 1: To break loose now. When you were deployed to Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Your first tour began in nineteen sixty eight as a
Speaker 1: platoon commander.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, I was an infantry officer, but parachute qualified,
Speaker 2: and I was assigned an armored platoon tanks and amtraks
Speaker 2: and some howitzers mounted on amtraks with the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: I mean, with the Rock Marine Corps Republic of Korea
Speaker 2: Marine Corps Blue Dragon Brigade. And it was a very
Speaker 2: interesting tour and we got in a lot of combat
Speaker 2: with them, supporting the Rocks against the NVA south of
Speaker 2: Danang and near Hooyan, Vietnam.
Speaker 1: And obviously your deployment nineteen sixty eight. That's a very
Speaker 1: sensitive time in the warrior, right after the.
Speaker 2: Time was after Ted in sixty eight sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Right, And so what was the attitude, the mood, the
Speaker 1: urgency at the time that you deployed.
Speaker 2: Well, Ted is vastly misinterpreted. And I arrived in Vietnam
Speaker 2: basically the US forces had cleaned out the enemy in
Speaker 2: tent because what happened, of course, was that the North
Speaker 2: Vietnamese encouraged the Viet Cong to rise. The Viet Cong
Speaker 2: rose and became very visible, and most of them were killed.
Speaker 2: It was interpreted very differently back in the United States.
Speaker 2: It was very hard to understand that when you were
Speaker 2: over there or explain it to the young Marines. But
Speaker 2: so we were still very well engaged all over the
Speaker 2: country in nineteen sixty nine, and I came back to
Speaker 2: Hawaii to the first Marine Brigade from there when I
Speaker 2: finished that tour.
Speaker 1: Talk about your interaction both with the Dragon Brigade and
Speaker 1: as a platoon commander. What type of combat did you
Speaker 1: see at that point.
Speaker 2: Well, we were both mounted and dismounted. Mounted times. I
Speaker 2: usually broke the platoon into two sections. Let the gunny,
Speaker 2: the platoon sergeant take one out. I took the other
Speaker 2: one out to support at the Korean Marine Corps in
Speaker 2: their operations, we had six tanks, ten troop carrying amphibious
Speaker 2: tractors amtraks, and six tractors that really didn't move because
Speaker 2: we couldn't get any parts for them that had Howitzer's
Speaker 2: assigned on them, So they were kind of a stationary
Speaker 2: artillery battery, which of course I had no idea how
Speaker 2: to employ, so I had to learn that in a
Speaker 2: hurry too. Nor did I know anything about tanks or amtraks,
Speaker 2: so I had to learn a lot there. You got
Speaker 2: to wonder sometimes how you get assigned to these duties. Anyway,
Speaker 2: it was it was a very very exciting tour during
Speaker 2: which I learned a great deal.
Speaker 1: How quickly did you learn the things he had?
Speaker 2: Probably not quickly enough, but we did well, And I
Speaker 2: guess I did well largely because of patients on the
Speaker 2: part of staff NCOs and some very good n CEOs,
Speaker 2: and I I had some very good training from the
Speaker 2: Marine Corps before I went over there.
Speaker 1: How would you describe the quality of soldiering on? First
Speaker 1: of all, on our side of the menu, that you led.
Speaker 2: They were superb. They were absolutely superb. Despite Jane Fonda
Speaker 2: and some of the others. They were great. And the
Speaker 2: casualties were pretty heavy in that war, but yeah, they
Speaker 2: were great. Taught me how to cook rice, among other skills.
Speaker 1: And what did you notice about the enemy?
Speaker 2: They were also very The North Vietnamese Army, the NVA
Speaker 2: as we call them, as who we were fighting. The
Speaker 2: viet Cong had been eliminated basically in tent but the
Speaker 2: NVA was another story. They were very They were very,
Speaker 2: very good, and they were artists with tunnels. I remember
Speaker 2: once one tunnel was eight stories deep to the ground,
Speaker 2: with meeting rooms in a hospital and all kinds of
Speaker 2: other things remarkable. And their sappers were also amazing. Sappers
Speaker 2: were highly trained, usually very small guys who had slipped
Speaker 2: through the wire and bullholes and try to penetrate your perimeters.
