Tom Glenn's Blog, page 115
May 1, 2020
The Sad Month of April (13)
On the morning of 29 April 1975, I and the two men who volunteered to stay with to the end struggled to find a way to escape from Saigon as the North Vietnamese attacked. We’d already received word that the ambassador had been countermanded from Washington and an evacuation had been ordered.
I telephoned the embassy. “The evacuation is on. Get us out of here!”
The lady I talked to was polite, even gracious. She explained to me, as one does to child, that the embassy could do nothing for us—we were too far away, and, although I probably didn’t know it, the people in the streets were rioting. Of course I knew it; I could see them. I uttered an unprintable curse. She responded, “You’re welcome.”
By that time, the Marines from the 7th Fleet, which was cruising out of sight in the South China Sea, had landed. I tracked down Marine Colonel Al Gray and asked if he could evacuate us with his guys. He assured me he would.
We got word that armed South Vietnamese air force officers had forced their way into the building and were on the loose, demanding evacuation at gun point. Offices were to be emptied and locked. We were to proceed at once to the evacuation staging area, an office the Marines had secured. We sent our last message announcing we were closing down. It was a personal message from me to my boss, General Lew Allen, Director of NSA:
HAVE JUST RECEIVED WORD TO EVACUATE. AM NOW DESTROYING REMAINING CLASSIFIED MATERIAL. WILL CEASE TRANSMISSIONS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THIS MESSAGE.
WE’RE TIRED BUT OTHERWISE ALL RIGHT. LOOKS LIKE THE BATTLE FOR SAIGON IS ON FOR REAL.
FROM GLENN: I COMMEND TO YOU MY PEOPLE WHO DESERVE THE BEST NSA CAN GIVE THEM FOR WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN THROUGH BUT ESPECIALLY FOR WHAT THEY HAVE ACHIEVED.
Even though the message was from me to General Allen, I still began the third paragraph with the words “FROM GLENN.” I wanted to be sure he knew it was me speaking.
More tomorrow.
April 30, 2020
The Sad Month of April (12)
Memories of the fall of Saigon, 45 years ago this month:
The bombing of the Tan Son Nhat runways, on the northern edge of Saigon, at sunset on 28 April 1975, was just the beginning. As we cowered in our office in the DAO building, we were bombarded throughout the night and much of the following day, first rockets, later, beginning around 0430 hours local on 29 April, artillery. One C-130 on the runway next to us was hit before it could airlift out refugees; two others took off empty. With the runways now cratered, fixed-wing airlifts were at an end. Rounds landed inside our compound; the General’s Quarters next door was destroyed. Worst of all, two of the Marines I had been talking to were killed at the compound gate. Their names were McMahon and Judge. They were the last American fighting men killed on the ground in Vietnam.
One image I’ll never forget: sometime during the night I was on the cot taking my two-hour rest break when the next bombardments started. I sat straight up and watched the room lurch. Bob was typing a message at a machine that rose a foot in the air, then slammed back into place. He never stopped typing.
Just after that, we got in a message telling us that FREQUENT WIND PHASE IV had been declared. That was the code name for the evacuation. It had finally been ordered.
We gave up trying to rest. The air in the comms center, the only room we were still using, was faintly misty and smelled of smoke, as if a gasoline fire was raging nearby. After daylight, I got a call from the Vietnamese officer I’d visited a few days before. He wanted to know where his boss, the general, was. He’d tried to telephone the general but got no answer. I dialed the general’s number with the same result. I found out much later that the general had somehow made it from his office to the embassy and got over the wall. He was evacuated safely while his men stayed at their posts awaiting orders from him. They were still there when the North Vietnamese arrived.
More next time.
April 29, 2020
The Sad Month of April (11)
More memories of the fall of Saigon, 45 years ago this month:
Not long before sunset on 28 April 1975, I made a head run. The mammoth Pentagon East, what we called the Defense Attaché Office building (originally the MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam] building) at Tan Son Nhat on the northern edge of Saigon, was in shambles. Light bulbs were burned out, trash and broken furniture littered the halls, and the latrines were filthy and smelled disgusting. I came across men on stepladders running cables through the ceiling. They told me they were wiring the building for complete destruction. “Last man out lights the fuse and runs like hell,” they joked.
