J. C. Stewart

 Thirty years after evacuation of Saigon, memories still weigh heavy on former Marine
 

 By EMILY TARAVELLA, The Daily Sentinel Sunday, May 08, 2005 There are two things John Stewart thinks about every day - his 16-year-old son and the 1975 evacuation of Saigon. Thirty years have passed since the last U.S. Marines were transported out of Vietnam by helicopter, ending this nation's military involvement in one of the most controversial wars in history. Stewart's memories have not faded with time. He wasn't much older than his son is now when he chose the U.S. Marine Corps over college. He said he preferred the idea of seeing the world to spending four more years in school. As it turned out, Stewart saw more than he anticipated. Stewart completed his Marine training in early April 1975. A few short weeks later, he participated in one of the most historic events of the century. With the seizure of Phuoc Long province in South Vietnam in December 1974, troops from communist North Vietnam violated the 1973 Paris Peace Accords that marked the end of the war for U.S. forces. The United States remained committed to the defense of South Vietnam, but Congress refused additional expenditures for military aid. In March 1975, North Vietnam launched several successful attacks against the South. On April 22, 1975, Xuan Loc (30 miles east of Saigon) fell to North Vietnamese troops. This opened the door to the enemy capital. Fifty-two Marines were assigned guard duty at the U.S. Embassy and defense attache office in Saigon. Stewart was one of them. "It was sort of surreal," he said. "As far as people my age were concerned, the war was over. We had watched it on TV. The draft had stopped. I never expected to go to Vietnam." Stewart arrived "in country" two weeks before the evacuation. Everything "seemed normal" the first week, Stewart said. But that was all about to change. On April 27, the North Vietnamese fired four rockets into downtown Saigon. It was the first air attack on the city in five years. "We had been working 12 hours on and 12 hours off," Stewart said. "After the attack, first hundreds - and then thousands - of Vietnamese began swarming the embassy gates." Many of these people had been promised safe passage to the United States. "Those who had family in the United States were supposed to have automatic passage," Stewart said. "Other than that, passage had been guaranteed to Vietnamese state department employees, their spouses and dependents. Hundreds of thousands of these people had worked for organizations ranging from USAID all the way down to the embassy cafeteria." Air strikes April 28 and 29 prevented American transport planes from using the airport, so U.S. helicopters began transporting people from rooftops. "U.S. military radio stations began playing (Bing Crosby's) 'White Christmas,'" Stewart said. "That was the signal that it was time for foreigners to leave Saigon." U.S. personnel and pre-approved South Vietnamese were picked up by convoys and delivered to the embassy. It soon became clear that the small 20-person helicopters landing on the embassy's lawn and roof wouldn't be able to get everyone out. Panic set in, and parents began throwing their children over the walls of the embassy. Others handed their children over to any adult who was guaranteed transport out of the country. Some people offered loose diamonds or gold to the Marines in hopes of buying their freedom with bribes. Stewart said he was driving a Jeep for one of the convoys, when an ambulance attempted to cut between his vehicle and the vehicle in front of him. "I kept waving the driver of the ambulance away, but he kept trying to get in front of me," Stewart said. "Finally, I was pointing my rifle at him, waving him back." The driver of the ambulance eventually pulled ahead of Stewart, and Stewart saw a man through a window in the back of the vehicle. The man held two infants up to the window, so Stewart could see them. "He made a motion with his hands indicating that there were 25 more infants inside the ambulance," Stewart said. "I let him cut in front of me." Over the course of 24 hours, 5,000 Vietnamese and 1,000 Americans were delivered to aircraft carriers offshore by 81 helicopters. "I realized this was the beginning of what really was the complete end," Stewart said. "At times, we wondered if we would get out alive." Two Marines didn't get out alive, including Stewart's friend, Cpl. Charles McMahon, 23, of Woburn, Mass. McMahon and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge of Marshalltown, Iowa, were killed April 29, 1975, becoming the last two casualties of the Vietnam War. Stewart also saw a C-119 gunship shot down. "After that, we wondered how safe it would be to get on a helicopter," he said. But the demand for help from so many people consumed all of the Marines' time and energy. So really, there wasn't much time to contemplate what their fate would be, Stewart said. On April 30, 1975, 19 more sorties landed at the U.S. Embassy during early morning hours and completed the evacuation. Hours after the last Marines flew away, North Vietnamese troops entered the capital and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City. Stewart said he was transported to the Philippines, and he went on to serve four more years in the Marine Corps. The images from the evacuation still haunt him. "To this day, I don't like large crowds," he said. "I avoid crowded shopping malls at Christmas, and I don't like to go to any sales that draw big crowds." Opinions about the Vietnam War vary. Stewart said he just did what it takes to be successful in military service - "what was expected." "You didn't really think about the rightness or wrongness," he said. "You left your politics at home. Our mission was to evacuate as many as possible, and that's what we did. I'm just grateful to be alive." The Marines who survived Saigon have a bond with one another. They've formed their own association, and they communicate with each other regularly. "I exchange e-mail with some of the guys almost every day," Stewart said. Last weekend, April 30, Stewart had hoped to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon with his fellow Marines. But Stewart is a student at SFA. With finals approaching and his graduation just weeks away, he decided not to go. Instead, he logged onto the Web site www.fallofsaigon.org, and viewed photographs from a ceremony that was held in honor of the occasion. He read news articles in which his friends were quoted, and he perused the first person accounts of the evacuation that were posted on the Web site. He said he has thought about putting his own memories into writing and posting them on the site for others to read. But that would require him to deeply reflect on things he really doesn't want to think about. "I'm sure it's the same for those who were at Iwo Jima, or D-Day, or who saw the World Trade Center come down," he said. "A sound or a visual image triggers a memory, and it's right there in your head." The Vietnam War claimed more than 57,000 American lives and more than 150,000 casualties. Some saw Saigon as an American Alamo. In a letter to the veterans of Saigon, former President Gerald Ford quoted Ernest Hemingway: "Human beings are not made for defeat. Man can be destroyed, but he can never be defeated." "What applied to individuals holds equally true for nations," Ford wrote. "There is more to a nation that its soil, its cities, its wealth or even its government. There is a soul in a great people. It is steeled in their sufferings. They may be occupied by foreign armies. They may be temporarily enslaved. They may be economically impoverished. But the soul of a great people cannot be crushed." Ford said history will judge whether America could have done better. But one thing was beyond question, he said - "the heroism of the Marines who guarded the embassy during its darkest hours, and of those brave helicopter pilots who flew non-stop missions for 18 hours, dodging relentless sniper fire to land on an embassy roof illuminated by nothing more than a 35 mm slide projector." In closing, Ford wrote: "May God bless you and them, now and always." -- Editor's note: Some of the information from this story came from www.fallofsaigon.org. -- Emily Taravella's e-mail address is etaravella@coxnews.com