Speaker 2: They were very They were a respected enemy. The area
Speaker 2: had also mines were a problem. The area had been
Speaker 2: mined in the thirties by the Vietmen in their fight
Speaker 2: against the French. Then it had been mined again in
Speaker 2: the in the early fifties, and it was mined a
Speaker 2: third time. Of course, when we were fighting, So there
Speaker 2: were a lot of mines at various locations, and it
Speaker 2: would we never carried marines inside the armored tractors. We
Speaker 2: put them on top with three layers of sandbags, and
Speaker 2: it was a court martial offense to carry them inside
Speaker 2: because of the mines and those in those days, the
Speaker 2: Amphibian tractors had gasoline in their bellies, so the mines
Speaker 2: had to blow through the gas. And what happened was
Speaker 2: I would stand, the platoon commander would stand on one
Speaker 2: in one hat standing on the chair, and the tractor
Speaker 2: commander would stand in the other one, and the air
Speaker 2: bubble would shoot us out like large slow murder rounds
Speaker 2: when we hit a mine, and we hit several mines,
Speaker 2: got to put a bunch of punctured ear drums. That
Speaker 2: was the only thing that happened to me in the
Speaker 2: entire tour. Ear drums and the typical cellulitis infections from
Speaker 2: the from the you know, the tropical diseases.
Speaker 1: How would you describe the situation compared to when you
Speaker 1: came on your first tour and to when you left.
Speaker 2: Well, when I left, we were beginning to draw down,
Speaker 2: just beginning to draw down. In sixty nine, and so
Speaker 2: it wasn't radically different. The Blue Dragons were still there
Speaker 2: and they were still fighting. The NVA was still there.
Speaker 2: They were still fighting us, but we were beginning to
Speaker 2: draw down. There was no question about it. And of
Speaker 2: course that was the lead up to the Paris Beast Conference,
Speaker 2: which a year and a half or two later ended
Speaker 2: up basically abandoning the South Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: Then after your first tour, I came back to the US.
Speaker 2: The Marine Corps thought I needed to be schooled again,
Speaker 2: so they they UH, they decided to send me to
Speaker 2: school again, to the Amphibious Warfare School, And well, I
Speaker 2: was a platoon commander and then a company commander and UH,
Speaker 2: first Battalion, third Marines in Hawaii, and we had to
Speaker 2: to uh. There was quite a bit of training to
Speaker 2: do there. And then they sent me to school, and
Speaker 2: then I volunteered and went back to Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Then your second tour, I guess the first tour could
Speaker 1: be described as more conventional. The second tour was much
Speaker 1: less conventional.
Speaker 2: The second tour was less conventional. I went back to
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia the second time in the late summer of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, and my job was to as the
Speaker 2: commander for field operations, I had in the search and
Speaker 2: the resolution of the MIA cases. We had several thousand
Speaker 2: MIA cases that hadn't been resolved, Remains hadn't been found,
Speaker 2: and in some cases there were some sightings of apparently
Speaker 2: live prisoners, it was not clear. So we were engaged
Speaker 2: in that. I had an Army Special Forces team of
Speaker 2: about fifty guys, terrific, unbelievably terrific guys, some of the
Speaker 2: finest fighters I've ever seen in my life, a small
Speaker 2: Navy intelligence dead and an Air Force medical debt. And
Speaker 2: of course there were no US facilities of any kind,
Speaker 2: and there were no US forces of any kind in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: It was completely different, and it was difficult to hold
Speaker 2: your head up because despite our pledges that had convinced
Speaker 2: the South to agree to the Paris Peace Treaty, we
Speaker 2: were abandoning all support of the South Vietnamese armed forces.
Speaker 2: And it was so bad that in some cases art
Speaker 2: the artillery batteries had one round per day for six guns,
Speaker 2: dozens and dozens and dozens of vehicles as each time
Speaker 2: you would arrive at a unit park no parts. Gasoline
Speaker 2: was scarce, and we were systematically After President Nixon's resignation,
Speaker 2: Congress decided to abandon Vietnam, and so they cut off
Speaker 2: aid despite President Ford's requests. So the South Vietnamese regarded
Speaker 2: us as honorable allies. But it was very hard to
Speaker 2: hold your head up.
