Zung Dao (2008) Jeffrey Wolin

Zung Dao ARVN Lieutenant Special Forces “On April 29, 1975, we could hear cannons and rockets all over the place so we checked with Headquarters—nobody answered. We had no contact whatsoever. We had tried on the 27th and 28th too—no contact. Now the rockets start getting closer and closer. Saigon was lit up. We said, ‘Let’s go. Move out.’ We were on the road that leads to the main highway to Saigon and saw a group of Airborne. I saw a captain and asked to borrow his Jeep. He looked at me and began to reach for his weapon. I raised my gun and said, ‘Give me the Jeep or I’ll blow your fucking head off.’ We took the Jeep back to our camp—everyone was gone. I told the men, ‘Go back where you came from. It’s the end for us.’ I had brought a friend of mine when we evacuated Da Nang. He was a ship pilot. He asked me to take him to the piers to look for a ship to take us out. So we drove along the piers on the Saigon River. There were a couple of Vietnamese Marines and in order to get through we gave them money. We went out to the pier and found a boat with a rope ladder. It was a cargo ship just returned from India. The boat could hold about 1000 people; there were a few hundred on board. Then all of a sudden all hell broke loose. A wall of people started pouring in like ants. The first mate got so scared he said, ‘Chop the anchor line.’ They didn’t have time to raise the anchor. They pulled the rope ladders up and chopped the anchor lines from the stern and bow and the ship started to move out in the channel. People swam out to the ship and got sucked down in the water. A Navy PT boat started shooting at us—‘let us on board or we’ll blow you out of the water.’ Now there are more and more people. Around 11 that morning on the 30th someone shouts, ‘A tank!’ It was a Soviet T54 crossing the bridge into Saigon. We were moving out into the channel towards the open sea. We got shot at by a rocket launcher—eight people on board got killed; one was a very well-known Vietnamese writer along with his grandson. We got a big hole right in the midship but luckily all the compartments were empty and closed. One rocket stuck right in the bow without exploding. The ship lost its hydraulic steering and we started to drift towards the bank but luckily the backup system worked and we made it to the open sea by about 5 in the afternoon. We turned on the radio—Duong Van Minhhad surrendered.”