Last Dragonflies: April 29, 1975

Uncovering my face from the woolen blanket, I floated into consciousness at the soft calling of Grandma Dong, “Hong-My, wake up!  Time to go bathroom.” 

When I finally emerged from the elastic path between past and present, it was my brother Patrick tugging at my leg, calling, “Hong-My!  Wake up!  Time to go.”

As the morning of April 29^th, 1975 peeked through Uncle Chan’s slatted windows, we were ordered to get ready to leave.  The adults had stayed up all night to come up with a new plan to get out of Saigon. 

“You cannot leave your family, and your children are too young to travel this way,” I overheard Mom’s advising her brother.  “With Danielle and Mai-Xuan being French nationals, you would be better protected than the rest of us.”   

My uncle was nervously pacing the living room, now glancing at the wall clock, now tuning his radio to another station.  We heard nothing but static, until he tuned to BBC.  Then it was my turn to frustrate, because I could not make out the meaning in the foreign tongue.  Often, the rising pitch of the emergency warning siren pierced through the whole city, “Ooooo…,” like a dog’s howl, drawing on, then abruptly cut as though its throat had been slashed.  With each “Ooooooo...,” Mom would plead, “Let’s hurry,” until finally, the adults seemed to reach a breaking point, when they could no longer think, debate, but need to run, to act.

Dad stood up. “Let’s go.”

Mom reached for the bag of provision and called for us.  The four of us climbed into the backseat of our red Mazda.  Before getting in the car, Mom held my uncle hand’s for a brief moment.  Their fingers enlaced.

“We'll see you in France,” she said. 

My uncle nodded. 

Dad came out with only his briefcase, the only item necessary for this change of plan. The rest of our luggage was abandoned behind.  My uncle hurried over to to shake Dad's hand. Through Dad’s last words to Uncle Chan, I vaguely understood that our family would try the American Embassy, located nearby.  On top of the embassy building was a heliport; inside it were the American Ambassador, Graham Martin, and his key personnel still holding out hope for a last-minute reversal of fortune.  Dad and Uncle Chan had counted on Esso’s promise to help.  The exit visas inside Dad’s Samsonite was supposed to clear us through the bureaucratic hurdle at the airport.  But now, even the vital documents inside the Samsonite seemed useless. All we had for the Embassy was the verbal assurance from Esso, months earlier. 

Slapping my uncle's shoulder, Dad attempted his usual light joke, “If we aren't back by tomorrow night, we may be  on our way to France, or Heaven.”  His ill-timed pleasantry would surely horrify our mother, had she been within earshot.  I shifted nervously at the idea of an impending quarrel between our parents.

Dad took control of his Mazda, and the chauffeurs were sent back home with the other two cars and extra luggage. Within ten minutes, we arrived to the Esso Building on Thong Nhat Street. Dad often took me to his workplace, either for a health checkup at his company clinic or to pick up some work documents on his way to town.  We clambered out silently.

As he was locking up, a man approached and proposed money for our car.  He must have guessed our intention to flee the country from the way we dressed. We were ridiculously bundled in thick, woolen clothes.  Dad said he was not interested, and when the man kept pushing for a deal, Dad acted rudely. 

“Leave us alone. We aren't going anywhere.”

Then our family of six quickened our steps toward our destination. I saw the mass a few blocks up. It was mayhem. Total chaos reigned on this normally stately neighborhood lined with government buildings, international company headquarters and foreign-owned mansions.  It was a market scene–food scraps, discarded luggage and clothing, scattering boxes of cigarettes, and tons of papers everywhere, trampled on by thousands of feet, running this way, that way. We were no more than scared animals, our wits driven by our escaping limbs. I saw harried faces with bewildered, searching eyes–searching for ways to run, searching for lost children, searching for unguarded belongings to steal, searching without a clear purpose, mouths hollering, all panicking. 

Rising above this frantic mass was a majestic building, a formidable boxy fortress with white concrete lattices enveloped by a vast compound:  the U.S. Embassy.  All I could see clearly was the high exterior wall with barbed-wires, the tall corrugated gates, and green, striped uniformed soldiers guarding above the walls. In front of this stronghold was an uncoordinated, loud, and mad makeshift camp, teeming with people. Fellowmen shoved and pushed one another for the prime locations closest to the embassy’s high gate. The frantic fathers and mothers bawled out the names of their straying children. From all directions, the calls of “Cu ơi! Hoy, Cu! Where are you?” echoed, transmitted from groups to groups. 