Speaker 1: Going to go back to the clandestine work and resolving
Speaker 1: the MIA cases. We got about a minute left in
Speaker 1: this segment. How did you actually resolve them?
Speaker 2: Well, there had been an ambush. The process was open
Speaker 2: until December of nineteen seventy four. That is, we tabled
Speaker 2: where we were going to go and what we were
Speaker 2: going to do to the Four Power Joint Military Commission,
Speaker 2: which included the enemy, the North Vietnamese, and so that
Speaker 2: was agreed to in the Paris Accords. And however, in
Speaker 2: December of nineteen seventy four, just before I went over there,
Speaker 2: they ambushed the American team, killed the captain team leader,
Speaker 2: and wounded several others. And so from then on we
Speaker 2: never tabled any more operations, and the skirmishing continued in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: And what I would do is I had to negotiate
Speaker 2: with the Hill tribes and others where we would go
Speaker 2: in for security because the popular forces, which they frequently
Speaker 2: offered us were really pretty well useless. They were just
Speaker 2: villagers armed.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's not that they didn't care, it's just they weren't trained.
Speaker 2: So I would negotiate, and I spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time in the hills and got a lot of parasites
Speaker 2: out of that. That eventually caught up with me.
Speaker 1: That's retired to US Marine Corps Colonel Tony Wood. When
Speaker 1: we come back, you'll hear how Wood got the daunting
Speaker 1: challenge of developing an evacuation plan for Americans in Saigon.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this addition is retired US Marine Corps Colonel Anthony Tony Wood.
Speaker 1: We now pick up his story as Wood explains the
Speaker 1: situation leading up to the need for an American evacuation
Speaker 1: plan in Saigon.
Speaker 2: We had left South Vietnam in nineteen seventy two. There
Speaker 2: were no US forces of any kind in the country.
Speaker 2: The situation was we had a mission, which is what
Speaker 2: the US calls its combination of civilians and military, diplomat
Speaker 2: and business supportive anywhere in the world. The mission was
Speaker 2: probably twenty five thousand strong in Saigon of civilians and
Speaker 2: fifty military officers were allowed by the Paris Peace Accords,
Speaker 2: and they were all very senior and they were part
Speaker 2: of the Defense Adiche Office Dao Major General Homer Smith,
Speaker 2: wonderful man, great leader, and I turned I turned twenty
Speaker 2: nine in November of nineteen seventy four, and we went forward.
Speaker 2: We were operating out of Thailand in the search for
Speaker 2: the resolution operations for the MIAs, and we went forward
Speaker 2: to Vietnam to Saigon right after my birthday when I
Speaker 2: turned twenty nine in November. And we did that because
Speaker 2: the Jolly Green helicopters that we were using for insertion
Speaker 2: and extraction left Thailand. At that point, they were the
Speaker 2: last US military operation capable outfit that would take us
Speaker 2: into Vietnam and for insertion and extraction. And from then on,
Speaker 2: in a development that turned out to be critical, we
Speaker 2: operated with Air America, the CIA's airline, piloted by terrific
Speaker 2: for retired army or former army warrant officers, mostly civilians now,
Speaker 2: and they're small hueys, and we flew with them almost
Speaker 2: exclusively for insertion and extraction for those operations. So we
Speaker 2: were operating out of Saigon in Vietnam on Air America helicopters,
Speaker 2: but there were no US forces in the country, and
Speaker 2: the senior staff that was in Saigon was it. And
Speaker 2: of course they were essentially managing the logistics support of ARVIN,
Speaker 2: such as it was ARVIN being the Army of the
Speaker 2: Republic of Vietnam. A lot of skirmishing was going on,
Speaker 2: and then, of course it didn't take long. A month
Speaker 2: later in December, the NVA attacked South Vietnam, despite the
Speaker 2: Paris Piece Accords from their sanctuaries in the west, across
Speaker 2: the border and took the provincial capital of Fuklong. And
Speaker 2: as I'd say when I tell the story occasionally around
Speaker 2: the country, it was a test and we failed it.