I went into the men’s room. I was standing at the urinal when the wall in front of me lunged toward me as if to swat me down, then slapped back into place. The sound of repeated explosions deafened me and nearly knocked me off my feet. Instead of sensibly taking cover, I believed I needed to know what was going on—I was an intelligence officer. I left the men’s room and went to the closest exit at the end of a hall, unbolted it, and stepped into the shallow area between the western wall of the building and the security fence, a space of maybe ten to fifteen feet, now piled high with sandbags.
The first thing I noticed was that the throngs of refugees had dispersed—no one was clamoring outside the fence—presumably frightened away by the explosions. My ears picked up the whine of turbojets. I shaded my eyes from the setting sun and spotted five A-37 Dragonfly fighters circling above the Tan Son Nhat runways. They dove, dropped bombs, and pulled up. The resulting concussions sent me tumbling, but I was on my feet and running before the planes went into their next approach. Back in the office, I received a dispatch telling me that renegade pilots who had defected to the Communists were bombing Tan Son Nhat.
More next time.
April 28, 2020
The Sad Month of A (10)
Continuing memories of the fall of Saigon, 45 years ago this month:
By 27 April 1975, I had succeeded in getting 41 of my guys and their families safely out of Saigon as the North Vietnamese began their attacks on the city. Two men, Bob Hartley, a communicator, and Gary Hickman, an communications equipment maintenance man, had volunteered to stay with me to the end. We locked all the doors throughout the office suite, and I moved my cot from the from the front office—my office—into the comm center.The three of us went on a regimen of one guy resting for two hours while the other two worked. Our food, bar snacks we’d been able to scrounge while we could still get out in the streets, was just about gone. But we had plenty of coffee—Bob and Gary had seen to that—and I’d made sure I wouldn’t run out if cigarettes. From then on it was lots of coffee, chain smoking, almost nothing to eat, and no sleep.
With nothing else to do, the three of us talked. We told each other all about our families, where our NSA careers had taken us in years past, our plans for the future, the meals we craved when all this was over.
Then a series of messages I’ll never forget flowed in. They asked me to get children out of the country. The requests were from American men who had fathered kids with Vietnamese women and wanted to save them. I shuddered to think what might happen to Amerasian youngsters when the Communists took over. But it was too late. I had no vehicle and couldn’t even get out of the compound—surrounded by panicky crowds anxious for escape—much less to the addresses the children’s fathers gave me. To this day, I don’t know how the senders managed to get messages to me.
Partly to stay awake, I maintained my schedule of recon runs, checking out the parking lot and the perimeter. I got chummy with the snuffs at the gate closest to the building exit I used. Unlike most of the Marines, these guys were willing to fill me in on any new scuttlebutt. Among other things, they told me that people outside the fence were tossing babies into the compound, hoping they’d survive and escape the Communists. Most of the infants didn’t make it over the top of the fence—it was something like two stories high with barbed wire and an outward tilt at the top to prevent scalers. Some of them fell to ground and were killed because the people below failed to catch them as they fell. Those who did make it over the top fell to the ground inside the compound and were killed, because there was no one there to catch them.
More next time.
April 27, 2020
New Review Up
I invite your comments.
The Sad Month of April (9)
More on the visit of Marine Colonel Al Gray to my office in Saigon in April 1975, as the North Vietnamese prepared to attack the city:
Al told me that he’d been named the Ground Security Officer for evacuation of Saigon when it was ordered. He and his troops were aboard ships of the U.S. 7th Fleet cruising in the South China Sea, out of sight from land. He’d flown in by helicopter to prepare.
