The US part of the Vietnam Conflict officially ended in 1973 as a result of the Paris Peace Accord. What this really meant was that the US combat forces would not take in the fighting anymore. It did not mean that the US was out of Vietnam. The vast majority of our forces left the country in 1973, but we continued to supply the South Vietnamese. We also had security forces for our embassy and consulates.

Because of restrictions on Navy ships entering Vietnamese ports ships like the USNS Sergeant Kimbro were used move supplies into the country. In April 1975 Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge and it was clear that the Republic of Vietnam would not stand long. These ships were also used in the mass evacuation at Tam Ky and Quang Ngai in late March.

An armada was put together during the month of April to support the withdrawal of all remaining forces and those who had supported us in our efforts. My ship was one of the units assigned to provide protection for this evacuation force. We were assigned a station five miles off the coast and well north of the evacuation force.

We were in a high state of readiness. We would keep our gun mounts and other combat areas of the ship ready for immediate action. We established port and starboard watches. Since we had no idea how long we would be in this high state of readiness we could not stay at General Quarters. With 50% of the officers and 50% of the key enlisted people on station at all times we could respond to any threat while the remainder of the ship was brought to GQ. In order to keep almost half the crew on station we decided to go to a watch routine of 12 hours on duty and 12 hours off. This would permit us to get enough sleep, attend to personal needs, and carry out necessary ship’s work.

I had the 1800-0600 (6PM –6AM) watch in the Combat Information Center (CIC). This is a compartment (room), adjacent to the Bridge which has the Radar, radio and teletype monitoring equipment, situational displays, plotting areas, Electronic Countermeasures and Sonar equipment which enables the officer in charge to evaluate the entire situation and coordinate a response.

Since a warship is more effective when moving we would run north for an hour, turn around and run south for an hour at 5kts with each leg passing through our assigned location. We repeated this routine day after day. On each watch we would exercise the mount crews and all stations by assigning fictitious coordinates as target and seeing how rapidly the mounts would come to bear on the target. The bridge crew would spend their time with the routine course changes every hour and plotting hundreds of little radar targets traveling steadily south along the coast as people tried to keep ahead of the advancing North Vietnamese. In CIC we kept busy plotting the location of all large ships in our area, tracking and identifying all aircraft flying through the area, and keeping track of around a dozen radio channels of communications between the defensive units, such as ourselves, and the evacuation forces to the south. We also had the ability to intercept radio broadcasts from various air and ground units with our Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) equipment.

Essentially it was almost an entire month of painfully tiring routine for the entire crew. It was hot, humid, and rather boring. We had rather primitive night vision devices in the mid 70s. On each bridge wing, along with a 50-caliber machine gun, we had a large pair of Binoculars with starlight amplification devices installed in them. They took whatever light existed and electronically amplified it to provide a limited degree of night vision. One of the significant problems with these devices was the fact that if you pointed it at a bright light it would take up to 30 minutes to readjust to night vision. If you aimed it at a strong light source you could destroy the device.

There were two basic pastimes, watching sea snakes and watching firefights ashore. The sea snakes were extremely common. They were everywhere you looked and would swim around with their head sticking out of the water to breathe. I understand that they are very placid, but I don’t think I would like to spend my summers swimming with them.

The more important pastime, from the historical standpoint, was watching the firefights each night. These were continuing battles taking place between the RVN (Republic of Vietnam – or South Vietnamese) as they retreated towards Saigon and the pursuing North Vietnamese. We were in an ideal place to watch since we were 5 miles out to sea we could see the coast clearly and essentially siting in one place it was very obvious what we were watching. In the beginning the shooting was all to the north of us. We could see the tracer rounds each night. It was mostly small arms fire with an occasional bright light from a flare. Each night (we could not see the fighting during the day) the lights were progressively further south. After several nights the shooting was visible directly west of us. We could hear nothing and really not see anything during the day, but at nigh the fighting was going on all night long. It was moving south night after night and we could do nothing about it. Sitting there watching the fighting night after night I realized I was literally watching a country fall mile by mile. That all those years of fighting and thousands of dead young Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese on both sides had been reduced to my nightly mental notation of where the fighting was taking place. It was very frustrating.

There were two scares that sent us to general quarters. Both times it was a report from external sources that we were susceptible to attack by small craft coming from the north. After a few hours of studying the radar and determining that the reports had been unfounded we would return to our port and starboard watch condition with a little more vigilance.

On the 29^th of April 1975 Operation Frequent Wind was executed. This was the order the main Task Force had been waiting for. Specially the force was tasked with evacuating U.S. personnel and Vietnamese who might suffer as a result of their past service to the allied effort They were also to evacuate third-country nationals. The initial helicopters were launched from the USS Hancock at 1244 local time and proceeded to evacuate 3,000 American, Vietnamese and third-country nationals by 2100 (9PM) from the U.S. Defense Attaché Office. The Marine security force was also removed with little difficulty. The last helicopter departed the compound at 0012 on 30 April.

