On April 29, 1975, four US Marines were killed in a rocket attack during the evacuation of Vietnam. Judge and McMahon were in my unit. Shea and Nystul were pilots who I did not know.

Dedicated To:
Lance Corporal Darwin D. Judge
Corporal Charles McMahon, Jr.
Captain William C. Nystul
First Lieutenant Michael J. Shea

Upon joining the Marines at age 17, I was not politically sophisticated. Furthermore, I had no political motive in volunteering for Vietnam. I simply wanted to serve my country as my father and uncles had done before me in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.

After a few months of specialized training at the Department of State and the FBI Academy, I arrived in Saigon on May 5, 1974. Our mission was to provide security for U.S. facilities and provide protection for American personnel working in Vietnam, including Ambassador Graham Martin and his State Department staff. I served nearly one year until April 30, 1975, when at 0735 in the morning, I was airlifted off the rooftop of the Saigon embassy and flown to the safety of the USS Hancock and the 7th Fleet off the coast in the South China Sea.

My tour of duty was very routine until the last five months of my tour when the North Vietnamese Army launched their last offensive on South Vietnam. From January 1975, the political and military situation deteriorated until the final few weeks when the city of Saigon was surrounded by 16 North Vietnamese divisions—that is correct—16 NVA divisions. Saigon was bombed by enemy aircraft, and we were subjected to hostile small arms fire from military forces and rioting by panicked Vietnamese civilians. The city and our positions were shelled by artillery and rockets from advancing military units, the latter resulting in the deaths of two of our Marines, Lcpl. Judge and Cpl. McMahon.

They and two additional Marines were killed when their helicopter crashed into the sea while attempting to reach one of the ships. Continually threatened by incoming fire and the imminent danger posed by massive crowds outside the embassy walls, we remained at our posts until all non-combatants at the evacuation sites of Tan Son Nhut Airbase and the U.S. Embassy compound were safely loaded aboard aircraft and flown out. It is estimated that we evacuated 6,000 non-combatants. We were the last to leave—the final military personnel to serve in Vietnam.

As I look back on this experience, I hope that all Americans will separate the noble sacrifice of our veterans from the political mistakes of our politicians. When asked to serve, the veterans gave their time, energy, youth, health, and, in many cases, their lives.

Like myself, the Americans who served were answering the call of one of our greatest Americans, John F. Kennedy, who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Herein lie important political and personal lessons for me:

Politically:

If we embark on a war of any duration, the majority of Americans must believe it is a noble cause, as it will be their young boys and girls who will die for it. Moreover, we must be sure to have the full support of the people we are fighting for. Their support is more important than weapons because if people believe a cause is just, they are capable of extreme sacrifices. Without that support, all the weapons in the world are useless.

In my opinion, people don’t give a damn about your politics when their bellies are empty. Therefore, economic aid may be, in the long run, the lowest-cost political strategy. Even so, this is viable only when the local governing authority is willing and capable of providing equitable distribution and delivery of the aid.

Personally:

We veterans are war’s living legacy. We continue to serve long after as America’s conscience. The veteran lives with the suffocating truth of war—not the Hollywood version. If we as veterans do not speak up and discuss the war experience, then someone else will rewrite the script. Without the voice of the veterans, as history revisits the body bags, the graves, and the tragedy of the war’s survivors, their noble service and sacrifice will be misrepresented.

History risks being revised to suit political ends. A veteran who serves and survives the trauma of war has a responsibility to articulate his or her experience. Not to do so is to abdicate one’s moral obligation to the younger generation. Our inability or reluctance to share the war experience will doom future generations to one day surrender their anatomy, humanity, or life far from home in a military campaign of little or no strategic significance.

Public autopsy of our successes and failures as a nation allows us to learn and grow as a people. Our collective conscience and national character can only benefit from this honest and frank retrospective of those who have served.

In the future, the hearts and minds that are there to win or lose belong to our children.

William C. Newell, Former SGT USMC
Hopkinton Resident

WBUR interviewed Newell and the other Massachusetts Marines in 2015, 40 years after the fall of Saigon.