But the ambassador was throwing every roadblock he could think of in Al’s way. He wouldn’t allow Al and his men to fly in on Marine helicopters—they had to use the little hueys, the Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters belonging to the Air America, a civilian company operating in South Vietnam. Those little birds could only hold eight to fourteen people max. The ambassador wouldn’t allow the Marines to stay overnight. So Al and his men had to fly in, do their preparatory work, then fly back to the 7th Fleet each day on the little hueys. And the ambassador insisted that Al and his men dress in mufti, not Marine uniforms. Al’s form of protest was the wild shirt he was wearing.
What Al told me helped to calm me. Now I knew that, ambassador or no ambassador, the Marines had landed. They were ready to carry out the evacuation the instant it was ordered.
After the end of the Vietnam war, Al Gray went on to become a Marine general. He was kind enough to stay in touch with me over the years after the fall of Saigon. We often gave presentations together at gatherings. And he contacted me at least once a year to see how I was doing.
By the way, I don’t call him Al any more. That stopped the day he was named Commandant of the Marine Corps. Now I call him “sir.”
General Gray is the finest leader I came across during my years in Vietnam. He had two priorities: his mission and the welfare of his men. And he never asked his troops to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.
General Gray is now 91 years old and still going strong. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a great man. It has been my privilege to know him.
More on the sad month of April 1975 next time.
April 26, 2020
The Sad Month of April (8)
More on my memories of the fall of Saigon forty-five years ago this month:
During the last week of April 1975, as I reported earlier, I was sleeping in my office located on the northern edge of Saigon and living on bar snacks scavenged from a local cocktail lounge. As I scrambled to get the last of my people safely out of Vietnam before the North Vietnamese took the city, I spent hours destroying our classified material. Since even the presence of National Security Agency (NSA) personnel in Vietnam was secret, reams of paper had to be burned. Then the ashes had to be stirred to be sure nothing was left legible.
As I took loads of material out to burn in the incinerators in the parking lot of our compound, I spotted brawny young American men with skinhead haircuts inside the fence. They were wearing tee-shirts and tank tops, shorts, and tennis shoes. And when two or three of them were walking side by side, they fell into step with each other as if marching. I realized they were Marines in mufti. But I knew all the Marines in country, so who were these guys?
I found out the next day. I was trying unsuccessfully to grab some sleep on the cot in my office when the door chime sounded. I took my .38 revolver and went to the door. Through the peephole I saw a middle-aged American man dressed in shorts, rubber flip-flops, and the wildest Hawaiian shirt I had ever seen, colors so bright they hurt my eyes. The man gave me a flat-handed wave and a silly grin, and I recognized him. It was Al Gray, a Marine officer I’d worked with on and off during my thirteen years in and out of Vietnam. I’d first met Al when he was a captain in the early 1960s. I knew he was now a colonel. I’d never before seen out of uniform—I didn’t think he owned any civvies. And I knew he never came to Saigon unless he had to, then he stayed less than a day if he could. He hated bureaucracy, and his job was in the field with his troops. I put aside the .38 and opened the door. “Hi,” he said. “Can I come in?”
We went into my office and we talked. I told him everything I knew about the military situation, but he knew more than I did. What he was less clear about was the mobs of refugees flooding Saigon. I explained that I couldn’t get a car through the streets any more and that the compound was now surrounded by a crowd ten to fifteen people deep, all demanding evacuation. I was afraid the fence might not hold.
More tomorrow.
April 25, 2020
The Sad Month of April (7)
Continuing the series of posts on my memories of April 1975 and the fall of Saigon:
Forty-five years ago tomorrow, I was hunkered down in my office on the northern edge of Saigon as the North Vietnamese prepared to attack the city. I had been sleeping there since the middle of the month because I could no longer get a car through the streets, now mobbed with refugees pouring into Saigon to escape the advancing North Vietnamese. Only a handful of National Security Agency (NSA) personnel were left in Vietnam. I’d been secretly evacuating all my 43 guys and their families since early April even though the ambassador had forbidden me from sending my people out of the country. Here’s how I reported the events of 26 April 1975 in this blog two years ago:
“During the night of 26 April, I was trying unsuccessfully to sleep when a blast threw me from my cot and slammed me to the floor. I ran to the comms center. The guys looked dazed, but everything was working and nobody was hurt. A bulletin arrived within minutes telling us that North Vietnamese sappers had blown up the ammo dump at Bien Hoa, just north of us. That meant, among other things, that panic in the streets would ramp up a couple of notches.”