Speaker 2: It didn't take very long. The second week in March
Speaker 2: they attacked banned Me two, a key highway intersection in
Speaker 2: the west, and Kantum and Plaiku were put at risk,
Speaker 2: and an entire South Vietnamese core collapsed because they were
Speaker 2: then trapped and one thing led to another, and it
Speaker 2: was the beginning of the end. And from March thirteenth
Speaker 2: until April the twenty ninth was you could count the
Speaker 2: days until fifty some days were left for South Vietnam.
Speaker 1: But you had already essentially been tasked with coming up
Speaker 1: with an evacuation plan even before those in March.
Speaker 2: In the first of March, General Smith, I've to this
Speaker 2: day don't know how he made the decision to do this,
Speaker 2: because he had, you know, a whole staff of very
Speaker 2: senior officers. At any rate, I came in from the
Speaker 2: field and I was ordered to report to General Smith.
Speaker 2: I did. I'd never seen a major general before, and
Speaker 2: wonderful Virginia boy, great, a great officer, just a terrific leader.
Speaker 2: And he had that soft Virginia accident. And he said,
Speaker 2: Captain Wood, do you know why you are here? And
Speaker 2: I said no, sir. He said you are here because
Speaker 2: I ordered you here. I said, yes, Sir, I knew that.
Speaker 2: And anyway, he said you are going to join this
Speaker 2: Special Planning Group. And I didn't open my mouth anymore.
Speaker 2: And he went on for a few minutes and said,
Speaker 2: everything you do will be secret. You will have to
Speaker 2: clear it with me. And I said, he said, do
Speaker 2: you have any questions? I had probably two hundred, but
Speaker 2: I said, sir, where is the Special Planning Group? And
Speaker 2: he said, you are the Special Planning Group. It's wherever
Speaker 2: you put it. That's literally what he said. And so
Speaker 2: we went down to this bunker, George Petrie, who is
Speaker 2: an incredible Army Special Forces hero, who was my deputy
Speaker 2: and my friend, and so it was the two of
Speaker 2: us and we joined one Marine Major Jim's avatur and
Speaker 2: we were the Special Planning So we just called ourselves
Speaker 2: the SPG since he said we were a special Planning group,
Speaker 2: you know. And we've found a bunker deep in the
Speaker 2: depths of the of the former mac V compound they
Speaker 2: called the Pentagon East, huge complex directly across from the
Speaker 2: Tonsonote Air Base. Very important fact because it plays later
Speaker 2: into what happened. So what's the mission. Well, he said,
Speaker 2: you are going to evacuate urban sigone, or better precisely,
Speaker 2: more precisely, you are going to develop a plan for
Speaker 2: the evacuation of the center of the city. And we
Speaker 2: went back and sat down. Of course, we had a
Speaker 2: million questions, but none of us had ever been in
Speaker 2: an evacuation before. None of us had ever been in
Speaker 2: a Special Planning Group before, and so we sat down
Speaker 2: and we said, okay, we have to figure out who
Speaker 2: we're going to evacuate, how many critically. We have to
Speaker 2: figure out what's going to happen here in this city,
Speaker 2: and we have to figure out what the assets.
Speaker 1: Are when we come back. Colonel Wood explains how the
Speaker 1: evacuation was developed despite overwhelming obstacles, and how the evacuation
Speaker 1: itself unfolded. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is retired US Marine Corps Colonel Anthony Tony Wood.
Speaker 1: As Colonel Wood just explained, he was tasked with creating
Speaker 1: an evacuation plan for Americans working and living in downtown
Speaker 1: Saigon as North Vietnamese forces drew closer and closer to
Speaker 1: the city. Colonel Wood now takes us through the hurdles,
Speaker 1: the setbacks, the ingenuity, and the execution of the evacuation.
Speaker 1: But he picks up his story by explaining that he
Speaker 1: and the other planners not only had to keep their
Speaker 1: work secret from the North Vietnamese, but also from the
Speaker 1: top American diplomat in the country.