Over the course of the day, different cu was lost, and others rejoined their parents.  The hailing reminded me to be vigilant of Patrick, whose hand I pulled. I could feel that Patrick, our own cu, had had enough of being dragged around by me as we trailed behind our parents from one corner to the next—Mom holding tight to little Michelle, Dad with Anne on his shoulders. I doubted if my brother understood this new game. Often, he tried to pull away from my tight grip, and more than once, I had to promise him that I would let him go free, "At that big gate," I said, showing him with my chin the mighty wrought iron entrance to the embassy.

We finally joined the thousands waiting for an opportunity to be airlifted in a scene that could have been taken straight from the Day of Judgment, when groups of people were called and separated out; the salvaged souls were led to the Gate of Heaven, while their condemned fellows were left for the hellfire. Each step closer to the forbidden gates seemed to cut a bigger escape hole into our fast-sinking world. 

The day lengthened. Around us the mass thickened in multiple lines stretched forth to the faraway embassy gate. Worn in their fight for survival, people were no longer on their feet tussling for territories but spread out on pavements, dozing off, chewing on bits of dried food, feeding their children. The crowd was at the same time patient and aggressive. Like air, it quickly filled the gaps left by the people who either had given up the wait to return home or had been called and allowed inside. The latter group were families with connections or with the backup of large fortunes, we soon found out.  But we would get there, I thought. We were already so close to that gate. 

By noon, there was a small breeze, and with it the odor of urine and sweats. The little boys were all exhausted in their parents' arms on the ground. The little girls all looked like Cosette, their hair matted and faces besmeared. The wailings of babies became hoarse, unnerving cat’s scream, and the men started to curse everyone present and absent. The government was “Son of a b_tch.” The same epithet was attributed to a neighbor for encroaching their space on the camping ground. Brawls broke out, only to be separated by the wives and other menfolk. 

While we were thus lost in the anonymity of the mass, “Quân, Quân," the sound of someone hailing Mom’s name rose above the brouhaha. We looked for the caller, which might mean help in this sea of sharks. The faint call became distinct.  There she was, Aunt Khang, cupping the name of her cousin.

Mom swam towards her across the human sea.  When they parted Mom swam back to us with great difficulty while Aunt Khang hastily peeled herself off from the mass. Mom relayed to Dad the content of the urgent message, which I caught in bits and pieces. "Leave," then "seaport." Navy ships, I later found, were still picking up evacuees at the port Ben Chương Dương to be ferried out to sea for subsequent airlifts.  

Dad’s favorite ear was pointed toward Mom as she spoke. I saw his other ear, the weaker one, disdainful with its thick lobe, always ready to ignore my mother's words in all my parents' debates. In the end, the left ear won. We were staying put. "It's too late to move away from here," Dad said. "Precious time has already been lost," he added, and really, who exactly knew what the right thing to do, which way to freedom, and which to mere running to and fro, to no use, or worse, death, crushed by the fleeing mad crowd, or pushed into the water, or shot at.

We did not budge from where we doggedly stationed.  Time and again, in a burst of desperation, Dad would get up to try for the embassy’s high gate for the umpteenth time, to no avail.  The human mass, packed in layers immovable in front of that gate, had become an effective barrier against any attempts of line breaching. Normally docile and accommodating, the grievous and abandoned Vietnamese had turned savage, easily provoked to violence.  Young men were seen climbing the barbed wall, only to be thrown back by soldiers guarding above it. 

The sun descended from its high arch, and the heat risen up like hot steam from the asphalt was dissipating.  Mom ordered us to get atop a car roof to rest, in case of a stampede towards the gates.  Above, the noisy choppers came and went, whipping the air with their blades, like a giant blender operated by an impatient chef. Suddenly, from the far horizon appeared a double helix Chinook, looming larger every minute through the canopy of tamarind trees, pulverizing leaves and branches, sucking up clouds of dust like the vortex of a tornado. The famous scene is well-described in an abridged version of Heroes by John Pilger.

