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.
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