April 30th, 1995 marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the Communists. For many Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era vets who were directly involved in the war, this month is especially memorable and to be very honest for many of us, most painful....

I was home on my lunch hour with my beloved, and now deceased, wife Kathie when the news was showing a clip of the Air-America chopper lifting off from the top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. I can recall with vivid memory the feelings that over-came me watching the chaos, this disorderly and most-shameful exit that would mark the end of America's military involvement in Vietnam. The tears flowed down my cheeks as so many questions still remained unanswered, the main one being, what had all of those who perished in America's most tragic war given their lives for? Why had Jerry 'Moose' Gillett, William Wallace, Thomas Barnett and many more from the Silver Spurs and the 3/17^th Air Cavalry perished, and the many others that I personally knew from my Troop who had been wounded and forever changed? Little did I know at the time how 20 years later so little would change, so many questions still remain unanswered..... the pain at times is as great as it was then.

I remember the chaos as the frantic evacuation from Saigon marked a final betrayal to those from South Vietnam that had believed in and worked for the U.S. You could see the fear and terror in their eyes as the realization settled in that we would leave them behind. They had always believed that the U.S. would be there for them. The scenes of them pressing against our embassy gates, hoping beyond hope that they too would be taken to safety, away from the 're-education' camps where many spent years and far too many perished. The TV showing scenes of ARVN choppers crashing into the sea in an attempt to be rescued by U.S. carriers off the coast and scenes of those choppers who were fortunate enough to have actually landed on the decks, without permission, those helicopters being pushed over the side to clear the decks for others inbound, showed just how desperate the situation had become. To ensure an orderly evacuation, U.S. military intervention was required and called for, but this was not to be the case. Despite the fact the NVA invasion was totally in violation of the 'Peace with honor' that Nixon and Kissinger had so proudly spoken of...I ask where was our honor at this final hour?

By then President Ford's hands were tied by our Congress with the passage of the "Church amendment" that forbid any military aid of any kind in the defense of South Vietnam. The resignation of President Nixon as a result of Watergate had sealed the South's fate. The country where over 58,000 American servicemen and women perished was no longer to be given so much as U.S. air support. We shamefully, and tragically, FLED South Vietnam with no honor, leaving over 2,100 American POW\MIA's to this day unaccounted for, and dividing our once-great nation between those who had served and those who had not. A chasm that has narrowed but still remains for many of us Vietnam veterans during these 'anniversary' dates, very wide as of this writing. This is also true for those who were very close to the war but didn't actually serve in Vietnam.

Take Pam [Roger & Pam were married in 1996] for example. She was in the U.S. Navy from 1970 to 1974 and worked at CINCPAC Joint Command and worked on the files for Operation Homecoming on those individuals, based on substantial intelligence, which Department of Defense EXPECTED to have returned by the North Vietnamese - at least 1,000 - when in fact we only saw 591 returned, the questions she had buried for so long have returned to haunt her. Couple this with her duties at CINCPAC dealing with the daily grind of 'body counts' and operational orders that directly effected the very lives of us in-country, it is no wonder that she too suffers from this war also. It is a proven fact that those involved so close to the war effort suffer the very same mood swings and depression, to name but a few symptoms, of those of us who actually experienced the war first-hand! She suffers from the very same guilt and frustration as I dealing in particular with the POW\MIA issue. It's only by searching for the truth, knowing the facts that she as well as I can begin to finally put the war into perspective so that the both of us can move forward. [However, in all fairness to the young warriors of Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) who comb the jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia their efforts have been partially successful in finding and repatriating U.S. remains. For example, two Silver Spurs, Knuckey and Taylor, were repatriated in 1993 and given a proper burial here on U.S. soil. However, efforts by JTF-FA, the Vietnam Veterans of America and more recently, VFW have revealed no resolution of those known as "the last known alive." One can only hope that restoration of diplomatic relations and opening communist Vietnam to the west will provide further answers, but at what price?]