… It was approaching midnight. The embassy compound was lit by the headlights of embassy cars, and the jolly Green Giants were now taking up to 90 people each. Martin Garrett, the head of security, gathered all the remaining Americans together. The waiting Vietnamese sensed what was happening and a marine colonel appeared to reassure them that Ambassador Martin had given his word he would be the last to leave. It was a lie, of course. It was 2:30 a.m. on April 30 when Kissinger phoned Martin and told him to end the evacuation at 3:45 a.m. After half an hour Martin emerged with an attaché case, a suit bag and the Stars and Stripes folded in a carrier bag. He went in silence to the sixth floor where a helicopter was waiting. "Lady Ace 09 is in the air with Code Two." "Code Two" was the code for an American Ambassador. The clipped announcement over the tied circuit meant that the American invasion of Indo-China had ended….

It might have been 3 A.M. when a great commotion was heard at the main gate, then a shout: “It’s open!”  I only learned of the significance of that moment through research as I wrote these lines, that moment when the embassy's enormous tamarind was felled to accommodate the large Chinook. The tree's life was taken to save American lives was the same Martin Graham, the American Ambassador in Saigon, had vowed to protect as it symbolized the American might in Southeast Asia.  Now, with that tree severed from its root and the last represent of U.S.A airlifted from his post, its buckskin would become the symbol of a painful defeat.  The ants had won the elephant. 

Unknowingly to the populace, Washington had long given up South Vietnam in exchange for a more profitable diplomacy with China. The death certificate of Saigon had been signed months ago. Just like the faithful reports of our journalists had failed to raise the sound of alarm inside the capital weeks ago, the brave resistance of our soldiers in the last hours of Saigon was only abortive efforts to slow the advancing enemy.

When the American radio started playing “White Christmas,” when over the inner circuit the coded message for the abandonment of Saigon was articulated to all Americans, when the last helicopter had picked up the ambassador, not realizing that the malevolent force of the cosmos had been unleashed to seal our fates, Mom and Dad continued to fight to save their family. They dragged us with them, using their elbows to pry their way through the crowd, lunging, pushing, squeezing through, and pulling their long tail of kids like a great serpent.  It was as if we were playing the “dragon and serpent climbing up the sky."

We were finally pushed inside the sovereign building, up a narrow flight of stairs, then through a small landing and upward, higher and higher.  As we clambered in the dark stairway, a faint fizz was heard, followed by a painful burning sensation in both my eyes.

“Tear gas,” a cry went up, to the confusion of all others.  We continued pushing up in search of an exit, sputtering and mopping our watery eyes.  Just when I thought that the stabbing in my eyes would blind me, if it continued, a merciful whiff of fresh air invaded the confined space.  The door to the heliport had been burst open. 

We found ourselves under a starry sky, atop the world.  Hope was grinning at me, showing all her teeth. I cried and laughed at the same time. I was instantly reenergized. We were saved. We filed in and sat down. There was a tacit cooperation among the people. There seemed to be a mutual agreement to behave, as if the wolves from the streets below, through the process of ascending higher towards the heaven, had reached their higher karma, had shed their furs, dropped their fangs and transformed into nobler beings. The departure would be orderly, people's behavior seemed to say.

Among us was one American civilian.  He, like the mass, looked searchingly into the stars, ears alert for the sound of “dragonflies,” as helicopters were dubbed. The few that came left hurriedly. After a long time, seeing that the people all became agitated each time another helicopter hovered closer, the American stood up and said these words, which a Vietnamese man translated: “Be calm! Be still! You are scaring the pilot. We must remain orderly.”

Afterward, a silence blanketed us like the dark drape of Death, suffocating all sounds, muting the agitated young kids.  Even the babies stopped stirring.  In that suspended position, we waited. We waited and waited. But no helicopter came. 

As dawn slowly rose over the horizon, the American got on his feet and left, and soon the people one by one followed him, going through the same opening that the previous night was the door to heaven and this morning gaped like the mouth of the devil, eating away our last hope. 