Speaker 2: It's important to understand the unique situation because it's hard
Speaker 2: to believe the Ambassador Graham Martin had forbidden any overt
Speaker 2: effort at all to prepare for evacuation. Initially none was permitted,
Speaker 2: so our ability to plan had to all be done
Speaker 2: in absolute secrecy. And we then asked what the assets
Speaker 2: would be, and over a period of weeks, one decision
Speaker 2: after another led to the fact that no marines would
Speaker 2: be put in to help secure the defense Attachet Office
Speaker 2: compound where we were and where we were building in
Speaker 2: secret an internment camp for ten thousand for ten days.
Speaker 2: Why because we weren't sure that the NVA would let
Speaker 2: us wait long enough to get a plan together. You know,
Speaker 2: there was no guarantee in my mind at least that
Speaker 2: we had thirty days, forty days, whatever we thought we had,
Speaker 2: and that's all we thought we had. So that was
Speaker 2: being done in secret. And that was the beginning of
Speaker 2: the volunteers, which is the whole point of this story,
Speaker 2: the real heroes. We recruited about twelve or fifteen American
Speaker 2: civilian Secretary's accountants, one who was a Lieutenant general equivalent
Speaker 2: Bill Austin, the Area auditor for Southeast Asia, and they
Speaker 2: began helping us build Project Alamo, which was the internment
Speaker 2: camp secret inside the DAO compound and of course, all
Speaker 2: this is in secret from most of the Dao staff too,
Speaker 2: And then the ambassador started making one decision after another.
Speaker 2: These all didn't occur. First of all, there would be
Speaker 2: no security provided for the Dao compound beyond the twelve
Speaker 2: marines that we had. Then the next decision he made
Speaker 2: was there would be no marines in the city of
Speaker 2: Saigon during the actual evacuation. And of course the question
Speaker 2: that hit me immediately was, well, how do we secure
Speaker 2: the convoy. Our plan included a bus convoy. So we
Speaker 2: had been developing a plan that essentially worked in two prongs.
Speaker 2: We would operate on eight routes named after the famous
Speaker 2: western trails of the United States Oregon, Texas, California, and
Speaker 2: so forth. And they would be buses, which we would
Speaker 2: armor somehow. We weren't sure how we were going to
Speaker 2: armor the buses, but we were going to armor them,
Speaker 2: and we were going to armor them in such a
Speaker 2: fashion that nobody would notice they were armored. Didn't know
Speaker 2: how to do that either, but we were going to
Speaker 2: figure it out. This was the plan. Okay, plans are great,
Speaker 2: then you have to do them. Then those men and
Speaker 2: women Vietnamese third country nationals for whom we had legal
Speaker 2: responsibility the US does all over the world, and of
Speaker 2: course Americans that we were going to pick up, we
Speaker 2: would pick them up on eighteen or twenty designated pickup
Speaker 2: points that were special buildings, and those buildings would have
Speaker 2: helicopter landing zones prepared on their roofs, which Marine Corps
Speaker 2: helicopters would then land on. Then another shoe fell. No
Speaker 2: Marine Corps helicopters would be allowed to land in the
Speaker 2: city except at the embassy. So remember that I mentioned
Speaker 2: to you we had been operating with their America. I
Speaker 2: went to Air America and I held a long meeting
Speaker 2: with the volunteers. We now had about one hundred volunteers
Speaker 2: by the end of March, working on all kinds of things,
Speaker 2: and including working with Air America to create hlz's on
Speaker 2: the roofs of those buildings. All twenty six are America
Speaker 2: pilots volunteered to stay with the volunteers we had and
Speaker 2: to evacuate from the rooftops, which in the end they
Speaker 2: did well. At that point, the North Vietnamese in the
Speaker 2: end of March attacked from the north simultaneously in Quang Tree,
Speaker 2: Crang Tree Fell, and in rapid succession wave fell and
Speaker 2: then d Nang. D Nang falling is like Chicago falling
Speaker 2: in the United States. That's the impact it had on
Speaker 2: the country. Now, tens of thousands of Vietnamese are fleeing
Speaker 2: south towards Saigon, tens of thousands clogging the roads. Troops
Speaker 2: can't move, and the NBA is coming in from the
Speaker 2: west and from the north, and they're attacking. And Arvin
Speaker 2: is having a terrible time and falling back, mostly because
Speaker 2: of lousy leadership. So at this point we go into
Speaker 2: override day at night, and when Dnang falls, the South
Speaker 2: Vietnamese government Saigon declares martial law. It affects a curfew
Speaker 2: and puts barricades up all over the city. Well, this
Speaker 2: is a huge problem because we are planning convoys on routes.
