I often see articles that in passing make a brief reference to the Vietnam War. Very often these references are based on myths. One of those appeared in Ha'aretz on March 6, 2002. I prepared but never sent the following "article" as a letter. The particular comment was

 "And a near victory … in Vietnam ended with the unforgetable image of a superpower airlifting the last of its citizens out of the country from the rooftop of the embassy" in Gideon Samet's article "Not before more blood flows", Ha'aretz, Wednesday, March 6, 2002, page 5:

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Anti-Communist Vietnamese Flee Saigon by Helicopter

The familiar image of the last American helicopter departing its embassy roof at the end of the Vietnam War is often misunderstood. The truth is that it was the last step in a gigantic rescue effort that over the course of the South Vietnamese collapse took to the United States about 140,000 refugees who feared for their lives. In the last ten days alone about 5,600 South Vietnamese were evacuated from Saigon, most by helicopter to carriers waiting in the South China Sea. Those so memorably left on the roof of the embassy were just a few of the other hundreds of thousands who wanted to make their escape from a dictatorial regime that would soon imprision them.

At the time of this departure, aside from the rescue crews themselves — Marines who had given their all to the rescue effort  — and a few embassy personnel, there were almost no Americans in the country.

As a result of anti-war sentiment in the United States by early 1972 President Nixon had withdrawn all but 6,000 American troops, down from its high of about 500,000. Taking advantage of this, North Vietnam launched a major offensive on March 30, 1972, and Nixon responded with a major bombing of the North between April and October, 1972, the first bombing since 1969. This led to the forced retirement of the North Vietnamese military chief, Vo Nguyen Giap. (Giap was sick and probably did not resist as much as he might otherwise have.) 

Ten months after the North Vietnamese offensive and four months after the US bombing campaign ended, a series of negotiations led to the signing of an agreement in Paris on January 27, 1973. The agreement called for the withdrawal of all remaining American forces and a cease-fire between North Vietnam and South Vietnam (and included numerous other points). On March 29, 1973, two months after the signature, the last American troops left. This was 25 months before the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Accusing the South Vietnamese of not honoring the treaty, the North Vietnamese proceeded to violate it. They planned an offensive for 1975. When it was implemented, starting with an attack on January 7, 1975 the North Vietnamese were successful far beyond their expectations. A South Vietnamese army of over a million simply disintegrated because of lack of arms, a defeatist attitude, and poorly executed retreats. The lack of arms was because the US Congress had cut off most of its funding for the South Vietnamese military. North Vietnam, heavily supplied by China and the USSR, suffered no such cuts.

On April 30, 1975 the acting South Vietnamese president, Duong Van Minh, issued an unconditional surrender. The capture of Saigon by arms was an affair staged for its propaganda value. For example, the famous photo of  a tank crashing through the gates of  the Presidential Palace was staged; the victors could have just opened the gate since there was no resistance, armed or otherwise.

During the period from January to May, 1975, as the North gained and the South lost, millions, with justice, fled life under the likely communists. Unfortunately only a small portion were initially rescued; most of the rest had to engender their own escape as boat people over the next decade. The famous helicopter scene and its panic, was a panic and departure of anti-communist Vietnamese, not an airlift of Americans.
 

Gerald Chandler
14 B Abraham Lincoln,
Jerusalem
(972) 02-6231512

March 6, 2002