“Let’s go, children. Quân! Let’s leave,” was Dad's voice in my ears, so far off, unreal. This was a second time in less than three days I witnessed his powerless defeat. It was incomprehensible.  Didn't he say we would be saved on time? I had placed my full confidence in him to lead us out of danger. He had never failed to get me out of trouble before. A signature or a phone call from him always resolved everything at school. When I felt and scraped my knees and the blood was so awful to see, just the fact that he scooped me up erased all pains. I saw how he extinguished the flames that had engulfed our kitchen when a hose from the propane tank leaked. Within weeks the kitchen was new again, the cabinets rebuilt and the walls repainted. What happened? Why did he fail this time when so much was at stake? Was he negligent?

He might choose to surrender, but not I. I could not accept this new fate. No. God would answer me. I had been a good Catholic. Stubbornly, I prayed, “Our Father who art in heaven ….” I prayed like a zombie, without faith. It dawned on me that Dad knew better. We could no longer be saved.  The clock had stopped ticking. Our morning sun would be replaced by a sickle and hammer bathed in blood.

We took the same flight of stairs down, passing through the many offices that we didn’t see in the dark the night before. All the doors were thrown open, and inside nothing was left unturned: chairs toppled–like wooden horses kicked by a spoiled child’s tantrum; desk drawers on the floors, their contents spilled like vomit out of a sick patient, and once more, papers, printed documents everywhere.  Mobs of looters pushed past us in the opposite direction, women and children among them, pouring left and right into the ransacked rooms for bounties, with the same urgency as witnessed in the people running for their lives on the streets. I didn't understand anything anymore. The chaos on the street seen only a day before was nothing compared to what lay at our feet, once we were disgorged from the Embassy cavity.  It was as if a hurricane had just blown through and had swept the contents of the whole city into the boulevards.  Floor fans with their blades silent, supplicant inside their metal cage.  Books. Binders, their pages torn off, the loose papers fluttering like white birds in the breeze.  Under the late morning sun, someone's refrigerator waited patiently in the middle of the street. 

We walked on, accepting the new face of the city unquestioned.  Convoys of tanks rolled down Highway One bearing soldiers in green uniform, with flags billowing in the air.  My initial reaction was joy, for I thought our army was still there, retreating back to defend the capital. Then my eyes spotted the darker green uniforms everywhere, like corpses, on the streets, and realized the difference. No, it wasn't our soldiers on those tanks, but the advancing enemies, into the heart of the Southland to claim their victory. We had lost the war.

At the corner of Thong Nhat, our crimson Mazda waited patiently.  "EO3592," beamed its license plate, like an old friend holding up a cardboard sign at the airport.  Dad pulled out his set of keys, and we boarded uncomplaining.  The Esso guard, recognizing Dad, ran out from his shack to share the terrible thing he had just heard. Dad quickly turned on the car radio. This was the announcement that invaded my ears at thirteen years old on that April 30th, 1975: “Compatriots!  I declare the war over.  I order all of you to put down your weapons and join our liberators in the process of reconciliation.  I repeat! The war is over!”

Dad cut off the sound, and both our parents wailed uncontrollably. Their tear-shrieked faces had aged all of a sudden. I could not bear to look at them and stared instead into the sun-clad boulevards, to the same scenery now unrecognizable under our new circumstance. Why were we still in this city? Whose country was it? But of course, there were no questions asked in that moment. Only sobbing. Only swirling thoughts in my head, possible answers, possible new realities, possible deaths. 

Dad drove our family to his sister, Aunt Su. Together, under the guidance of a Red Cross employee, a close friend of my aunt’s family, our group took off in two cars toward Saint Grall–one of Saigon’s few well-established hospitals, in search of amnesty under the protection of Red Cross International. Our car bore two flags on each side of the windshield: the tricolored flag of France and the universal Red Cross flag.  We took refuge inside the hospital for a few days, then when it was deemed safe we returned to our separate homes.

The old, quarrelsome turkey had been slaughtered for meat in our absence, but all was as before.  Our three servants decided that they would stay with us.  The chauffeurs had all left, since their service would no longer be needed. South Vietnamese would soon find out the chameleon laws of the jungle, wielded by party members and the Red regime. The prophetic phrase, "Don't listen to what the communists say, but look at their actions" would soon be enacted.

But I am getting ahead. Let my story unfold and speak for itself.