Speaker 2: So every night, one of us has to run the barricades,
Speaker 2: and we have silenced weapons because if we have to shoot,
Speaker 2: are going to have to shoot National police South Vietnamese
Speaker 2: National Police at the barricades if we get into a fight.
Speaker 2: So every night we did that, and then in the
Speaker 2: morning more than once breakfast, I hate to say it
Speaker 2: now was a poor example was Scotch and a cigarette,
Speaker 2: but it was so the volunteers, about one hundred of
Speaker 2: them by the last part of March, are busily engaged.
Speaker 2: They're installing flak jackets in the buses and stationing buses
Speaker 2: and groups in these specially prepared stops. During the day,
Speaker 2: the buses operate normally and nobody notices these flack jackets
Speaker 2: that are bolted underneath the windows as protection. And there's
Speaker 2: mesh in the windows, but that doesn't show up a lot.
Speaker 2: The Pacific architects and engineers a great outfit builds all
Speaker 2: kinds of special barricades that will close off the stairwells
Speaker 2: in these buildings, because we know from the cities that
Speaker 2: we fell with. We went up to several cities, George
Speaker 2: Petrie and I, and we knew how Sygon would fall.
Speaker 2: It would be horrible rioting, there would be arson, barricades, shooting,
Speaker 2: and all of which and more did in fact occur.
Speaker 2: So we had to be able to close off the
Speaker 2: route to the helicopter landing zones that were going to
Speaker 2: get people on the roofs once the convoys couldn't get anymore.
Speaker 2: And then in the meantime, others volunteers strung wire inside
Speaker 2: the huge water tower at Dao and made a giant antenna,
Speaker 2: and we put those small motorola radios you've seen in taxicabs.
Speaker 2: Those were in all the buses. That's how we control
Speaker 2: the evacuation of Saigod was in those little tiny motorola radios.
Speaker 2: But it worked. The drivers for the buses got to
Speaker 2: drive the buses one foot forward and one foot back,
Speaker 2: and to see how to change gears because everything had
Speaker 2: to be done in secret. On April the third was
Speaker 2: about the worst day of my life. Operation the Baby
Speaker 2: Lift had begun and the US government flew in a
Speaker 2: giant C five A transport and put three hundred orphaned
Speaker 2: infants on board, and thirty of the finest women in
Speaker 2: Dao volunteered to take it out, about twenty of whom
Speaker 2: were from the volunteers are volunteers. The C five A
Speaker 2: took off and at twenty five hundred feet it had
Speaker 2: explosive decompression. It blew its doors open. They went through
Speaker 2: the tail and the airlines. There was no control to
Speaker 2: the bird after that. And this young airman, the captain
Speaker 2: whoever flying that airplane by an incredible act of airmanship
Speaker 2: using just the engines was able to get it. He
Speaker 2: couldn't make Tonsonut, he couldn't get back to Tonsonut. He
Speaker 2: could see he wasn't going to make it. He put
Speaker 2: it down in their ice paddies instead of in the
Speaker 2: city where it would have killed hundreds. And of course
Speaker 2: almost everybody in the aircraft was killed, I think, except
Speaker 2: five people, including the volunteers. So when you have a
Speaker 2: blow like that, you immediately get everybody together. And I
Speaker 2: called a meeting, locked the doors because our meetings were secret,
Speaker 2: because nobody was supposed to know all this was going on.
Speaker 2: And I said, here's the situation. There won't be any
Speaker 2: marines in the city. I have a plan to secure
Speaker 2: the convoys, but will have no armed defense. The roadblocks
Speaker 2: will be up. It's likely to be mutinying and other things.
Speaker 2: And I know after the deaths this morning of twenty
Speaker 2: of your friends, that you're wondering whether this is worth
Speaker 2: your life. And I said, anybody that doesn't show up
Speaker 2: to me tomorrow, we will not hold it against you.