At the time, I didn’t know how I and the men still in Saigon would get out if commercial aircraft ceased flying—which happened the next day. Unbeknownst to me, the U.S. 7th Fleet was cruising out of sight of land in the South China Sea.
More in coming posts.
April 24, 2020
The Sad Month of April (6)
Further on my memories of living through the fall of Saigon in April 1975:
By the last week in April 1975, my staff and I had become experts at finding ways to get our people out of the country despite the ambassador’s ban on evacuation. But that wasn’t true in the beginning. Sometime during the first half of April, I asked a staff member where the earliest flight the next day would be headed. It was destined for Delhi, India. Fine, I said. Put George on the flight to get him safely out of the country. Label the trip justification “TDY,” that is temporary duty. My subordinate responded that sending George to Delhi on TDY was a violation of the rules—we had no work for George to do in Delhi because we didn’t have any operations there. I told my staff member to do it anyway. When he hesitated, I yelled at him. We sent George to Delhi who then booked a flight from there to the U.S.
By the next day, that staff member had become as expert on finding available flights out of the country to all kinds of places to get our people safely out of Vietnam. He ended up booking himself out for Germany.
I tell that story to demonstrate how flexible and ingenious my subordinates were during those dark days. Thanks to them—and to my unflinching willingness to lie, cheat, and steal to save my subordinates’ lives—all 43 and their families escaped before Saigon fell.
At the very end, I was no longer able to draw on funds to buy airplane tickets. So I paid from my own pocket for a ticket on Pan Am for one of my last guys to escape. His flight out turned out to be the last Pan Am flight out of Saigon at the end of April 1975.
Meanwhile, on 24 April 1975, 45 years ago today, the wire services, which we monitored, reported a speech that President Ford had given the previous day at Tulane. He referred to Vietnam as “a war that is finished.”
For once, my cynicism overcame my dread. If the Vietnam war was finished, what were I and my subordinates doing in Saigon? We were, after all, men of great value to the North Vietnamese if they could get their hands on us. We were spies. If we were captured, we’d spend at least a year imprisoned and be regularly tortured. And Saigon was now surrounded by eighteen North Vietnamese divisions.
We redoubled our efforts at getting everyone out. In the end, thank God, we were successful.
More on April 1975 in later posts.
April 23, 2020
The Sad Month of April (5)
More on my sad memories of April 1975 when Saigon fell:
On 22 April 1975, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published an estimate that the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) would not last more than a week. North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam, in other words, was at most a week away. As I sat isolated in my office on the northern edge of Saigon, I used every means at my disposal to get the last of my forty-three subordinates and their families safely out of the country. When I read the DIA analysis, transmitted to me electronically, I was grimly buoyant that at least the U. S. military was under no delusions about what was happening in Vietnam. The civilian side of the government, on the other hand, was under the sway of the U.S. ambassador in Saigon, Graham Martin, who assured President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger that the North Vietnamese had no intention of attacking Saigon and that, therefore, no evacuation was necessary. I knew better from monitoring the radio communications of North Vietnamese forces as they advanced closer and closer to Saigon. I warned the ambassador repeatedly of the forthcoming attack, only to be ignored.
I was living, sleeping, eating, and working in my office, having surreptitiously evacuated my wife and four children thirteen days earlier—the ambassador had forbidden me to evacuate my people. Only a few of my guys were left in Saigon. I’d gotten most of them and their families out by any ruse I could think of to get around the ambassador’s edict. Food was running short. For the next seven days, those of us living in the office survived on bar snacks we’d been able to scrounge from the few cocktail lounges still in operation.
More later.
