What I remember 30 years distant of that last day in Vietnam was waking before dawn to muffled explosions and, in a groggy half-sleep, rolling onto the floor and pulling the mattress on top of me and dozing off again. The reaction was instinctive, a Pavlovian reflex to avoid any shattering glass should the explosions get nearer.
But then I awoke and realized the explosions were a softening-up barrage of artillery out at Ton Son Nhut airport. The North Vietnamese forces that had been rushing south for weeks with a tidal wave of refugees before them, had finally reached Saigon. After a decade, the war was at its end.
As the Vietnamese divisions had approached, there had been endless late-night discussions in the patio of the old Continental Palace Hotel where so many journalists stayed. Should we stay to record the final Vietnamese army takeover of the city we had so long lived in? Or should we follow U.S. Embassy plans to be sent by bus to Ton Son Nhut to catch the evacuation flights to Guam that had already been flying for weeks?
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