Speaker 2: We understand. Well. At that point, a little tiny lady
Speaker 2: in the front row said, Captain, do you think will
Speaker 2: get out? Well? Now the rubber really met the road
Speaker 2: here it was there are, and everybody in that room
Speaker 2: looked up, cause it was the question on everybody's mind.
Speaker 2: You know. I just told them that they don't have
Speaker 2: any security that we're going in anyway, and it was
Speaker 2: a terrible decision to make. But I don't know what
Speaker 2: the other I don't know what the alternative was. I
Speaker 2: answered her. I said, I don't think we will all
Speaker 2: get out, which is the truth. I just didn't know
Speaker 2: how much. How many would I but I didn't think
Speaker 2: we would all get out. It just didn't seem like
Speaker 2: the odds were in favor of it. So we went
Speaker 2: on and a week later, Brigadier General Bond, who is
Speaker 2: Major General Smith's deputy and is in charge of the
Speaker 2: final evacuation planning, holds a meeting, right after which he
Speaker 2: is arrested by marines sent from the embassy by the
Speaker 2: ambassador and flown out of the country in the middle
Speaker 2: of evacuation planning in April, less than two and a
Speaker 2: half weeks before Saigon fell, and the ambassador has found
Speaker 2: out that General Bond sent a message requesting one company
Speaker 2: of marines to guard this huge compound that we've got.
Speaker 2: We have twelve marines to guard this whole compound. They're
Speaker 2: throwing babies over the wire. The Marines are running and
Speaker 2: grabbing and catching the babies because the South Vietnamese women
Speaker 2: are panicking and they want their kids to get out.
Speaker 2: It's a very bad situation. And their national police are
Speaker 2: harassing people going in and out of the Americans going
Speaker 2: in and out, so we needed some security. So he
Speaker 2: sent a message. Well, the ambassador relieved him of duties,
Speaker 2: arrested him, and flew him out of the country and
Speaker 2: we never saw General Bond again after that. We not
Speaker 2: only were secret, we went subterranean, and we went into
Speaker 2: high gear, and we were working day and night to
Speaker 2: get ready for it. And so the plan was that
Speaker 2: we would fly people using Air America helicopters into the
Speaker 2: Dao Compound adjacent to Tonsonut Airbase, and we would pick
Speaker 2: them up in the convoys and bring them in there,
Speaker 2: and from there they would be taken across to Tonsonut
Speaker 2: where big Air Force fixed wing transports would take them out.
Speaker 2: On the twenty eighth, the North Vietnamese rockets landed all
Speaker 2: over Tonsonut airborne and on the Dao compound. One of
Speaker 2: them landed on the gate, killed both of our marine
Speaker 2: guards that were stationed together and blew the gate up
Speaker 2: and the rest of the rockets landed on Tonsonut. Most
Speaker 2: of the aircraft were burning on the runways and Tonsonut
Speaker 2: is now closed. The day before the evacuation is going
Speaker 2: thirteen North Vietnamese divisions have surrounded Saigon, and the fighting
Speaker 2: you can hear everywhere in the city, and see nobody
Speaker 2: in Saigon had heard a shot fired in seven years.
Speaker 2: Well now you could at any rate. So Tonson it's
Speaker 2: out of the question. General Smith takes the ambassador there
Speaker 2: and finally convinces him on the twenty ninth that he
Speaker 2: has to surrender control to the military and it's time
Speaker 2: for the evacuation to go down. So he orders white
Speaker 2: Christmas plate on the radio, which is the signal, and
Speaker 2: the buses roll. Not a volunteer missed it. They all
Speaker 2: they got in the buses and our secret plan. I
Speaker 2: had forty taxicabs painted in a warehouse in National Police
Speaker 2: colors with revolving blue lights on the top and Venetian
Speaker 2: blinds in the windows. So I put National Police cars
Speaker 2: at each end of each stick of buses, and they
Speaker 2: had an American guide and a Vietnamese driver in them,
Speaker 2: and they were in National Police helmets, even with the
Speaker 2: decals on them. In other words, we had forty fake
Speaker 2: National Police cars and everybody was scared to death of
Speaker 2: the National Police and Saigon. And I hoped that by
Speaker 2: putting by creating these fake National Police cars leading the convoys,
Speaker 2: that we would buy ourselves some time and get a lot.