POW\MIAs: For those of us that know our government left our Brothers and Sisters behind to become statistics, the POW/MIA issue keeps the war very much alive. Many will not rest until the fullest accounting is made by the Republic of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to account for those they have previously admitted in having had in their control. In his resignation letter as head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), Col. Millard Peck stated:

What we've been witnessing the past years is exactly that. The lifting of the embargo by President Clinton has allowed Vietnam to continue the deceit along with what I feel unprecedented cooperation from the U.S. government to completely 'kill' the POW/MIA issue. I can assure you that this isn't my paranoia but conclusions I've come to after reading and studying the topic which includes numerous declassified documents that support the fact live American POW/MIAs were knowingly left behind when we as a country fled the conflict! I’m not saying that any remain alive today, but there is evidence that some may have been alive as late as 1992. It should be noted a recent survey showed approximately 80 to 85 percent of Americans feel that we as a country left live Americans behind to suffer at the hands of the communists! This can ONLY be attributed to all the fine work family members, activists and Vietnam veterans have done to present their case. Unfortunately, even though they believe this to be true and many citizens state they wish to heal the injustices that we as Vietnam veterans endured when we arrived 'home', I still hear no public outcry to demand that Vietnam account for at least the men and women they have acknowledged to have held and supposedly died in captivity, those known as the "last known alive." If that's the case, what became of their remains? Why haven't at least their remains been returned along with the particulars of their deaths? I strongly suspect if they have actually died in captivity and the remains were returned that forensic medicine could prove they didn't die of natural causes!

The Final Betrayal: In a single stroke, the American Congress, and more importantly to me the American people, turned their backs on South Vietnam, and their own sons and daughters that had fought and died in Southeast Asia! The end of America's involvement in its longest and most-tragic war came to an abrupt conclusion as a Soviet-made T-54 tank, with their NLF flag flying proudly, crashed through the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace gates. By the end of the day, Saigon would be renamed Ho Chi Minh City, thus bringing this sad chapter in U.S. military history to a close.

In spite of what is often written, there were ARVN heroes during the collapse of the South. At Xuan Loc where various Troops of the 3/17^th had operated during the squadron's deployment to South Vietnam, the 18th ARVN Division, under the command of General Le Minh Dao, refused to turn tail and run. When ARVN troops were led by capable leaders they could be very tenacious. The 43d Infantry Regiment launched numerous counter-attacks on April 10th and actually pushed back the NVA invaders. By the 12th the battle seemed to be turning in ARVN's favor, but by the 16th the overwhelming numerical superiority of NVA turned the tide. The last bastion located on Highway 1 leading to Saigon had been isolated and 70 percent of those brave Xuan Loc defenders had been killed or wounded. Their objective had been to slow the NVA drive towards Saigon with the hope that U.S. military aid could be negotiated for. Their sacrifice bought a week's time for more to be evacuated but nothing more.

By the 16th, Bien Hoa was under heavy rocket attack, thus in effect neutralizing the ARVN air force. On the evening of April 15th, NVA commandos blew part of the huge ammo dump at Bien Hoa which exploded with so much force it was felt as far away as Saigon, approximately 20 miles to the south.....thus marking the end of any real effective resistance to the NVA invasion.

Patrick Pilcher, a Vietnam veteran himself who writes for the Seattle P-I, wrote on April 7th of this year [1995];

As Mr. Pilcher has pointed out, unless the United States learns the lessons of Vietnam, our country will be doomed to condemn another generation of young men and women to life-long problems. As Vietnam veterans we are well aware that our history is trying to be rewritten. This also includes WWII when very recently President Clinton didn't want the fall of Japan ending World War II referred to any longer as V-J Day. He apparently feels that it offends the Japanese people and current relations. [And look at the recent flap over the display of the B-29 Enola Gay at the Smithsonian!] I'm sorry, it was Japan that attacked the United States on December 7th, 1941, not the U.S. attacking them! And history, no matter how ugly or embarrassing, should be told honestly so future generations will see the bitterness and heartbreak of war. I don't feel it should be 'sanitized' to make it more palatable or for the sake of diplomatic relations.

If we as Vietnam veterans want our wars' history to be written properly for future generations to learn from, it is up to each and everyone of us to write that history, share our thoughts with the American public, and be ever vigilant of our elected officials, the press, our educational system and intelligence agencies that have possibly combined to 'sanitize' the legacy of Americas' most tragic war. The memory of our Brothers and Sisters who perished and those we left behind deserve not to have died or endured in vain...... As a former soldier and Vietnam veteran I have no other choice.....

Roger Young - April 1995 [Revised 1999]

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