35 years after fall of Saigon

April 28, 2010
By Richard Botkin
WorldNetDaily

Thirty five years ago this Friday, the final chapter to the American portion of the Vietnam War was ingloriously concluded – even though American combat forces were largely gone by late 1971 and all remaining support troops, air crews and POWs were home in early 1973. Unlike Dec. 7, 1941, or June 6, 1944, or Aug. 15, 1945 (Victory over Japan Day), or any other notable day from World War II, April 30, 1975, will never be recalled in positive ways by those old enough to remember or those too young whose ideas have instead been shaped by contemporary media.

For the more than three million American servicemen who honorably served in Southeast Asia between 1964 and 1973, there were no tumultuous homecoming parades, no victory celebrations in Times Square or any town square – nothing. For the remaining 200 million Americans alive then who did not go to Vietnam, the war was mostly a vicarious, unpleasant inconvenience. Where Americans might recall this day in 1975, if they recall it at all, they are likely to conjure tension-filled images of action at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, of Marines attempting to impose order from chaos, of throngs of Vietnamese clamoring to get aboard already overcrowded helicopters hoping to leave ahead of the invading communists, some of those same helicopters later being pushed over the sides of U.S. Navy ships, of barely seaworthy, ramshackle hobo freighters packed to the gunwales with star-crossed refugees steaming well in trace of the American armada. As negative as it all seemed, as bad as the day was, at least the bad dream that was, for Americans, the Vietnam "experience" was ending. Time to move on.

For the left-behind 17 million citizens of the Republic of Vietnam, which ceased to exist the moment the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet retired over the eastern horizon, memories of that day are far different. While April 30, 1975, really did signal the conclusion of American involvement, all that changed for our discarded former allies was the manner of struggle and degree of difficulty. There would be no moving on. The new communist masters would impose a different kind of peace. It would be peace with retribution, peace with subjugation, peace with no forgiveness and peace with maximum pain.

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