Last American standing's fight before the flight
In this excerpt from ‘The Vietnam War Its Ownself’, former CIA agent James ‘Mule’ Parker tells of the tense dealings with army generals from the south
PUBLISHED : 26 Apr 2015 at 06:18
NEWSPAPER SECTION: Spectrum
After the February, 1973, ceasefire mandated by the signing of a US-North Vietnam agreement, I was re-assigned to South Vietnam. I was the last guy out.
Some of the most memorable events of that time took place in the last couple of weeks of the American war, as the North Vietnamese army swept southward towards the capture, on April 30, of Saigon. The South Vietnamese capital was renamed Ho Chi Minh City a day later.
These events connected with my April 1975 evacuation included my last meetings with two generals of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), Le Van Hung and Tran Van Hai. Hung, at his headquarters in Can Tho, commanded Military Region IV, the vast Mekong Delta south of Saigon. Gen Hai was the last commander of the ARVN 7th Infantry Division, then based at Dong Tam, My Tho province, roughly halfway between Saigon and Can Tho.
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Hung — who spoke in a low voice, and had to search for the right English words in his limited vocabulary — was philosophical about the obvious coming to an end of the fighting. Hung was the No 2 South Vietnamese military man in the Delta, and he told me at our last meeting of the movement of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces barrelling in to attack and take over Saigon. It was almost as amazing as the fact that our US embassy in Saigon refused to believe what he was saying.
Hai spoke vernacular English and could cuss like a US sailor. He could use the F-bomb in every phase of our language — verb, noun, adjective, adverb, conjunction. Gen Hai had his ARVN 7th Division on the Cambodian border, right under the Parrot’s Beak. His was the only South Vietnamese force between a growing encampment of North Vietnamese across the border, and the underbelly of Saigon.
I don’t know where he learned his English, but like I said, he had a strong command of the language, and one of the reasons he allowed me to visit every few days is that he liked to use his English and I was the only American who visited. He brutalised me with his comments about the way the US had exercised its assumed responsibility in fighting the North Vietnamese. He was unmerciful in his comments, holding me responsible, because to him, I represented the US government.
Around April 12, Senator Frank Church went front and centre of a host of cameras in Washington, DC, and said that the US Congress was not going to fund the war in Vietnam any more. Video of the interview is still out there on the internet. He said the South Vietnamese were on their own, and he made some parting comment which we heard as, “Good riddance” and “at last”. Hai followed US news reports.
I told the Air America crew who took me out to Hai’s headquarters the next day that the general might shoot me because of what Church had said, and I asked them to shut the helicopter down — which they didn’t want to do because the enemy was so close, but did when I told them they would be able to hear the gun shots inside the general’s tent.
Same entrance this time as before, the long walk down that pallet floor to the lawn furniture, Gen Hai lost in a cloud of smoke in the dark tent. And finally when he started talking he got up, and I’m not sure if he had made up his mind to shoot me or not, but when he got up, he had his pistol in an open holster on his belt, and the butt of his hand on the pistol. I do not remember him saying Senator Church’s name specifically, maybe he did, I just don’t remember. I was scared s**tless. He went over everything Church had said in that interview, including whatever that wise guy remark was at the end, which at that time in that place sounded vulgar. Especially with Hai repeating it. He mentioned the old US battle guide-on of “Duty, Honour, Country” was now absolutely gone from US endeavours overseas.
When I finally decided that he wasn’t going to kill me, I gathered my wits enough to tell him that things had run their course, and he had to accept fate, and make the best of them. Not long thereafter Frank Snepp the CIA chief analyst came down from Saigon to try to convince us in the Delta that the end was not near. As incredible as that sounded, he went on like he knew what he was talking about. He sounded out of touch, arrogant. Pompous.
And here’s the thing about that. I grew up in Aberdeen, NC. Mr Snepp grew up in Kinston, NC — 100 miles apart in the tobacco growing region of North Carolina. But it was like we were living two realities in Vietnam, and as the CIA chief analyst, he had more credibility than me. His was the prevailing reality. More people in our government listened to him. Of all people, he was supposed to know … but he didn’t.
We were absolutely of two minds on the situation. And he was wrong. He never asked what I thought about the situation. Not one question on what I or the CIA base in Can Tho thought. Our reality.
My final escape from Vietnam was fast paced, using Air America to take me and some CIA spies who would certainly be shot when the North Vietnamese took over out to the US Navy. I talked some ship captain into taking my charges. Soon, because he could find no one on Planet Earth who had approved what we were doing, he kept me off my final flight out, and put me and my rough-looking group of Asian spies on a merchant marine ship sitting at anchor. On that ship, I made my getaway from Vietnam, after a run up the coast in an old landing craft so that it could pick up the very last of the refugees from Vietnam in the Vung Tau harbour.
I was on the topmost bridge of that ship when I said my goodbye to Vietnam. There were no Americans to my front. I was so tired I could barely stand, but I remember clearly that I forced myself to straighten up and I forced myself to remember those who had died in this fight. At the end I gave them — and those who had survived — a hand salute.
The next day, as we steamed toward the Philippines, South Vietnamese General Hung and Hai separately committed suicide rather than surrender or flee. Duty, Honour, Country writ large.
At 7pm on April 30, 1975, Gen Hung, the former ARVN 21st Division commander and my friend, called his wife into his office in Can Tho. He told her that 10 townspeople had come to him and asked him not to fight the advancing Viet Cong in their city’s streets. The communists would simply shell the city and leave it waste, they said, and many civilians would die.
Hung told his wife he understood and had agreed not to turn Can Tho into a hopeless battlefield. He also said a contingency plan to retreat with some of his soldiers to an isolated area of the Delta had been compromised and was no longer viable. Surrendering was not an option. He could not even bear to meet with Major Hoang Van Thach, the ranking VC in the area. He would not flee his country. He had an obligation to the men who had given their lives in its defence. He was left with one honourable alternative, he said.
His wife cried and pleaded with him to reconsider. “Why can’t we leave for a foreign country like the others?” she asked. He stood, embraced his wife and wept. Finally he said, “Hurry up and ask your mother and the children to come in to see me.”
When his mother-in-law and the children came into his office, he said goodbye to them, kissing each child. All the soldiers in his outer office came in next, lined up, expecting orders. Hung told them the fighting was finished. He said the country was lost because of poor leadership in Saigon and asked their forgiveness if he, personally, had made mistakes. The atmosphere was solemn. “I accept death,” he said. “Goodbye, my brothers.”
He saluted them and then shook each man’s hand. He asked everyone to leave. Some of his men did not move, so he pushed them out the door, shook off his wife’s final pleas, and finally was alone in his office. Within moments there was a loud shot. General Hung was dead.
On the morning of May 1, 1975, at the mobile headquarters of the ARVN 7th Division, General Hai’s first lieutenant military aide came into his office.
General Hai lay face down at his desk. Alone during the night, without saying goodbye to anyone, he had committed suicide. A half-empty glass of brandy, laced with poison, was near an outstretched hand.
Three other generals of the expiring Army of the Republic of Vietnam also committed suicide rather than flee or surrender. n
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