We saw one backing up and turning, its gears grating, and then advancing on the old French hospital, hardly a military objective. But soon enough the tanks were at the palace gates and then through them, the lead tank bearing a jubilant but nervous James Fenton, the poet and journalist who had improbably become the last Washington Post correspondent in Saigon.
As the new soldiers came in, the old soldiers faded away, sometimes with a final, bitter flourish. We saw one column deliberately firing off all its signal flares as it marched in formation — green, red, white, green again — before dispersing.
They looked relieved: the war was over, they had not died, and they had played their part in a great victory. Some days later, there was a parade, after which many left Saigon. Those who stayed were polite, and almost hesitant. They assumed white foreigners were Russians.
But they appeared formidably well trained. Soldiers who had been lounging and smoking a minute before were suddenly prone and judiciously returning fire, as outflanking squads rapidly closed in on the attackers.
It was a reminder that the time when the war had been about under-equipped guerrillas taking on big, conventional forces was long gone. The North Vietnamese rolled into Saigon with everything a modern army could want.
They had ample armour and artillery — everything except air power. But by then the South Vietnamese had hardly any air power left either. Vietnam had been a political, military, and moral cockpit for years. So many important things would be decided here: which side would prevail in the international contest between communists and non-communists; whether western countries would continue to dominate the ex-colonial world; whether small countries could stand up to big ones; whether guerrillas could defeat modern armies.
And also, whether a popular movement — a peace movement in the very heart of the war-making country itself — could turn around the policies of a great power.
These questions, simple in outline, remain almost as hard to answer today as they were on the day Saigon fell. The plain fact that the American war in Vietnam was a mistake and a crime — because it was undertaken so lightly, pursued so brutally and abandoned so perfidiously — is about the only plain fact there is.
The story of the collapse of South Vietnam is notoriously a chronicle of a defeat foretold. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, knowing the war was no longer politically sustainable, had agreed to withdraw US troops, as stipulated by the Paris Peace Agreement in Although it seems they occasionally entertained the idea that South Vietnam, given help, could perhaps survive, what this really meant was that they expected the South Vietnamese to fight on after the American soldiers slipped away, with the result that the US would not look too bad internationally.
A disillusioned and mutinous Congress bolted, particularly on the war, imposing cut after cut on the military aid that Saigon had been promised. Inexorably and, to the South Vietnamese, inexplicably, the number of shells their guns were allowed to fire, the number of missions their aircraft could fly and the spare parts available to keep equipment working diminished month by month.
As a technical, military problem, the war really was quite simple. South Vietnam was a long, thin country that was, by its geographical nature, permanently outflanked. It had to defend itself at every point, and could not do so without the mobility and firepower that was provided by US aid.
But the tap supplying that aid was now being turned off. President Thieu, who never had much legitimacy, now had even less. But if the South Vietnamese were in a parlous state, the North Vietnamese had deep anxieties of their own. Although party and government maintained an outward show of absolute confidence that victory and reunification would come, inwardly they were not so sure.
They, too, had equipment and ordnance problems, since the Russians and Chinese had also cut supplies after the Paris Peace Agreement. And, just like the South Vietnamese, they worried about the reliability and motives of their allies. The plan was for a two-year campaign that would bring victory in But the opening moves in the central highlands were so successful that they went for broke in It was all over within two months.
The North Vietnamese then closed in on Saigon. In the central highlands, Hue, Danang and elsewhere, there were terrible scenes of panic and disorder, of disobedience and desertion, but also hard-fought battles and acts of heroism and sacrifice. The world gasped. The reporters who had chosen to stay in Saigon were mainly French and Japanese, plus a few British and one or two Americans vaguely pretending to be Canadians.
We had reported a war that, while not without its dangers, was in some ways an easy one for journalists. We were ferried around efficiently by US planes and helicopters, and fed, accommodated and protected by US and to a lesser extent South Vietnamese soldiers. You could be on the edge of a battle in the north, near the ironically named Demilitarised Zone, in the morning, and back in Saigon having a drink after a shower in the early evening.
Now we suddenly found ourselves in limbo. Our life-support system of American pilots and protectors, analysts, Australian embassy military attaches and the like had vanished. Many Vietnamese contacts had left or gone to ground. Our fixers, assistants, drivers and translators had, too.
Some who turned out to have been communist agents did remain, but they had moved up in the world, naturally. The North Vietnamese had a few sophisticated English- and French-speaking officers who were sometimes helpful, but that was rare.
On one such occasion, just after the fall of the city, a North Vietnamese army film unit burst into the offices of CBS and demanded that the bureau hand over its footage of the last real fight of the war, at Newport Bridge just outside the city. They were sweaty and angry — it seemed they had arrived too late at the bridge to get their own film, so they wanted to grab what the US TV crew had shot. I witnessed the confrontation and shot off to get a suave North Vietnamese colonel we had met earlier.
He came, defused the situation and ordered his compatriots to leave. The relieved bureau chief offered him a drink. Perhaps not surprisingly, we never did.
We were left to our own meagre devices. We could not file our reports at first, because the post office was closed and all other telexes and phone lines were down. When we could, we sent reams of copy about the final days that we had been unable to get out at the time. After that, what could we do? We could not do what we had so often done in the past, which was to write critically about US policy and the South Vietnamese government and army. All that was gone, and our criticisms no longer mattered, if they ever had.
A group of us drove along Route 13 toward An Loc, a town north of Saigon that had been under siege during the general offensive. South Vietnamese military tunics were scattered in the ditches on each side. Support Our Journalism. Friday, 12 November, Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Privacy Policy. Password recovery. Diplomats and south Vietnamese being evacuated from roof of US embassy in Saigon on 29 April www. Most Popular. Covaxin efficacy stands at Like Kabul, the city's capture came much quicker than the US had expected.
In response, the US abandoned its embassy in Saigon and evacuated over 7, American citizens, South Vietnamese and other foreign nationals by helicopter - a scramble known as Operation Frequent Wind. By its end, the Vietnam War had become increasingly unpopular back in the US, and had cost not only billions of dollars but over 58, American lives.
For some, the fall of Saigon was a blow to America's standing on the world stage. In the decades since, the term Vietnam Syndrome has emerged - denoting a reluctance by American voters to commit military power abroad. Many US policymakers have drawn parallels between Saigon and Kabul. It's not that kind of situation.
Symbolism aside, there are major differences between the two. The fall of Saigon took place two years after US forces were withdrawn from Vietnam. America's evacuation from Kabul, meanwhile, is happening while the US was already preparing to leave Afghanistan.
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