The evacuation of the American Embassy, however, was not to go a smoothly. Several hundred evacuees had been gathered in the embassy grounds. However, as the North Vietnamese Army entered the outskirts of the city crowds numbering in the thousands besieged the embassy and started climbing the walls in their attempt to flea the country. The Marine security force did an amazing job of maintaining control of the landing area in the parking lot as long as they did. They then retreated to the embassy, which had the remaining landing spot on the roof. That landing spot was not adequate for the large ch-53 helicopters which had been taking the majority of evacuees out. That meant fewer people would be going out in each flight. The choppers were receiving more and more ground fire on their way in from the sea as the city turned to chaos.

The men in our ECM room had found the frequencies of the helicopter controllers and the choppers themselves. I was able to spend my watch listening to the reports from the choppers as the struggled to find their way to the embassy without being shot down. It was a night of heroic efforts by a bunch of dedicated pilots and a small group of Marines who had the daunting problem of controlling a desperate mob of people who were fighting for their very lives. I heard the order relayed directly from the President that only Americans were to be evacuated from that point on. The marines managed to seal off the embassy and by barricading doors and hallways as they worked their way towards the roof.

At about 0400 (4AM) I heard an order relayed to the embassy that the Ambassador was to be on the next helicopter no matter what. The ambassador had been refusing to leave until the last moment. Fortunately at 0445 the ambassador and his staff boarded a helicopter. This left only the Marine security force on the roof of the embassy. They had backed themselves all the way to the roof using tear gas and physically blocking the route behind them with everything they could find. The official word was broadcast that the evacuation had been completed when the ambassador left the embassy.

We, who were listening, knew differently. My watch ended at 0600 but I could not leave until I found out what would happen to the remaining Marines. The helicopters continued to fly the more and more hazardous trip to and from the embassy and the last Marine was lifted off the roof at 0753 and successfully made it back to the carrier.

Within two hours of the departure of the last chopper Communist tanks broke through the gates of the embassy. In total the helicopter evacuation from the two sites in Saigon removed some 7,000 people, two of the Marines at the Attaché’s office had been killed and two chopper crews were lost at sea.

The exodus, however, was not over. As a part of the Operation Frequent Wind implementation we were ordered to foul our helicopter deck so as to make it a lest tempting landing site for escaping Vietnamese helicopter pilots and to be prepared to receive junks and sampans carrying people fleeing the country. We were, however, well north of the evacuation fleet and essentially behind enemy lines and never were approached.

This was not the case for ships to the south of us. Junks, sampans, and small craft of every description were sailing out to the fleet. Six MSC tugboats, which were permitted in Vietnamese ports had loaded barges with refugees and ferried them out of Saigon Harbor to the waiting fleet. A contingent of 26 Vietnamese Navy ships and other vessels evacuated 30,000 sailors and their families. During the 30 of April and the following day the taskforce slowly moved seaward. They continued to pick up people as they were departing and by the time the numbers of fleeing people had ceased on 2 May over 6000 people had been saved. Helicopters and observation planes had been commandeered by Vietnamese pilot who loaded them to the point of just barely being able to take off and either landed on or crashed in the water near ships of Frequent Wind.

The Sergeant Kimbro and nine other ships of the MSC contingent ended up carrying a total of approximately 44,000 men, women, and children to the Philippines and Guam. We will never know how many perished at sea during that period. We will not know how many perished at the hands of the Communists for working for or with us or our allies or how many tried to escape and failed.

How do I feel about this? I can only say that it was a different time in a different world. It would be wrong for anyone who didn’t grow up with the fear, right or wrong, that the Communists might at any time start a war that would end all life on this planet to judge us who made decisions to either support or oppose the war. I grew up hearing stories of friends of my parents who never came back from the war against Fascism. I grew up knowing how the good ideal of Socialism looked in theory and how perverted it became under Communism. I grew up in a world that could very realistically have come to an end in a matter of hours or days if ideologies had clashed at full force. A family that had very strong patriotic feelings brought me up. I was given a four-year college education in return for a four-year commitment to serve my country in the military. I was fortunate enough not to serve in country during the war, but I had many friends who did, some of who came home crippled physically and mentally. I had many other friends who protested the draft and managed to avoid service. I feel no differently to those who truly felt that the war was wrong and fought to change this country than I do about those who served. I only feel animosity toward those who chose to leave this country, not as a protest, but because they didn’t have the courage to fight for or against the war. The attitude of this country has changed radically as a result of views from both sides of that war and the world has changed significantly. I hope no one ever has to face the choices that my generation did.