Speaker 2: As it is, they made four full circuits of the
Speaker 2: convoys before most of the most of the buses were
Speaker 2: being shot up pretty bad. And I was in the
Speaker 2: city with my driver until ten o'clock, and at ten
Speaker 2: o'clock of thereabouts they flipped our jeep over in one
Speaker 2: of the riots at a bus stop and we had
Speaker 2: to We made it into the one of the buses,
Speaker 2: and from then on we controlled whatever we could control
Speaker 2: from that bus because the rioters had pretty well and
Speaker 2: we were the only Marines in the city. Air America
Speaker 2: now is operating from the rooftops, landing with their hueyes,
Speaker 2: and that famous shot you see of the people going up,
Speaker 2: that's an Air America huey, not a military huie. And
Speaker 2: the Air America Hueys are landing on the sixteen or
Speaker 2: seventeen hlz's on the roofs taking off the people that
Speaker 2: can't make it to the buses, and the buses are
Speaker 2: picking up Vietnamese are Vietnamese employees, thousands of the well,
Speaker 2: they picked up about forty five hundred people in the
Speaker 2: buses and another thirteen hundred or so off the rooftops.
Speaker 2: So Air America loses their base of operations because it's
Speaker 2: at Tonsonut and it's hit by artillery and rocket fire,
Speaker 2: and they start refueling in the street in front of
Speaker 2: Tonsonut and they fly out to sea and land on
Speaker 2: the Navy carriers. You ought to hear the stories about
Speaker 2: how the Navy greeted them anyway, and we had been
Speaker 2: flying out to the Navy carriers at night in Air
Speaker 2: America helicopters Quya at night. We had to do it
Speaker 2: in secret from the embassy so the ambassador wouldn't find out.
Speaker 2: It's true. It's incredible, but it's true, and so that's
Speaker 2: how we coordinated with the Marine Brigade at sea. And
Speaker 2: on the afternoon of the twenty ninth, at fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: the marine, the largest helicopter operation in history began because
Speaker 2: Tonson was closed, and five hundred and thirty four sorties
Speaker 2: later at midnight they finished evacuating the Tonsonate compound that
Speaker 2: we had prepared in case of internment, and the bus
Speaker 2: convoys rolled until dark and then Air America rolled until
Speaker 2: a little after that, but the marine lift continued bringing
Speaker 2: the thousands out of the compound until midnight, and that
Speaker 2: was under General Kerry and later Commandant of the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: Al Gray and George Petrie and I flew out and
Speaker 2: one of their helicopters at about midnight. Now the embassy
Speaker 2: was not evacuated fully until the next morning, but they
Speaker 2: were not part of the Ambassador of course wouldn't have
Speaker 2: allowed them to be part of the evacuation plan. So
Speaker 2: that's the story of the incredible number of volunteers, and
Speaker 2: those volunteers went home never even got a thank you note,
Speaker 2: despite being nominated by us for everything. And my shame
Speaker 2: is it never occurred to me when I left, when
Speaker 2: I was ordered to Hawaii later to write the after
Speaker 2: action report as part of that team, it never occurred
Speaker 2: to me that they that our nominations wouldn't go through.
Speaker 2: So I didn't save the names of the listing or anything.
Speaker 2: And years later I found out they hadn't gotten anything
Speaker 2: and hadn't even been thanked. You know, twenty of them
Speaker 2: died and the rest of them did an incredible job.
Speaker 2: And they were fifty five to sixty years old. They
Speaker 2: were veterans, though mostly mostly veterans. I think a couple
Speaker 2: of the women were also veterans. And what an astonishing
Speaker 2: group of people. And that's the evacuation of Saigon.
Speaker 1: That's retired to US Marine Corps Colonel Anthony Tony Wood.
Speaker 1: Colonel Wood served thirty four years in uniform and was
Speaker 1: a critical planner in developing and executing the evacuation of
Speaker 1: saigod while facing every imaginable obstacle. Again, April thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, marks fifty years since the fall of Saigon.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this
Speaker 1: is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
Speaker 1: a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
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