Tens of thousands of people gathered here today to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war with the fall of Saigon to Communist forces and the defeat of the US-backed South Vietnamese regime.
Gala celebrations got under way in the southern economic capital, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, as people massed on the street in front of the former regime’s presidential palace, now called Reunification Palace.
Top leaders including Communist Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh, state President Tran Duc Luong and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai were joined by Raul Castro, Cuba’s defence minister and brother of President Fidel Castro at the ceremony.
“The victory of April 30, 1975 opened a new era for the Vietnamese people. This glory and this victory belongs first of all to the heroic Vietnamese people,” declared Nguyen Minh Triet, politburo member and party secretary of Ho Chi Minh City.
The glory and victory of the invading North, the actual aggressors along with their Soviet allies, were not to be shared by all of the Vietnamese people, as thousands were subsequently killed by the conquering communists and thousands upon thousands more suffered for almost two generations under the dictatorship of a gasping, dying ideology that now turns to the “aggressor” U.S. for friendly cooperation.
The day is also marked rather differently by John and the denizens of Argghhh!!!. I especially direct you to the remembrances of the day in the comments, where several, including some vets, have posted their memories of the moment. Here’s a painful one from John:
I just stood behind my Dad in the family room, watching the blood flow from the 5 Purple Hearts his tour in Vietnam garnered… as a little bit of his soul leaked out of each one, as he sat watching the television.
In his book Summons of the Trumpet, an excellent history of the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, Dave R. Palmer did not write of the glory of the fall of Saigon but instead looked at how the U.S. failed an ally and scrambled to save what and whom it could.
Meanwhile, with the time bought by the ARVN stand above Saigon, the United States was able to evacuate most Americans and tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who were related to Americans or were marked for death because of their affiliation with various U.S. activities in South Vietnam. The last group out was extracted in a day-long helicopter shuttle started after North Vietnamese gunners began shelling the city. Two American marines were killed when a round struck the building which had once housed the MACV headquarters. The last to die in the long war, neither had been born when the United States began to back Diem with advisors in 1954.
When the final chopper lifted off, carrying the last marine guards, it signalled the humiliating end to a once bright American dream of preventing a communist takeover of South Vietnam. The trumpet was silent.
That is the true heritage of the day. And the U.S. military has unfairly been forced to labor vigorously to salvage its reputation — globally, historically and in the eyes of the American people — ever since that day thirty years ago, a day when the American military did not lose but the U.S. did.
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2 responses to “Fall of Saigon — Thirty Years Later”
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